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PM Forum - Birmingham

Return on investment and effective event follow up

Two of those phrases that can strike fear into the hearts of marketers and finance controllers - return on investment and effective event follow up.

So when we all pitched up in Birmingham to hear about effective event follow-up, focussing on the Entrepreneur of the Year awards, from EY’s Kay Stone, we were eager to hear where we had been going wrong and more importantly how we were going to become ‘event follow up gurus’. Sadly we were disappointed – but this was nothing at all to do with Kay’s enlightening presentation. You see – the long and short if it is - there is no golden rule and the truth of the matter is it takes a lot of preparation and persistence from both the BD teams and fee earners alike to make sure that that elusive return on investment is achieved.

Preparation – Kay could not stress this enough. The amount of planning that goes into the Entrepreneur of the Year - the research that is done in advance, the briefing of fee earners and hosts, the matching of personalities, the resulting action plans is enormous. So much so EY has a dedicated team of 12 nationally who work on this initiative alone.

Persistence – making sure the resulting action plan is adhered to and actually carried out. Again, this could be not stressed enough.

I would venture to suggest that a lot of firms do not make the most of the events they hold. And yet they should. A great deal of money and time is spent on a great event but then it all goes a bit cold – clients and perhaps more importantly targets are allowed to disappear into the ether because the follow up is patchy or is simply not done.

There is just no excuse anymore - we as marketers have to make sure follow up happens – it’s our job to facilitate the follow up and make sure it’s done by the fee earners involved.

The figures from EY speak for themselves. They were staggering – their return on investment for Entrepreneur of the Year clearly shows that getting it right, from start to finish, can certainly pay off.

Kate Roberts
Cobbetts LLP

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