Get most out of SaaStock17

It’s only three weeks to SaaStock17. By now you should have booked at least your conference tickets, flight & hotel. In addition, you probably should have secured your ticket to one (or few) of the SaaS.City bootcamps on Monday the 18th. SaaStock is one of Europe’s leading B2B SaaS events. The conference is in the RDS in Dublin on the 19th and 20th of September.  SaaStock is expecting to gather 1500 Founders, VC’s and Execs for three days. In addition, there are 20+ satellite events around the event from Sunday the 17th to Friday the 22nd September.

This is our second time at SaaStock. This year we’ll have a stand with 6 people from our team. In addition, we’ve lured (with the help of Finnish Software Entrepreneurs Association)  20+ other Finnish SaaS entrepreneurs to SaaStock so in addition to the onboarding and online sales experience we’ll bring to you we’re able to give you a sneak peek to the Finnish software and SaaS ecosystem.

To get the most out of the 3-5 days you’ll spend in Dublin you have to set your personal goals for the event. In addition to the free(?) beer, what do you want to achieve at SaaStock17? Do you want to solve your challenges in productization or want to find best practices in customer success management or expanding your company to the US? Want to meet specific people, close your funding round or acquire new customers? When you know what you want to achieve, you can get yourself familiar with other attendees and speakers (topics).

• Be active on social media: Follow the @saastock and #saastock17 on Twitter. Make the best that other attendees know why you’ll be at SaaStock and introduce yourself to the people you want to meet.
• Book meetings: Make the most to book meetings before the event. You can find sponsors, investors, and speakers from the SaaStock site. You can contact them via LinkedIn, Twitter or Email to request a meeting. If you don’t get a reply to your meeting request don’t give up.
• Prepare your pitch: What is your intro (one liner), 30sec “elevator pitch” or your pitch deck? Don’t rely on technology or notes. Do your website and social media profiles support your pitch?

Two days, three tracks and 100 speakers. From 9 am to 6 pm on Tuesday and Wednesday. You can only be at one place at a time. It’s super hard to follow during the event if you haven’t prepared yourself a agenda for the day. For every interaction, instead of selling, think how you’re able to help.

• Prepare your agenda: Check the agenda beforehand and pick the best topics for you. You probably anyhow miss some of your selected topics but when you have the extra 30min spare time you know easily where to go. https://www.saastock.com/agenda
• Prefer morning meetings: We’ve had our best meetings first in the morning before the official agenda. Grab a cup of coffee, mingle around the area. Calm and easy start for the day.
• Be active with side events: There is a lot of things to do after the official agenda. Many of the speakers and attendees is at the Ballsbridge hotel. Could you meet someone there at hotel breakfast or at the Dubliner pub? Be active and search for the parties, talks, drinks, etc. around the event. Don’t forget the #saastock17 hashtag.

After the Dublin experience, it’s important to make most out of your new connections. Based on SalesForce it takes 6 to 8 touches to generate a viable sales lead. During the SaaStock you probably met at least tens of new people and probably had 2-3 discussions with the best connections. You still have 3-5 touches before you get the sales lead so in all the cases it’s important that you follow-up after the event.

• Connect on LinkedIn and follow on Twitter: Use LinkedIn as your business card and Twitter to start or continue the conversation. Send a connection request with a personalized message. Don’t forget to visit companies LinkedIn and Twitter posts to see if there is something new to add to the agenda.
• Follow-up via email: Don’t forget to send the promised pitch deck and summary follow-up emails. The best time to send these is probably next week after the event. Remember to give something valuable (attachment, link, blog) to the recipient.
• Book follow-up meetings: Did you get leads, new ideas or did you forget to say the most important thing? Get more familiar with the people and companies you met at the event and book a follow-up meeting with personalized agenda.

Looking forward to meet you in Dublin. We’ll be there on Monday morning. We’re there to help SaaS companies in onboarding and online sales automation. Just contact us beforehand to fix a meeting or come to talk during the event.