User group conferences
USER GROUP CONFERENCES
The ultimate diversionary tactic to get clients to forget their real problems!
Now there’s this rumor doing the rounds that user group conferences are not the serious events they’re made out to be, ie sharing best practice with other clients and learning to use the product better. Instead, participants are out playing golf or sailing all day, wining and dining to great entertainment at night, emptying the mini-bar back at their five-star hotel, and generally having a good time at company expense. Well, I’m sorry to say, it’s all true!
We often hear customers complain that enterprise software vendors are out of touch with the real world and what their customers really want. I’m not so sure that’s true when it comes to user group conferences. Here’s the rationale from the vendor’s perspective. Throughout the year they’ve been having a hard time with new customers past the honeymoon stage, recent customers who are having trouble with their projects, and established customers who are wondering just how they managed to get in so deep. And in parallel, they must somehow convince all these people that the forthcoming upgrade, with its attendant headaches and disruption, is still in their best interests.
Using the classic diversionary approach favored by politicians the world over, they therefore stage an event that allows them to temporarily make their constituents forget their real problems, and to simultaneously sell them on the merits of the next version. Enter the user group conference, a combination of theme park, expo, work and play skillfully rolled into one and billed as the annual extravaganza they just cannot afford to miss. And to top it all off, they also invite along prospective customers, who rub shoulders with real customers and benefit from all that marketing hype, thus increasing the chances of closing new deals.
About three months beforehand, back in the trenches at customer sites, key players from both IT and the business begin to jockey for position to see who will be going this time to San Francisco, San Diego, Barcelona or Cannes for a three-day break. About a month before the final countdown, internal rivalry is rife and reaches fever pitch as IT and users – who’ve been bitching all year at the vendor about that upgrade they don’t really need – all of a sudden begin to think that maybe it will deliver great business benefits after all! And the only possible place for them to reach such a decision is of course at the user group conference! Last but not least, it’s a great place to network if you’re looking to change jobs.
And it works every time, year in and year out. IT departments and senior user execs might not be able to nominate the deserving to tag along to the President’s Club, but they can get them short-listed to go to the next user group conference! On a good year, you’ll find five or more people from the same company in attendance, especially from global companies. ‘Oh Jill, fancy meeting you here as well!’. ‘Tom, what a surprise!’
Amazingly, it’s not even free – invitations are parsimoniously distributed, and only speakers usually have the $1,500-2,000 registration fee waived. Then there are the so-called partners (ie other vendors, consultants and integrators) with their stands in the pavilions, who foot the rest of the bill. Such partners are usually placed in categories like ‘Platinum’, ‘Gold’ or ‘Silver’, which are very aptly named, because they are indicators of how much it costs them to be on the annual user group bandwagon.
No folks, you’ve really got to hand it to them: enterprise software vendors have this particular strategy down to a fine art. So let it not be said that they are not in tune with their customers. It’s just not true! And finally, remember, during the other 11 months of the year, don’t go overboard in giving your vendor a hard time or bad-mouthing the product. Instead, schmooze, suck-up and generally play the great pretender, so you can increase your chances of going to next year’s great event! MG
