BTW - Every Wednesday I take a hot take from LinkedIn and answer the pushback live. This week's post hit a nerve, so I took the toughest comments and answered them here.

If you have a better one, drop it in the comments. I read them all.

Let’s dig in.

———————————————————————————

Budget season is here, and I keep seeing the same thing.

Two weeks ago I ran an AI transformation roundtable with 12 CEOs. I asked where their next dollar goes. Seven of the 12 said events. Not a conference booth. Roundtables, roadshows, and add-on events next to the big industry shows.

You can't hire a bot to host a CEO dinner. Registration and follow-up can be automated. The room can't. That's good news for humans, and it's why this is a go-to-market story, not an events story.

Here's how I think about it by company stage.

Startup, zero budget: build a community. At Terminus (a $100M+ exit) we started Flip My Funnel. We invited competitors, media, and analysts. It took on a life of its own, and we spent zero dollars promoting it.

Larger company: reconsider roundtables. 10 to 20 people, sometimes fewer, meeting regularly. Nobody records them or posts about them. This is where mega deals get made, because people talk freely.

Somewhere in the middle: run 3 to 4 roadshows a year. Bring people together in the cities where your customers are.

———————————————————————————

Fair. Big companies have always spent big on events. One data point is not a trend.

But I've been at Inbound for 10 years. Dreamforce. Clay launched its first event, Sculpt. Terminus had Flip My Funnel. An event is how you signal to the whole industry that a category is emerging. It's the one place analysts, media, competitors, customers, and future customers show up together.

In an AI world, we've lost our way a little. Everyone can build a product now. Not everyone can build an event.

Symptom: your moat is a product anyone can copy.

Fix: build a point of view people will travel for. Terminus had one on account-based marketing. Clay has one on the go-to-market engineer. Salesforce had one on CRM.

What's yours?

Without one, you'll pour money into an event and get nothing back.

———————————————————————————

Community is all I've done. Flip My Funnel. Then a community for marketing leaders becoming CMOs. Now a community of fractional leaders building $250K to $500K businesses.

My line: without a community, you're a commodity.

Tammy made the best point on this. Build the community before you host the big event, or you'll have empty seats. I'm a nervous wreck before every event. Will it rain? Will people find the parking? Will they show up?

The fix for the nerves is a community. If there's a Slack channel and people are posting and getting excited weeks before, you can see the momentum.

That's how we knew Flip My Funnel would be full.

———————————————————————————

Here's my own pushback first: the event is not the strategy.

I've seen booths at big shows where nobody stops. Sponsoring an event is not a growth plan. Events alone don't close deals, speed them up, or expand customers.

Ways to make an event part of a strategy:

When the CEO asks "what was the ROI?" on the Monday after, you didn't have a go-to-market strategy behind the event.

Measure every event in three buckets:

At Terminus and at GTM Partners, we brought three customer success leaders to events. Their job was 20 to 30 customer meetings. At some events, that was the best ROI we got. Customers expanded, then told other people.

Symptom: finance and revenue argue about "was it worth it" forever.

Fix: agree on the ROI definition before the event, per bucket.

Judge it over time, not the Monday after.

———————————————————————————

Budgets are tight for anything where the ROI conversation isn't clear.

If you're a startup, I don't see why you'd spend any money. Host it at a partner's or customer's location. Get a sponsor for food. Do breakfast or lunch instead of an all-day event. Find a happy hour sponsor. You don't need an events budget. You need an events investment.

If you're putting in $50K to $100K, you can still look for 3x to 5x. Just look over a period of time, not the Monday after. OpenAI isn't asking whether a booth paid off. It's probably bringing its biggest customers into a room for real one-on-one time.

———————————————————————————

Your CFO. Most events people never go to the CFO. The CFO approves next year's budget.

What I've helped founders and go-to-market leaders do:

The CMO and CRO matter, but the CFO decides how much money events get.

———————————————————————————

If you're good at events, put as much of brand and demand into them as you can. Here's why.

Put 10% of your marketing budget in events and you'll dabble. You won't see ROI. At year end you'll say "events don't work for us." The other 90% sits in growth ads, so you'll have more data there and invest more there. You invest in what you can measure, and you can only measure what you invest in.

What I recommend is thirds:

You keep the flexibility to go all in on events by mid-year if the data says so.

And you have a real sample size.

———————————————————————————

Legal tech. Fintech. Manufacturing. Every industry has an event that drives real business outcomes. I've shared the ones I know from the last two decades. Tell me the ones I'm missing in the comments.

And tell me where you stand: is events going to be the main place your 2027 brand or demand budget goes?

———————————————————————————

Go to runongtmos.com/move and take the free assessment. Over 5,000 companies have already run it. It'll show you the next step, not another motivational all-hands.

CEOs: if you want an operator to help you install the system, not a deck, check out the GTMarketplace.

Fractionals: 10+ years in GTM and want to become a Forward Deployment Operator? DM me on LinkedIn.

Now, let's get moving.

love,
sangram

p.s. 100,000+ GTM leaders read our content every day. If you want more frameworks like this, follow along at runongtmos.com and let's get moving.