If you search online, there’s an unending list of financial industry-related seminars and conferences – Michael Kitces provides a master list of top financial advisor conferences that’s regularly updated. If you’re attending one soon, you need to make it worth the effort.
Traditionally, you sign up, you attend, you acquire handouts and copious notes, and then what? What are you doing with all the newfound information?
If you’re like many attendees, you package it all up with great intentions and return to the business at hand.
You can do better! Here are some follow-up tips to check off the month after a financial conference to get the most out of your educational experiences.
One Week After Event
How Do I Make Use of Social Media?
Typically, financial advisor conferences promote their event and even breakout sessions using hashtags. Use them to search and identify key professionals who can continue to nurture your business development.
Follow them and create opportunities for dialogue. If the hashtags are popular, you may even find related content online to round out what you learned at the event.
Beyond looking for what the host is promoting, take this opportunity to make some new connections and share what you learned with others. Start with your LinkedIn profile and then move on to your more social—but still business-related—sites like Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube, connecting and sharing at each stop.
Gather all the business cards you collected and connect online with each one. When making your requests, be personal and relate it to the event or ask follow-up questions to show you’re genuinely looking to connect rather than simply building followers and likes.
Related: Finacial Advisor’s Social Media: Dos and Don’ts
Sort Out & Organize Your Thoughts
Thoughts, notes, and handouts can quickly turn into clutter if you don’t find a way to organize them for future reference. Testing shows that two months after listening to a talk, the average listener will remember only 25% of what was said.
Information comes in large amounts and very quickly at conferences, and you don’t want to lose that valuable information. First, download any presentation decks you can access, as these will be a great reference in the future.
Next, organize and digitize your notes into four groups:
- Key issues discussed
- Reference and guide materials
- Action items to take
- Questions
Two Weeks After Event
Practice Makes Perfect (Or At Least Improves Your Game)
Determine what resonated with you and find a way to implement it into your business practices to move you forward. Recognize that implementing new processes is often one of the most challenging things a work team can take on.
Putting a proven process you learned into action gives your team a glimpse of what’s to come. Refer to your notes and decide what steps you need to take regarding the changes you intend to make and the outcomes you want to achieve.
Once in place, consider measuring the new process in terms of meeting customer requirements, alignment within your company’s goals, or even productivity measuring input versus output. The simple act of measuring drives improvement.
Are You Sharing or Hoarding Your Knowledge?
The best financial advisor conferences offer a valuable way to improve your business, and putting ideas into action is essential to making it worth attending. But remember, hearing and learning from an industry leader is much different than having first-hand experience.
So, before you talk up the information with your colleagues, reach out to the presenters to answer lingering questions and provide clarification or deeper insights.
Once you’re comfortable, it’s time to share. When you share what you know with others, there’s an opportunity for everyone’s business to grow and prosper. Sharing ideas spurs creative ideas so go ahead and create that PowerPoint or blog post and let your insight generate new ideas.
One Month After Event
It’s Time to Discover the Conference ROI
It might take a moment to equate an activity to a mathematical number. Still, you’ll want to place a monetary value on your output from the event to determine if it was worth attending and if similar events should be in your future plans.
For example, if you’re now saving three hours each week, what are the cost savings? If a new contact is helping you bring in business, can you turn that connection into a monetary value?
It may not be all about the numbers but determining the ROI of attending a conference by placing a monetary value on each of these components can help you decide where to place your time and money in the future.
Income
| Conference Takeaways | Monetary Value |
| Questions Answered | $______ |
| New Information Learned | $______ |
| Vendor Connections | $______ |
| Growth Opportunities | $______ |
| Business Contacts | $______ |
| Time Efficiencies | $______ |
| Other (______________________) | $______ |
| TOTAL INCOME | $______ |
Expenses
| Conference Consequences | Monetary Value |
| Expenses | $______ |
| Time Away | $______ |
| TOTAL EXPENSES | $______ |
Do the Math
TOTAL INCOME – TOTAL EXPENSES = VALUE OF THE CONFERENCE
Are You Working Your New Connections?
Making connections after a conference should take on a two-pronged approach. First, you’ll want to revisit the stack of business cards you acquired and find reasons to connect with the people you believe can help your business grow.
Discuss what ideas you brought back from the conference, what’s working, and what challenges you’re facing, and even share resources. This valuable rapport can turn into referral alliances—build those strategic partnerships.
Related: 4 Quick Tips to Generate Referrals from Existing Clients
Second, you’ll want to think beyond that stack to apply what you learned to your new business model. For example, look for opportunities to connect your internal team with an external team from another business and brainstorm new ideas. Often something even better comes out of these meetings, with everyone sharing ideas and results.
Final Thought
Attending conferences isn’t just about the event; it’s about getting the most value out of it and being able to make a positive impact on your business.
Set your goals before you go so you can measure your takeaways when you return, and if the ROI doesn’t make sense, scratch that one off your list.
Keep Reading: Financial Dinner Seminar Best Practices to Drive More Business
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