Conferences and trade shows are a vital part of sourcing, enabling dealmakers to build relationships with top targets and identify attractive new opportunities. More than 75% of the dealmakers we surveyed reported that conferences and trade shows are among their top sourcing tactics.
Yet most firms manage this critical tactic the same way they plan their holiday party. Our survey revealed 83% don’t use data or technology to orchestrate and inform their process. Instead, this top source of deals is overseen with Google searches, spreadsheets, and individual calendars. One investment banker shared that it took four associates over two weeks to prepare for just one conference.
Without a data-backed, coordinated approach, strategic acquirers and advisors are investing hours in mundane tasks. But more importantly, they may not even be attending the best events. An estimated 13,000 trade shows happen each year in the United States alone. Evaluating all the possibilities by industry, geography, and comparing against your pipeline and target criteria is an impossible undertaking.
Dealmakers need to leverage data and technology to ensure that their investments in conferences and trade shows are delivering value with tools that:
This is where Sourcescrub’s new Conference Planning solution can help.
Sourcescrub’s Conference Planning is the only solution built specifically for dealmakers that uses data and technology to optimize event strategy and management. Powered by our unmatched, dynamically managed database of over 150,000 conferences and trade shows, interwoven with 15 million+ company profiles, Sourcescrub delivers recommendations on the best events based on identified targets and criteria used to surface new opportunities. Robust planning and collaboration tools — including a dedicated conference calendar and project management functionality — help dealmakers remove hours from the conference planning process.
An origination team leader shared: “Sourcescrub’s Conference Planning solution gets a 10/10 from me – it’s a game changer. I can reconcile information with our CRM, track events by individual thesis areas, and receive personalized conference recommendations, all in one place."
Optimize your event strategy with always-fresh data, centralized in one platform
The 83% of dealmakers who don’t use a technology-supported approach to conference management are missing out on high-ROI events and struggling to maintain up-to-date event data. With information spread across static sources like spreadsheets and documents, data quickly becomes stale.
Instead of chasing information across platforms, you can manage all your events in Sourcescrub. With our always up-to-date conferences, company details, and contact information, dealmakers can create, organize, and manage lists of conferences based on investment thesis, location, timing, or any other focus area. Teams can easily collaborate on interesting conferences in one click and collaborate, assign ownership, and indicate statuses to keep everyone in the loop. What’s more, you can organize and manage lists of.
Get complete visibility into upcoming conferences
Busy dealmakers looking to better manage their schedules can use Sourcescrub’s dedicated conference calendar. All their upcoming events are in one place, with the ability to add team members, track status, and filter views based on target attendance, lists, and more.
To uncover new conferences, Sourcescrub has a dedicated Conference Search page. Users can filter upcoming events based on what’s important to them, such as the attendance of top targets, event type, industry, and other conference attributes.
Receive personalized conference recommendations
Sourcescrub also surfaces personalized conference recommendations based on your lists of target companies and events. This enables you to view the highest-value conferences in one click — no searching required!
You’ll also receive even more curated event recommendations delivered right to your inbox in a daily digest. This will help you stay on top of conferences 24/7, even when you’re not in Sourcescrub.
Once you’re ready to begin outreach prior to a conference, you can leverage SourcingGPT — our AI-powered sourcing assistant — to generate personalized messages that consider the target’s recent milestones, news, and inclusion in Sources. And our out-of-the-box CRM integrations help you accelerate and scale outreach to book more meetings at each conference.
Ready to see how Conference Planning can help your team save time and get more out of conference season? Chat with an expert here.
