In this episode of Sequence Over Strategy, Michelle unpacks why engagement isn’t about teaching more, explaining more, or proving yourself again.
Are you mistaking engagement for more information and unintentionally overwhelming the people who already trust you?
In this episode of Sequence Over Strategy, Michelle unpacks why engagement isn’t about teaching more, explaining more, or proving yourself again. It’s about helping people slow down, process what they already know, and feel confident moving forward. Drawing from real questions that came up during her Build Your Relationship Funnel intensive, she explains why peer-to-peer industry gatherings can be one of the most effective ways to bridge awareness and sales, especially in B2B.
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Hi, I'm Michelle Warner, and I'm a business designer and strategist. And in the 15 years I've been doing this work, I've noticed the same trend everywhere. Business owners are falling into the trap of centering strategies first.
And they need to be centering sequence. Because the reality is, the steps you take in your business and the order in which you take them is far more important than how well you implement any single strategy. So on this show, my goal is to fix that by helping you find and trust your own sequence of actions rather than blindly following someone else's strategy.
Welcome to Sequence Over Strategy. In every episode of this show, I answer a real question from a real entrepreneur who's struggling with a real challenge in their business. And today, I want to talk about something that came up last month when I was hosting my Build Your Relationship Funnel in a Day intensive.
And that question is, how to bring people from an industry together for an engagement event. This came up over and over that day, so I promised I would record an episode about it. But just fair warning, this is a really specific question, so this may not be the longest episode ever.
But we'll see where it goes. First, let's back up and get you up to date with what I'm even talking about when I say running an industry get-together for an engagement event. Remember, when I say engagement, I am talking about my three stages of marketing and how I personally define the marketing process.
And how I do that is I think of marketing in three stages. Awareness, engagement, and sales. Awareness is how people meet you, engagement is how they come to trust you, and sales is when they buy something from you.
Redefining Engagement in Relationship Marketing
And even though I just said the goal of that engagement stage is to get people to trust you, how we do that in relationship marketing is a little bit different than how maybe you've been taught before. Because often when we are doing marketing, we're kind of thinking through a know, like, and trust framework, right? We're thinking about how can I give people more information so that they know what I'm talking about, they understand that I'm an expert, and I'm helping them move forward in some way.
So that's generally, I think, when people come into the relationship marketing world, and I say engagement is that stage between getting to know someone and selling them something, people are generally thinking about, oh, I have to give them more information so that I can build trust. That's not actually how I think about it. First of all, if you've heard me talk about awareness enough, you know that we spend a ton of time during awareness actually building trust.
So you should already have the trust of your people if you are running a proper relationship funnel, right? So the goal is not actually to continue trying to sell yourself. Instead, as you get to the engagement stage, if they've gotten through awareness correctly, and they're already on board, and they trust you 90% of the way, they just need to get to that final piece.
The last thing you want to do is bombard them with more information. And let me repeat that. If you have completed awareness correctly, the last thing you want to do in engagement is keep putting information on people's plate.
The reason for that is, is because it overwhelms people. And especially in a day and age when people are feeling a little flustered, you know, attention spans are not what they are, it can feel really intimidating to continue to get information put on your plate. I usually use an example of an e-book.
And that's a pretty outdated example now, but it's an example I use because it gets across, you can see how what I'm talking about. Because if we give somebody an e-book in this engagement stage, instead of finding that useful like they may previously have, often now I'm seeing people say things like, Oh, gosh, you know, I can't work with you until I get through this e-book. They're overwhelmed with the amount of information that they already have.
So we actually don't want to give them more. Because they already trust you, you don't have to continue to get them on board. Instead, what you have to do is help them process that information.
And help them process that information in a way that moves them towards wanting to solve the problem. Right? Because if in awareness you have said something to them, that allows them to kind of get that gut punch we talk about often, or that productive haunting that I talk about.
Right? And so that they know that, hey, there's something I need to solve here. Again, don't add more to their plate because they've already had that aha.
Why Peer-to-Peer Events Work So Well
Instead, you want to think about, oh, wow, now they know that they want to solve something. But they're probably going to start to doubt their capacity to be able to do that. If you're in a B2B situation, which is what we're talking about a lot when we're running these industry events, is they're thinking about budgets, they're thinking about capacity, they're thinking about if they're even able to tackle this thing that you want them to hire you to solve.
And so you want to spend engagement not making that sound like a more difficult thing to take on. Right? You don't want to make the logistics sound harder.
You don't want to make the challenge sound harder. Instead, you kind of want to take a minute to allow them to process this, to allow their nervous system to take it in and to normalize it. You want to help them really define the challenge, define the problem, and define the pathway forward and to talk it down to size to something that is not only doable, but also feels exciting and energetic to solve.
That's the goal of engagement is, again, to help people kind of accept that this is their best next step and to get excited about their organization's ability to do so. So when you're a solo entrepreneur, you can do this in a lot of different ways. I talk a lot about audits and diagnostics, and you can still use those in B2B really effectively as well.
But often when we're in a lot of different formats, but especially in B2B, one of the best ways that you can do this is to help people connect with their peers and run events that are not focused on you being the star of the show. They're not focused on you running a webinar, on you explaining how to do something, but instead it's focusing on giving these people a minute to breathe. In a very chaotic day with a lot of different priorities and not understanding how to move forward, one of the best things you can do is get a group together, a small group.
We'll talk about the logistics in a second, but have kind of a peer-to-peer group that is just there to support each other. This is not a learning environment. This is not a place to do a lot of things.
It's more a place to take a deep breath and to be with other people who are struggling with the same types of demands on their day and on their jobs. And again, a lot of times this is effective in a B2B space and also in a B2B space where they're not going to be competitive with each other. I have seen these types of gatherings work exceptionally well if you are talking about HR leaders.
HR leaders, and I'm going to talk in generalities, right, of what I have experienced with my clients, but a lot of HR leaders maybe don't, these days, maybe don't feel completely respected by their organization. Or when they look at the rest of their senior leadership team, they don't see the support there for their role that they have before. And so they get a lot of benefit from being together in a way that maybe marketing or sometimes finance senior leaders would more feel like that would be a little competitive, right?
So you want to be sure, if you're thinking about these types of events, you want to be sure that the group you're gathering together is a group that actually wants to be together and sees each other as peers and sees that as a good opportunity. The other peers that this can happen in is if you're working within, you know, an ecosystem of people who work with the same types of clients. So maybe this is not a B2B, but maybe this is a healthcare ecosystem, right, where we have alternative providers of different modalities who get together in the same way that it's kind of peer-to-peer, but we all do a little something different for our clients.
Those types of gatherings work really well here as well. And again, you're not bringing folks together in order to teach them something, but you're bringing them together because they've all had a certain aha from you. They're all facing the same challenge.
And you want them to feel comfortable to talk that down to size and to understand what it's going to look like to solve that. And so what you can do, this can be a one-time thing. It can be a quarterly thing.
It can be a monthly thing. Whatever is appropriate for your business and for your people, how they're going to want to gather, is you can offer to facilitate essentially venting sessions, right? Because all these folks, again, are struggling with the same things.
They have no time. They're not going to come to a webinar. But if you provide a space that doesn't exist, where they're able to connect with 8 or 10 of their true peers, and we'll talk about that in a second, but a space where they can connect with 8 or 10 of their true peers and just spend time for an hour connecting, venting, having a facilitated conversation.
Designing the Right Group and the Real Win
And what I mean by facilitated conversation, again, is not learning a new skill or talking about a new topic. It's the last thing they want to do. But instead, just like a facilitated kind of brainstorm.
How can we help you? Just what's going on type of situation. But you being the someone in charge who has brought everyone together, that is going to naturally drift towards the topics that you want them talking about.
And when they talk as a group, with you facilitating that and you being able to add in some anecdotes or add in some direction for the conversation, again, not teaching, but adding in some direction for the conversation, what you're going to accomplish is two things. Number one, you are going to become the trusted person who actually takes the time and effort to put them all in one room. And number two, again, they're going to naturally gravitate towards talking about what you would want them to talk about in a fully selfish way.
And they're going to see you as a leader of that space. And so then what happens is that when they're ready to tackle these things, number one, they're going to get to that point of being ready way faster than they otherwise would have. And they're going to call you.
You are going to become the trusted resource that they're going to call first when they are thinking about anything within your sphere of what you do. Because you're the person who bothers to get them together. And this can take a million different formats, right?
If this is a local thing, meaning you do high-end B2B consulting in New York City or meaning you live in a small town and you're a physical therapist who partners with a lot of other kind of healing and recovery modalities, well then maybe you do it in person, right? This is where dinner clubs came from. We hear stories all the time about all the business that happens when you gather eight to ten people at a dinner.
Well, gather them at a dinner. Or gather them at a much more low-stakes happy hour. Or have a breakfast.
All of those things work really great if it is a natural in-person market. If it's not, no big deal. I have seen these done well virtually.
You can also do these, maybe you're gathering a few times a year at a certain event. Well, be the person who organizes the informal event outside of the formal event, right? Hold a happy hour.
Invite everyone to gather in the hotel lobby at a combined time. You don't have to overly stress about the format and the place in which this happens. Instead, you want to be thinking about, how can I gather these people, when does it make sense, and, let's talk about this, who should be in the group?
Because that's a really important question. Because you want it to be a group of trusted peers. So, who do you invite?
How big is the room, right? These questions really, really matter. Especially if you're working in B2B.
And a couple of things that I will tell you, is you probably want the group smaller than larger. You know, eight to ten people. Maybe it's up to fifteen.
But once we're getting to twenty, that's starting to not be the intimate setting that you're looking for. So, this is a small group environment, right? And that applies if it's, again, B2B, or if it's more of a local situation that's not senior corporate settings.
So, you want a smaller group. And if some of them know each other, fantastic. But you want to pick people who will see each other as peers.
And make those personal invites. And then, what you can consider, for your benefit, is that maybe you ask them if they would like to invite a friend. And you're very clear about who qualifies to be in the group, and they will respect that, because they want to be with peers.
And the reason I have repeated, you know, be with peers 47,000 times at this point, is for a reason. Because you are putting them in a protective environment, where you want them to be able to vent, and to be open, and to be honest, and to feel some relief from this meeting. So, how can you ruin that really quickly?
Well, you can ruin that really quickly by inviting a bunch of senior HR directors, and then immediately also inviting people who are a couple rungs below them, like managers, or even directors. Because they're going to clam up immediately if they are not with their peers. So, one of the most important things that you can do in these types of events is to make sure that this is truly a peer-to-peer gathering.
We cannot mix senior and junior in these situations. If you have reason to, if both of those people buy from you, by all means, try this with a senior group and with a junior group, but they have to be separate. Because the senior people are not going to participate, are not going to find any value if they show up, and they feel like they have come to just any kind of public event, where just randoms are there.
They need to be with their peers. And so, when you're thinking about who to invite, be really clear about that. Again, whether it's a local group who kind of centers in the same ecosystem, or whether it's a B2B group, just make sure they're going to consider themselves peers.
Make sure that if you get into an industry discussion, a venting discussion, even a brainstorm to be helpful, that they're all going to feel helpful and comfortable at that table. That's the most important thing. And again, when you can maybe encourage a few who you know the best and trust the best to invite a friend, then you're expanding your own network, and this turns into a little bit of business development for you, right?
So not only are you cultivating a group of folks who you trust and would love to work with, or probably a couple of your current clients are there, and you're inviting them because you want to deepen that relationship. So a great mix at these tables is to have some current clients and to have some leads that are close to closing, or at least properly in your pipeline, and then to have some way to meet some new leads. So what are ways to do that?
Again, if you're bringing in a couple of clients, ask your clients to bring a friend, and don't put that impetus on your leads, right? And that way everybody's winning a little bit because your clients get to bring a friend to this preferred event. You get to meet some new people via the friends that they bring, and then your leads get to interact with people who have already worked with you and people who respect you.
And so it becomes this really great mixture, and then they all feel protected, and they all feel built up by just being with each other because you have protected that peer-to-peer feeling of it. And again, what is the win for you out of this? The win for you out of this is that, you know, your clients feel supported.
The people who are close to closing are probably made comfortable to such an extent that they are ready to finalize that conversation. And people who may come who are new are going to be intrigued because they're going to hear from your clients, and they're going to hear from people who are close to working with you. They're going to hear from people who have processed this challenge and have chosen to take it on.
So they may be still in that early stage of feeling intimidated and defining what the problem is and talking this down to size and figuring out if they can really do it. Well, they're going to build the confidence. And so they'll move through the pipeline a little bit faster if they're the right types of leads.
When you mix the group in this way, it's just a win-win-win for every stage who's there and every stage of your pipeline. And all you're really doing, you're playing the role of the super connector here. And again, you're facilitating a conversation, but you are not directing or teaching a conversation.
You are just the person who's going to get people together so that they can be supportive, and we can all talk about this mutual challenge that we're having, but talking about it in relatively informal ways where the group can dictate the conversation. But the group is engineered in such a way that that conversation is still going to center around how you serve and how you think and potentially even your IP, right? Because if you have some clients in the mix or people who are familiar with your work, they're going to talk about it through that lens.
And so that is how we solve the engagement problem, right? So if we go all the way back to the beginning when we talk about why would we run one of these events, we would run one of these events because we're trying to bridge people from that awareness moment in marketing when they meet you to the sales moment. And so what do we do to bridge them?
What's the job of engagement? The job of engagement, remember, is not to add more information, but it's to help people talk things down to size. It's to help people normalize things within their nervous system.
It is to help people see a clear path, see a clear map that this is doable for their organization and what it looks like. And so these events, when they're talking to a mixture of people who have been through it or are thinking about going through it and they're able to talk to their peers about it, that's when we solidify that feeling and that confidence. And so that's why we do these events.
And again, maybe they happen once a year for you. Maybe they happen on a monthly schedule. Maybe they happen quarterly.
This is going to be different for everybody based on your business and who your customers are. But when I talk about engagement events and when I talk about, especially in the B2B place, you know, bringing together these peer groups, this is what I'm talking about. And the goal is to bridge from awareness to sales by running an engagement event that helps people talk their challenge down to size in a way that doesn't involve you adding more information to their plate, but instead, again, talking, processing, understanding.
All right, I hope this helped. I want to give you some perspective and get you thinking about how to run these engagement events. As always, if you are looking for more information or want to chat about this more, you can find me over on my website at TheMichelleWarner.com.
There's plenty of information there. And I do run Build Your Relationship Funnel Boot Camps throughout the year where we get into this engagement question pretty deeply. I also work on this one-to-one.
So if you are a person who is ready to build your relationship funnel, you can always feel free to reach out to me. As always, if you found this episode helpful and you know of somebody else who would find it helpful, I would be so grateful if you would share it. It's one of the best ways we have to spread this information and to make sure everybody who needs it is getting it.
So thank you, as always, for being here, and I will see you back here in a couple of weeks.