Speakers. Your role is to fill seats and serve the event.

The first time that I was asked to speak for the Pro Audio Manufacturers Alliance, I remembered the words of my speaking coach — “Your job is to fill seats!”

And this really resonated because while PAMA is an industry trade organization led by the top executives from the leading Pro Audio companies, their online events up to that point had been sparsely attended. The month prior, they hosted the Head of Partner Marketing for Sweetwater and in his presentation, he shared every tip and trick — every success story — that helped take Sweetwater from their humble beginnings to topping well over $1 Billion in annual sales. And yet for all those gems and nuggets and learnings, there were less than 20 people who got to hear that talk live.  

So when I was asked to talk about how to increase sales and branding by adopting a networking mindset, I knew what I had to do. I was on a mission. I was going to pack the house. 

I knew that PAMA was in the midst of a refresh and rebrand and that the online lecture series was a new outreach program. And I knew that if I brought in a lot of new faces, then I could start my talk off by sharing all the different ways that PAMA serves and helps the industry. I knew that I could use the platform not just to share my message — but to help the trade organization share its mission and purpose. My talk could simply be the medium that helped the organization achieve its goals.

Rather than waiting, hoping, and expecting the organization to do the marketing and outreach to pull the crowd, I got busy and went to town. Let’s be honest. It goes without saying that if they couldn’t deliver the crowd for the Sweetwater talk, then there were obvious structural issues that they were working through. And if I had waiting for them to do the work, then I would have been lucky to have 10 people show up. My success was on me to deliver. 

I started making calls and pulling favors and I reached out personally to many of the top players in my network. And in that initial outreach, I got to sing the praises of the organization. I got to explain the benefits of PAMA. I got to share why I passionately care about the work that they do. And I got to drive traffic to the previous talks so that everyone had the chance to hear all the knowledge that had previously been disseminated. 

Even if most of my outreach didn’t convert to signups, I still accomplished my larger goal of showcasing PAMA’s work to the people that mattered most.  I was still helping fulfil my larger commitment. 

And here’s the best part of the story! Of course it worked and the signups and attendance were significantly higher than any of the previous talks, but one attendee — who had heard about the opportunity from a friend of a friend — accidentally bumped into his boss while everyone was ZOOM socializing before the talk started. He was worried that he was going to get in trouble for joining the meeting during work hours. So right after the event, he called his boss (who happens to be a friend and mentor of mine.) Anyways, he called to mention that he had shifted his workload around and that his attendance would not impact his output or deliverables — but that he had heard about the event and the topic and was told that it was a talk that couldn’t be missed.

Later on that same day, my friend called to congratulate me on the talk and on the numbers and to share the story. So I figured it was the right time to come clean and to tell him that I totally cheated and that I had done all the leg work to ensure that the event was a success.  

He simply winked. And reminded me that the job is to fill the seats!