How to run a round table event

Transform your research project interviewees into fully fledged relationships by holding a post white paper round table event. The primary objective of a research project is to develop relationships with individuals from cold – an activity which would traditionally be difficult and time consuming. The lynchpin in transferring the relationships from the interviewer to the commissioning organisation is the round table event. This is where:

the commissioning organisation meets the interviewees face to face
the findings are presented back
interviewees can network and share ideas
the commissioning organisation can showcase some of its own work

It’s possible that this event may be advertised but may be undersubscribed – especially if only ten people have been interviewed. If this happens, a cancelled event has still served its purpose in part by drawing interviewees forward to the next stage. Later in this document, we talk through the best way to handle this situation.

Here are Onefish Twofish’s top tips for running this event successfully.

Planning

start planning early in advance – at least 3 months, preferably 4-5 months
the first step is to book a venue and set a date
illicit the refund policy from the venue – firmly ink these dates into your diary and schedule your planning around them. For example, if the last date you can cancel before incurring a fee or losing a deposit is 4 weeks prior to the event, then it’s vital to make sure that you are in a position to decide whether to cancel or go ahead at this point. If invitations have just hit inboxes, then it’s impossible to know what the response rate will be
most senior people will need 6-8 weeks notice to schedule a date in their diary

Choosing a style of event

this event can be utterly straight forward (a simple tea/coffee only, morning meeting at a serviced office (e.g. MW Business Exchange), luxurious (full lunch at a smart London hotel e.g. Café Royal) or more unusual (e.g. meeting plus guided tour of the Cabinet War Rooms)
a maximum of a half day is recommended. 2-3 hour slots are ideal e.g. 10-1 or 2:30-5:30. Breakfast meetings and evening meetings are definitely not recommended – they sound very time effective but have a low response rate and high drop out rate!!
if your own offices are in a good location and large/smart enough, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t hold the event there

Choosing a schedule

It’s vital that a balance is struck between ‘light-under-a-bushel’ and blatant advertising of the commissioning company. Any information presented or provided should be strictly positioned as information providing, not selling. If in doubt, err on the side of caution.
Consider inviting clients or other people in your network to speak or lead particular slots as an extra ‘pull’ for delegates
Good ways to showcase your own work include: explaining why you conduct this kind of research, presenting your own client case studies (alongside them if possible) and positioning your business clearly.

Communicating with delegates

The round table concept will have been introduced at the interview stage by Onefish Twofish so all interviewees should expect an invitation.
Send personal email invitations with pdf attachments. Hard copy invitations are much more trouble and expense and unfortunately less effective.
Any potential interviewees who could not take part but expressed interest in the subject matter can be offered a discretionary guest pass

Here’s the action list for invitation distribution

Send invitations with 6-8 weeks to go. Include a strong email, summarising the event and expressing 3-4 bullet point benefits of why they should attend and/or subject matter that will be covered. Attach a formal invitation (pdf document with good artwork – not just a word document!). Include a list of interviewees/invitees. Include an agenda.
Send reminder emails after 2 weeks.
As responses come in, send out joining instructions to all those who can attend. Include directions, a further copy of the agenda, full contact details.
Ask those who have declined whether they would like a member of their team to represent them or a colleague to attend in their place.
Chase non-respondents by phone with 3-4 weeks to go
Follow up with agreed attendees in the final week (c. 3-4 days before the event). Check for dietary requirements. Check each attendee has all the information they need.

Persuading people to attend

The following factors are the top five reasons why people attend external events of this type:

Case studies and insight, direct from the organisation itself (e.g. BBC explaining how it develops its leaders internally)
A chance to network with opposite numbers in well known businesses
Information which does ‘legwork’ i.e. provides a large amount of valuable information in a short space of time (e.g. “everything a B2C direct marketer needs to know about B2C communication law”)
Content which is new or innovative e.g. research or a new way to do something. Many events claim to provide a new slant on a particular challenge, but in fact don’t. So a high degree of credibility is needed here if innovation is the specific hook
An opportunity to contribute/have a voice. Many senior managers feel good about sharing their own experiences and views and contributing to an important subject

At director level, numbers 2, 4 and 5 are most important. At manager level, numbers 1 and 3 are the key draws.
When word-smithing the agenda and invitation text for the round table, it’s vital that you consider the elements above in the context of your audience and communicate the value of attending accordingly. For example, instead of:

10am – Presentation of research findings
11am – Group discussion and debate

try…

10am – Research findings: What 6 key issues should Internal Comms be ready for, 3 years from now?
11am – Innovation and idea generation session

Simply sending invitations and waiting for a response is usually not enough to secure a good response rate. Here are the best ways to make sure that the people you really want to attend, do so.

Use Cialdini’s insight on the psychology of persuasion:

Reciprocity – if you do something which helps a delegate, they are more likely to agree to any requests you make. Send them an article or paper which is really interesting to them or link them up with a valuable contact.
Likeability – invitees are several times more likely to attend if they like you. Build a relationship, rather than relying on generic email communication
Social proof – people are more inclined to follow the lead of people who are similar to them. So if you can demonstrate that all their peers are attending, they are much more likely to attend. If you can’t show that they are attending, you can at least show that they are invited and/or have contributed.
Authority – if any of the speakers have titles or professional qualifications, leverage these. Similarly, send invitations from your managing director, principal consultant or whoever commands most credibility in the eyes of your prospects. Conversely, sending invitations from the Sales or Marketing Director will have the opposite effect!
Scarcity – the round table needs to be portrayed as a small, exclusive event to which only a select number are invited. Imply that places are limited at every opportunity e.g. describe it as an invitation only event, offer a contact one of four guest tickets, explain to non-contributors that you will have to check whether you can squeeze them in etc.

Important note: in any event of this type, the single biggest influence on the response rate is the extent to which the whole business gets behind emailing and phoning their contacts. If this activity doesn’t happen, the event is highly unlikely to succeed from a numbers perspective.

Filling the room, if numbers are low

Invite clients – it’s great to have people around the table who can make the link between the research project and the work your business does. The ideal is that they speak highly of you so that you don’t have to do so much promotion of your business yourselves
Make sure you’ve invited all the interviewees who expressed interest but could not take part. There should be 5-10 in this category
Approach parallel organisations e.g. “Mr Lloyds TSB, we recently conducted research in the Financial Services industry and RBS and HBOS took part. Would you like to join them at the contributor’s lunch as our guest?”
Ensure every client facing person in the business is emailing and calling their contacts. It’s a good reason to get in touch with people you haven’t spoken to in a while and offer them something which is genuinely of interest and of value.
Ask ‘polite turn downs’ whether they would like anyone to represent them or attend on their behalf
Invite associates and suppliers, where appropriate
Invite academics/business school lecturers who specialise in the subject matter you are presenting
Ask clients, prospects and associates to bring a colleague or a peer from their business. A good research project will address several internal functions, even if the interviewees come from only one function. So if the project addresses HR, you could always run a slot about innovation in collaborating with Marketing, and ask your HR contacts to invite the Head of Marketing. This is hard to pull off, so make sure the slant and link back to the research project is spot on
Also, ask for referrals. “We’re running an event on xyz – who do you know who’s particularly interested in this?”

Making sure attendees don’t drop out
Once a guest list is secured, it’s important to make sure that as many people from this list as possible actually do attend. A good attendance rate would be 75%. 90% would be exceptional, 60% is average and <50% would be disappointing and logistically problematic.

Take every opportunity to be in contact with committed delegates. Break out the communication you have with them into chunks, rather than communicating everything in one hit. For example, send joining instructions after a positive response has been received. The follow up with a form for them to complete if they wish to bring someone else a week later. Finally call everyone with 3-4 days to go to check whether they have everything they need and whether they have any special dietary requirements. Explain that you are really looking forward to meeting them on the day and provide a contact mobile number for them to call at any time should they have trouble finding the venue.
If you find an article or paper which is very specifically of interest to a particular delegate, send it over as a ‘saw this and thought of you’. This works brilliantly if it is truly and uniquely relevant to that person. If not, it’s a cheap shot.
If a last minute cancellation call comes in, brief whoever receives these calls to try and book a 1:1 meeting instead, there and then. This is a great time to capitalise on guilt!

Making the best of people who can’t attend
Some people simply won’t be able to attend due to diary clashes or distance. There are a number of options for these people:

Offer to meet for coffee and share the results with them informally
Offer to meet them in their offices and deliver the results in a 1:1 meeting
Invite them to another event you are holding
Ask them to contribute to the next white paper
Suggest they send someone from their team to represent them

Cancelling an event with grace and dignity!
Provided you have observed the cancellation date, there should be no major loss of money or reputation if the event needs to be cancelled.

Contributors will be aware that they were one of only a dozen interviewees so you can simply explain that most interviewees chose to receive the findings through a 1:1 meeting instead of a round table event. This will increase the likelihood that other delegates will take the same route rather than simply accepting the cancellation and taking no further action
Tie up all loose ends at the venue and make sure you have personally spoken to every confirmed attendee to make sure that no one arrives on the day by mistake
It’s not unusual for numbers to be low for some time before a deluge of responses comes in. Sometimes the threat of cancellation due to low numbers is a enough to increase internal activity around calling and emailing contacts!

On the day itself

Have a receiving table, however small the event, where individuals can pick up their badges. Give them lots of information as you meet them about what they should do next (e.g. “Here’s your badge, you can leave your coat in the cloak room over there, and then coffee and cake is being served just to your right. We’ll be starting in about ten minutes, but if there is anyone you would like us to introduce you to in the meantime, just shout!”). This makes everyone feel a bit less ‘at sea’ and explains what you expect them to do. It can be difficult to recover people who have felt embarrassed, uncomfortable or neglected at the start of this type of event
Have plenty of people from your own organisation to chat to delegates. The correct ratio is around 1:2, delegates: own people.
A nice bonus is to have some services available to the delegates on a specific table. Here you can offer mobile phone charging, taxi booking, white paper ordering service, train/bus timetable information, online laptop for checking emails. The idea is to iron out any hygiene problems that routinely occur.

Some other points to note

Unlike bigger events, don’t invite the press (too invasive and their impact on a small group is too great) and don’t charge for the event (although you can send out complimentary guest passes implying that some people might have paid).
If you build a great relationship with an individual you could offer to present the findings to their team or a group of people in their business they feel it would be useful to. But in general, this is a high risk proposition for an interviewee to accept as they have to recommend that their team/peers invest time in research they haven’t seen the outcome of, and which has been conducted by people they don’t know. However, it may be a good follow up for people who attend the event who find the insights presented particularly relevant to their business.