Competitive Focus

Selling the Value of Your Event -- IEEE Panel of Conference Organizers

Try this spreadsheet for your event.

What are your goals? (For example, to obtain $10,000 of funding for your event. to obtain scholarships to support attendance at your event, to get companies to send people or speakers to your event, to get companies to provide exhibits at your event.)
What do you need from potential patrons? (For example, $2000, Scholarships, attendance, speakers, sponsorships?)
What might a potential patron want? (Visibility, users of their products, new hires?)
Where are there shared intereste? (Be creative! For example, we can provide you with an audience of 200 eager and bright young engineers and a recruiting booth if you will sponsor a networking happy hour.)

Template

Example:

	You	Company A	Company B
Goals	Increase attendance	increase engineering capacity	Solidify our platform as the de facto standard platform
Needs	Money to fund scholarships, Companies to send 10 individual contributors	Hire 10 entry level electrical engineers by Q4	20 firms to adopt their platform this year
Shared Interests		Provide them with a recruiting booth in exchange for scholarships to 15 people to attend the conference	Exhibit space and a speaker slot in exchange for becoming a Gold Sponsor

You

Company A

Company B

Goals

Increase attendance

increase engineering capacity

Solidify our platform as the de facto standard platform

Needs

Money to fund scholarships,

Companies to send 10 individual contributors

Hire 10 entry level electrical engineers by Q4

20 firms to adopt their platform this year

Shared Interests

Provide them with a recruiting booth in exchange for scholarships to 15 people to attend the conference

Exhibit space and a speaker slot in exchange for becoming a Gold Sponsor

"Excellent Execution: Top Ten Lessons for Managers," IEEE Engineering Management Review, February, 2016