LizzardTech’s Top 5 Tips for Making the Most of Dreamforce
LizzardTech’s Top 5 Tips for Making the Most of Dreamforce
How to cut through the noise, stand out at Dreamforce, and have fun doing it.
This year was the first year that our company, LizzardTech Consulting, has sponsored Dreamforce. It’s been a busy year, and Dreamforce is the place to network, celebrate hard work, make connections, and yes, close new clients.
If you are a new, up and coming Salesforce Partner, we hope these five key takeaways will help if you decide to take the Dreamforce sponsorship plunge.
1. Stand Out from the Crowd
With 1,000’s of booths and exhibitors at Dreamforce, it’s important to come up with a way to differentiate yourself from the pack. We opted for a ‘peacocking’ strategy with flashy lime green company polos. This might sound tacky, but it is a sure fire way to stand out from the crowd and have people approach and ask you about your company and what you do. It’s also a useful way to stand out as you head around to different exhibitors. You’ll find that people are just as likely to meet you in the crowd, and make that mental recognition when they see your team at the booth. Next year we’re thinking bomber jackets.
Another way to stand out from the crowd is with your booth presentation and giveaways. We noticed other companies doing everything from giving out free massages all the way up to raffling off fancy and expensive items. It’s all about getting people to come to you and being noticed. Dreamforce is an opportunity to advertise and increase brand awareness.
The more people who hear about you or recognize you the better off you will be. Word of mouth can spread fast, so if you’re the ‘“cool booth’” with the fun games and awesome giveaways, people will seek you out. That said – you don’t need to spend a fortune on your booth – creativity goes a long way.
2. Make Friends – There’s Room For Everyone At The Top
Although the neighboring booths could be your competition, it’s important to socialize and make friends with them. Even in cut throat industries, collaboration > competition.
For one, it helps to pass the time by and keep things interesting. But also, the more friends you can make in this industry, the better. You never know when an important business or partnership opportunity can arise, and it can all start just from a simple hello and a smile.
Engaging and connecting with your fellow exhibitors is a great opportunity to share best practices, learn about what’s working and what isn’t, and when you get home, there’s an opportunity to leverage social content, host workshops and meetups together, and even kick over work in the long term.
3. The days are long, so make sure you’re comfortable.
Make sure to wear your most comfortable and supportive shoes on and we highly recommend paying for extra booth chairs. It’s not a luxury, it’s a lifeline!
Standing in the same place for 8 hours, can make for some really achy knees and feet by days end. You don’t want to be the person who misses out on one of the big after hours networking events, because you need to go back to your hotel room to rest your lower extremities. (If you have access, some standing desk/restaurant quality gel mats can be great to reduce pressure on your feet.)
The after hours events will offer some your best opportunities to network and make key business connections all the while unwinding, in a fun and relaxing environment.
4. Take turns staffing the booth and networking with the masses.
While it’s great to have a booth, you can sometimes go hours before talking to a potential business prospect. Don’t get us wrong, you’ll be talking to a lot of people passing by your booth, but many of them won’t be who you’re looking for in terms of expanding your business.
Dreamforce is crawling with potential prospects and it is important to have some foot soldiers wandering around mingling. Your company will maximize its Dreamforce efforts with the inbound booth traffic approach combined with an outbound networking in the masses approach.
5. Take notes – and keep track of the details so you can proactively follow up and help your prospects remember you
Dreamforce will supply booth sponsors with a scanner. The scanner is actually an old Galaxy S4 that runs an information capturing software coupled with NFC (Near Field Communication) technology.
Every person attending dreamforce will have a lanyard with a name badge around their neck (You can’t get into the event without it). The badge utilizes the NFC technology and when the scanner is pressed to the badge, it picks up the attendees contact and business information.
You will likely be talking to hundreds of different people and scanning their badges, so it is important to take detailed notes about them and your conversation. Nothing is worse than getting home from a long event like Dreamforce and completely forgetting who you talked to and what you talked about. (Pro-tip: people like talking about their kids, their pets, and their hometown. These are all great details to help jog memories and convert to a follow up call.)
After capturing the attendees information via a successful scan, there is a ‘notes’ section included with their information, which populates immediately on the device’s screen. Simply click on the ‘notes box’ and start typing the key information about that particular exchange. Keeping good notes is imperative so that later on, when your company is sifting through the list of attendee contact information, you can decipher who is who just by reading your notes.
When you get home? Make sure to follow up with everyone you spoke to no later than a week after the event has ended. The sooner the better!
We hope these tips help you make the most out of your Dreamforce experience!
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