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Dreamforce is a remarkable opportunity for many things — professional development, networking, discovering new ways to conquer key issues you’re now tasked with addressing. But now that it's halfway over, you might be feeling a bit overwhelmed at how to get the most out of time here.
Hit pause.
You've got two days left to do these things:
Dreamforce is a remarkable opportunity to discover how to ‘make better happen.’ Know what the ‘better’ is that you’re chasing. In general, better tools abound. Every year, it’s astonishing much how the platform and tools enabled on it have evolved. Avoid the risk of getting lost in an endless hunt for better ‘buttons.’ Know what better business results you’d like to enable. Armed with that, you’re ready to go.
Learn from the lessons of others. Attend sessions where the types of results you’re after will be discussed. That room will include speakers with amazing stories to share, others in the audience with related stories to share, and folks just like you who are trying to figure things out.
Arrive early. Stay late. Introduce yourself to the folks around you. Ask why they’re attending. Get their story. Learn from it. Discover from such conversations who else you should be speaking with to better understand what your path to better results is likely to entail and obstacles you’ll likely need to overcome.
It’s hard to retain everything you can learn from the conversations you have. A simple trick to doing so: write notes for yourself explaining what you learned from folks you’ve had a conversation with, and next steps arising from each conversation.
With every particularly helpful conversation you have, send the person you met with your notes. Ask them to verify that you correctly understood the info and suggestions they shared with you. This’ll achieve three things: it’s a subtle ‘thank-you’ to folks who’ve been especially helpful; you’ll discover which of these folks is willing to help you continue to figure things out by the additional feedback they give you; and you’ll sharpen your own read on other issues you need to consider before leaping into action.
Invite folks whom you have particularly valuable conversations with to connect with you on LinkedIn. Do so judiciously. A high quality social network of 500 is worth far more than a giant network of folks who barely know you and are unlikely to ever take your calls. Build your social network one *valuable* interaction at a time.
Getting better at anything is a process, not an event. Take what you learn, and who you meet who’s helped you learn it, and continue related conversations. Reach out to your new connections. Schedule follow-up conversations that you’d find helpful. Bring to those same conversations as much reciprocal value as you can. Make time with you valuable for everyone who meets with you. By definition, you’ll be unusually worth spending time with.
The magic in this approach? It’s what top performing sales execs instinctively do, every day.
They engage. They discover. They document. They connect. They follow up. It’s why they succeed. They’re curious, constantly learning, value-creating, unusually organized and helpful.
Be so, yourself, while you’re here at Dreamforce, and you’ll reap the rewards for months to come.
John Cousineau is the founder and CEO of innovative information inc., makers of Amacus, a solution that improves B2B sales productivity by letting sales teams discover and improve the buyer value of sales practices.@jcousineau.
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