We are The Roundtable

Large, multi-day events have their place, but the most effective avenue for growth is the invite-only roundtable

I started this year with a desire to see where the wind took me. If a full-time position presented itself that matched my skill set and experience, I would pursue it. In the meantime, I would work on various projects and contracts, including freelance journalism, content creation, and event organisation. As soon as I returned from spending the Christmas holidays in the US, I called everyone I knew and respected and asked for a chat. Some of these meetings were focused on “You have any work for me?”, while others were just chats and advice.

One such chat took place at a Soho House in Aldwych with Alessandro Hatami. I’ve known Alessandro ever since I booked him to keynote the first Finextra Future Money event in 2014. His talk, given when he was digital payments and innovation director at Lloyds Banking Group, looked at how we would save, spend, and invest in “five, 10 or 20 years”.

I’ve been a “trade journalist” for over 30 years. I’ve always focused on a specific industry, which in a broad sense can be placed under the fintech umbrella today. When you are a trade journalist, you tend to work on a lot of projects that fall more into the marketing and sales section of your publication, these being webcasts, events, videos etc…

While at Finextra, those activities were the bulk of my work. I worked for many years alone, as the editorial person who produced content that the free news wire charged for. One of the first roundtables I did was a breakfast gathering of 15 people for a large global tech company. It was so successful, meaning they realised a sale through it, that the tech company bought a few more.

In addition to lead generation, some of the best and most enlightening conversations I have had about the state of innovation at tech companies and regulated banks have been held around a table in a closed room with a dozen or so invited guests.

I have attended, spoken at, and created large-scale events all over the world. They have their value and their place. However, I have also listened to hundreds of tech companies that have spent thousands, if not millions, on setting up a booth at an exhibition centre, hoping that the right sales opportunities would simply “walk by”. When the sales leads don’t appear, they complain and wonder why so much of the marketing budget was spent on booth swag and non-working QR codes.

Honestly, I don’t feel the event organisers are at fault for this issue. The very structure of a large-scale, multi-day event, in a vast venue, does not lend itself to targeted lead generation. Brand recognition, yes. General serendipity catchups, OK, sure.

Where some event organisers let the industry down is when they sell exhibit space based on senior job titles on the speaking agenda. However, most of these “senior job titles” tend to walk straight into the speaker’s lounge, proceed to their talk, and then walk out the door. Also, a seemingly senior job title does not always mean they are the person you should sell to. I once knew a global C-suite person who used to hide their badge at these events to fend off the dozens of irrelevant sales pitches from people who failed to investigate what they did at the bank and responded only to the “global CIO” on their LinkedIn profile.

Most large live events are like the physical equivalent of a LinkedIn InMail robo-sales push. (Does anyone get any sales through those?)

Finding the right people to sell to, to even just have a productive conversation with, shouldn’t be left to chance. If your goal is high-quality discussions and actionable lead generation, I know of nothing that works better than an invite-only roundtable.

This is what I said to Alessandro Hatami.

Several weeks and months of discussions followed. Meaghan Johnson, who co-authored Inclusive Finance with Alessandro, joined the team. I had a conversation with Ben Fitch, who used to sell these types of roundtables at the Financial Times. We decided to bite the bullet and set up a website and launch an initiative.

That initiative is The Roundtable.

We are The Roundtable. Our goal is to provide companies with meaningful conversations as well as actionable networking and lead generation opportunities.

Roundtables, invite-only, under the Chatham House Rule, are all we do.

I’m excited to see where this journey will take us.

Don’t hesitate to give us a call to find out more.

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I’ve started posting about The Roundtable on LinkedIn this week. Quite a few people asked if we would provide armour and jousting. Honestly, if that’s what floats your boat, it can be provided. I know I should provide a song from the Richard Harris/Vanessa Regrave musical, but the first song that came to my head when people started sending me pictures of knights was this: