It’s nearly half way through the first quarter of 2019, and it’s time to find some spectacular conferences to attend. Here at RISE, we love conferences and workshops just as much as you do. We’d go the distance to fly across the region to not miss out on really great conferences, looking to learn from some of the best speakers and organizations around the world. However, conferences and workshops aren’t cheap. In fact, we found that the average cost to attend a tech summit could cost as high as US$600 per person and 2-day immersive workshops for at least US$1,500 per head!
So, if you find out this perfect conference that will likely bring a lot of values and growth for your companies, and you end up having to pitch to your boss to send you and your team to the conference, how do you get a “yes” from them? Also, we have a tool to help you pitch your boss at the end of this article!
You know that Corporate Innovation Summit (CIS) 2019 is Asia’s first experiential conference and it is going to be phenomenal, but that doesn’t really matter until you get an approval from your boss to attend. What matters is, how do you convince your supervisor that this conference is a must-attend event?
We help you break it down to two questions:
You can start by first outlining the basic infos like the name of the conference/workshops, the date and location of the event, cost of tickets, estimated cost of travel and link to the agenda for the conference. But hey, this is not rocket science - even a fifth grader can do this. Why don’t you add a little bit of spices by emphasizing on the highlights of the event? Some examples are:
It’s crucial to understand what the summit is really about, what component of the summit matters to your organization and ultimately focus on the benefits of attending.
“If your audience doesn’t understand what you’re offering to provide, you’ve failed.”
The first utmost important quality of an outstanding pitch is to “make a point”. Many of the good products and services out there failed to get customers simply because the audience had no idea what the value offerings are. Every word you speak should work to explain and clarify that purpose. You don’t need to make a TED talk out of your short pitch, but practice is crucial. The key is to practice in front of a mirror and record a video of your pitch, making sure that your pitch is clear, concise and interesting.
“By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.”
Some managers are not the most friendly after all. Since the cost to attend the conference involves both money and time, some bosses can be quite skeptical about the idea of attending. So, how do you ensure your boss wouldn’t cut it off and conclude that the conference is just a gimmick that wastes people’s time and money, and worse, does not bring about any results. This is why this is very important - you should always be prepared to defend your points. Before pitching, think of a possible downside for attending the event. Then come up with strong points to counter those downsides while making sure that they are solid enough to conclude that “the reward outweighs the risk”.
“Vision is the art of seeing the invisible.”
One of RISE’s ultimate goal for the attendees is the key takeaways from the summit: mindset, skill set, and toolset. Rather than making this summit just purely keynote sessions, we give a heavier emphasis on engaging workshops and mentoring clinics. We don’t want our attendees to attend the summit, get inspired, go home and totally forget everything they “learned” from the summit. Having a vision will score you a bonus point when making your pitch as a lot of people just focus way too much on the present without seeing what the next steps are.
One way you can pull this off is to plan the objectives and key results of attending the summit. An example of an objective could be: We send 1-2 team members to attend “Competing with Business Model Canvas & Value Proposition Design” workshop in order to share and educate the rest of the team to implement the toolset into our company’s operating model. A few examples of the key results could be: 1) The team achieves a 10% increase in their KPIs within a quarter. 2) The average working hour of the team reduces by 10% given increased productivity. It’s important for these objectives and key results to be realistic yet challenging for the team - something to maximize the team’s potential and resources.
“There is real magic in enthusiasm. It spells the difference between mediocrity and accomplishment.”
Once you’ve come up with a pitching plan covering points from 1-4, it’s time to deliver this elevator pitch to your boss! With the content of the pitch, a robot can deliver the pitch just as good, if not better, as humans do. One quality which differentiates a passionate human from a monotonous robot is enthusiasm, and this is all about your tone of voice and body language. How do you get better with this? Check this out: https://www.genardmethod.com/blog/bid/144247/the-5-key-body-language-techniques-of-public-speaking
And also here is ready-to-use-template to pitch your boss >> Download
Prepare to pitch your boss and GET THE TICKET >> Here
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Author: Vanessa Techapichetvanich