Creating Customer Events, Lessons Learned from Microsoft Convergence

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Microsoft Convergence has become a can’t-miss event for many. Microsoft Convergence is Microsoft’s premier customer event, and is preceded by a Microsoft Dynamics partner day. I’ll be headed to Sage Insights in May and can’t wait to see how their event compares to Microsoft’s. Now I know many of you can’t afford to put on an event on the scale of Microsoft, but who can?! Everyone has to start somewhere. The first Great Plains Stampede and Great Plains Convergence had only a handful of people - but they built from there. (Great Plains Software was acquired by Microsoft in 2001.) With more people looking to get referrals and build their business through word-of-mouth, now is a great time to think about hosting a small, locally-based user group. If that’s something you are interested in trying, let me share some lessons I’ve learned over the years from attending Microsoft Convergence. 1. Make sure your top executives are actively participating in your event. Although your clients (hopefully) love your staff; they want to know they are important, and that they are being heard at the highest levels of your organization. They want to understand the direction your company is headed. 2. Make sure your information is educationally-focused. In past years, I would hear sporadic complaints when a conference became too “sales-y” only talking about an upcoming product releases. Make sure you provide value that can be used TODAY, not just in the next version of your products. 3. Provide plenty of socializing and networking time. All work and no play make for a dull event. Build in some time and ways for people to get to know each other. If you have partners, this might be a great opportunity for them to sponsor part of your event. Microsoft Dynamics GP partners and customers have come to look forward to Rock-n-Rave year after year. Their party at Harrah’s this year was as phenomenal as ever! With their clever marketing efforts to drive booth attendance, this event is both a great socializing event and a great marketing tactic. 4. Communicate. Microsoft had a website. They Twittered. (http://www.Twitter.com/MBSconvergence.) They created a FaceBook group. They created ways for people to find each other and connect online before the conference. Once you arrived at the event, they had handouts and signs. Partners also reached out to their clients to host dinners and cocktail hours. All of these efforts helped to make attendees feel confident that they were in the right place at the right time. 5. Take care of the details. Everything was meticulously planned. The food. The meals. The hotel rooms. The signs. I can’t even imagine running logistics for an event of that scale! In past years, they even had signs on all the doors, the floors and in the lights. The devil’s in the detail, so make sure you put a highly organized person in charge. One last thing. Microsoft Convergence attendance was down (I heard @ 15-20%) from prior years. Paying $1500 for a conference, plus the hotel, airfare and dinner costs for travelling across the country to attend, PLUS the out of office time was too much for many people at this time. There wasn’t much Microsoft could do to react. Contracts were signed long before the economy tanked, so their costs were fixed. But if I was putting on an event today, I’d keep affordability as a top-of-mind issue. It doesn’t have to be free, but the value has to be clearly communicated.

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Written by Adrianne-Machina