CES is one of the biggest tech-shows of the year. With over 175,000 attendees covering 2.9 million square feet of space, CES is bigger than IFA in Berlin, and bigger than MWC in Barcelona. CES should be viewed not as an event, but as a 4-day business development summit designed to accelerate business growth and drive value for your innovation portfolio. If orchestrated strategically, CES can drive an innovation agenda designed around education, partner engagement and growth.
Sprosty Network, a business acceleration consulting firm, helps businesses identify, develop and execute organic growth strategies. Our hands-on, pragmatic and entrepreneurial approach to innovation helps you deliver what’s next. We leverage CES for internal business development. We also lead curated tours across the 4-day show for our clients to align their strategic needs with new paths to growth and opportunities to drive their innovation pipeline.
It can be overwhelming to step on to the floor at CES or to choose the right on-site summits to attend. We have been attending CES for over 20 years and have developed a business development framework that redirects our approach to CES. This approach may change how you plan for the show, determine attendees, schedule time, and focus on post-show follow up.
Pre-show
- Assign a core team for CES that can coordinate efforts across your company. This core team will be responsible for aligning show objectives, creating a centralized view of all vendor and/partner meetings, and publishing post conference results. Coordination of effort across the organization will reduce duplication of effort and can strengthen conversations with potential vendors/partners.
- Clearly articulate your innovation objectives for the show. Are there specific strategic areas or partnerships you want to advance at the show? Are you looking for core, adjacent or transformational opportunities? Are you trying to primarily fill the front end of your innovation pipeline? Or are you focused on deepening relationships with current partners? Are there any specific initiatives you want to progress? Answering these questions will have a direct impact on how you craft your agenda.
- Right size your attendee list (how many and who) in order to drive your show objectives. You need to ensure that you have the right decision makers at the right meetings to further your innovation goals.
- Develop a prospecting strategy. Study the floor layouts and map a route to see and meet vendors across the strip aligned with your objectives. Once identified, develop an outreach plan to connect with and schedule meetings at the show. Contact info is often challenging to come by, so leverage LinkedIn or company websites to help.
- Prepare your current or potential partners. It seems obvious, but time and time again we see so many people forgetting this very important step. Setting clear expectations and defining post-meeting success will allow the people you meet to prepare appropriately. You don’t have a lot of time to waste at the show. You want to ensure each hour you spend is impactful.
At the show
- Plan your route. CES can be overwhelming. Navigating across multiple convention centers and other locations can be challenging and time consuming. For this reason, schedule meetings in a single area after determining where you will be.
- Keep track of key learnings throughout the show. In addition to documenting each meeting, take the time in between meetings to keep a broader running list of key “a-ha” moments and key next steps. Daily recaps with the team can also be helpful to ensure no insights are lost. After 5 days of back to back meetings, you will find that having effective notes will be a life saver.
- Reserve dinners for key meetings. Dinners are your most valuable meeting slots. You can spend anywhere from 1 to 2 hours with a vendor/partner without feeling like you are rushing to the next thing. Schedule them wisely.
- CTA member lounges are a life saver. The access to lounges (complete with drinks and snacks) are one of many benefits of being a CTA member. This benefit alone makes the membership worthwhile. Finding meeting spots (or even a place to sit) is nearly impossible at the show.
After the show
- Follow up with partners no later than a week after the show. If you’ve been keeping good notes throughout the show, you will have prioritized your next steps. Set time for follow ups while the show and key conversations are still top of mind.
- Convene as a team as soon as everyone is back. Capture team insights while they are fresh. Be sure to review key learnings and catalog any new ideas for your pipeline. Take time to reflect on what went well, what could be improved and what the team wants to remove from the list. Driving process improvement will be key to next year’s planning.
- Teach back the value of the show back to the organization. Whether it’s you or someone from the core team, ensure that there is a clear recap of the show once learnings have been aggregated. At the end of this teach out, teams and leaders should be able to articulate the ROI for the show. For example, you can share top 10 learnings, the density of partner meetings, number of new ideas added to the pipeline and other key advances made in the innovation portfolio.
CES should be used to drive business development and accelerate your innovation pipeline. We can help you do that.
From Idea to Execution: Sprosty Network helps businesses identify, develop and execute organic growth strategies. Our hands-on, pragmatic and entrepreneurial approach to innovation helps you deliver what’s next.