Using High Ticket Events To Find Customers

I’ve just spent the last few days at the inaugural Otago AI residency.

The event cost $5,000, but our target customers were in the room (11 of New Zealand’s largest companies and their heads of IT & other C-suite executives).

Our average sale for Tacit sits between $20,000 - 100,00+.

We’ve booked four calls for next week, with one project getting a verbal while at the residency.

I didn’t do any paid advertising other than attending the event and talking about what we’re doing at Tacit.

If you’re in B2B and you’re trying to find customers, here’s how to vet if an event is worth attending:

1. Find out who the course is for:
   

   

   A screenshot of who should attend the Otago AI residency

2. Call the person in charge of recruiting for the course - you can typically get this by emailing the more information button on the site and asking to talk to who is running the event
   

3. Once you have the contact person's details, call them and ask: “Can you please tell me the names of the companies attending and their relative roles so I can see we’re actually a good fit?”

With this information in hand, you can track down each of these people on LinkedIn and actually see if they’ll be your buyers or not.

I had people from New Zealand’s largest companies & organisations in the room with me, hearing about our product for two days - where else do you get sales opportunities like that?

The Spreadsheet

Back when I was a Buffett wannabe trying to create my own Berkshire.

My great thesis was: buy small businesses that aren’t digital and make them digital.

I bought a cafe, installed Vend, and used social media.

I bought a hair salon, set it up with a website, and connected it to Timely.

I bought a gym, signed up with a direct debit provider, switched to a cloud CRM and went 24/7 with an automated front door.

In each case, it reduced costs and improved customer service.

My thesis wasn’t the golden ticket I thought it would be.

Turns out you have to be good at other things when buying businesses, like due diligence, so you don’t get fleeced on the purchase.

But it did give me a simple insight that holds.

If you’re looking for opportunities, look for the pen and paper.

Or now the more common case is to look for the spreadsheet.