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Writer's pictureLizzie Chapman

Conference Goal #1: Be Curious (Conference Curiosity).

Updated: Mar 17

Success at Conferences: The Power of Curiosity & Genuine Networking

Conference Curiosity

Upfront apology for skipping my newsletter the last couple of weeks! I was at Hubspot’s INBOUND conference and then of course followed it up with a virus as seeing hundreds of people overwhelms my rural Vermont immune system these days! But it was all worth it and today I want to share how I try to show up at a conference…with curiosity (Conference Curiosity).

Over the last few years as large in-person conferences have been limited and budgets have been tight, I haven’t attended a big trade show-style conference in almost 5 years. Instead, I’ve been going to smaller 250-500 person partnership conferences, so showing up to INBOUND was a shock to my system beyond just my immune system. RollWorks had a booth that attracted over 1,700 people in 3 days. I attended Hubspot’s Partner day with over 1,500 people and I helped the AdRoll agency team bounce around the hundreds of booths to meet current and prospective customers. At a partnerships conference the main goal is relationship building and learning, at a trade show the goal is booking meetings and selling, but what I noticed is that my approach to people and interactions didn’t change in the slightest and I would argue it was part of my success.

Here’s the perfect example of a typical interaction at a tradeshow that I witnessed:


  • Phase 1 of conversation: Someone, we’ll call them Sarah, comes up to the booth to ask what we do and a sales person, we’ll call them John, starts giving the pitch. Sarah instantly calls out that we’re most-likely competitors. I’m standing nearby listening in and acknowledging that Sarah is correct and there probably isn’t a lot we could do together, but would love to learn more about their product and approach. John jumps in and continues to pitch the product and goes through the entire script. John can not be stopped from his pitch script no matter the cost…and this is no shade on John, he’s been directed to go through the script, he’s goaled on setting up meetings and what he knows is how to sell the product. Sarah generously thanks John for the overview and says she doesn’t think they’re a good fit for a follow-up meeting and John goes on to the next potential prospect.

  • Phase 2 of conversation: I stick around and again ask about the product and what Sarah was looking to solve when coming by the booth. She explains the product and I relate to her with my experience in the ad tech world and she mentions she’s looking for B2B intent partners. I mention the partners we work with and the ones that seem to be hot topics of the conference, where to find their booths and the people she should connect with there. In return, she shares a few partnerships opportunities with me and how some of the prospects they receive would be a better fit for our product and we should set up a referral relationship. A few of those prospects are at the conference and Sarah messages them to tell them to come to our lounge and ask for me… REMEMBER, WE’RE COMPETITORS. We connect on LinkedIn and she sincerely offers to connect whenever I’m running into problems or need advice and asks if she can do the same, which of course I would return the favor.


I’ll give you the TLDR version of a few other interactions like this, in the coffee line at our booth, I sell the value of Sendoso (one of our partners) to a prospect and connect him with colleagues on LinkedIn, I recommend CallRail to an agency prospect who ultimately is looking for a call tracking solution. Both Sendoso and CallRail sent prospects our way throughout the conference as well.

So what’s the moral of the story? Your conference goal is to always get to PHASE 2 of the conversation, Phase 1 is the mandate part that only holds value if you’re talking to the right individual at the right time and honestly shouldn’t come until you ask, “What is it that you do, what does your company do and what are you looking for?” Once you have that understanding you can 1. Pitch better and/or 2. Give advice and potentially get something return. (Call back to my “Give to Get” newsletter). You may not even have anything to give outside of your curiosity to learn more about what someone is looking for and you may only get a bit more industry knowledge from the conversation…and that’s a perfectly okay result!

By bringing my curiosity to INBOUND, I learned so much about what our prospects, customers and partners need and created new GTM motions that were validated by feedback as I shared the ideas in real-time. I gained a new network that had many people texting throughout the weekend immediately after to ask to connect again in the next couple weeks. I learned about new players in the industry that I should partner with or learn more about. And the cherry on top, I helped drive a lot of highly qualified sales meetings and I did it by helping others solve their current problems and meeting their needs.

So I encourage everyone to reframe their conference goals and intentions to:


  1. Be Curious: to learn about people, companies, their needs and industry knowledge.

  2. Be Helpful: Find solutions to others’ needs when you can across your offering or others'.


In doing this you will automatically sell your product to anyone who’s the right fit AND you will be seared into the minds of others’ who may be ready for it in the future. The tactical goals of meetings & sales will be meet with ease when you show up to a conference with curiosity.

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