By Hilary Bird, Marketing at Consensus, @Hilbonix
What a week. Let’s start with a short list of why I was so excited for Accelerate16:
- Announcing our partnership with InsideSales
- We’d be on our home turf – the gorgeous Park City
- An incredible lineup of speakers
- Sharing the floor with some of the most successful companies (i.e. Microsoft, Salesforce)
- Lynyrd Skynyrd
- Kevin Nealon
- Our light-up bouncy ball giveaways
Weather reports were telling us it would be rainy and overcast, and all of the keynotes were outside, in a tent. Amazingly, the weather held out and it never rained. The skies actually opened up into that beautiful, bluebird color that Utah is so well known for. With about 800 attendees, the show was small enough to truly engage with a lot of people. We were sharing expo space with sales and marketing thought leaders, executives and the up-and-coming, younger crowd. We even got to interview some of them about their experiences and challenges they face in the B2B sales world. Check out the short video.
The diversity of topics covered among the keynotes kept me engaged throughout both days. Bestselling author Stephen Covey covered the importance of trust in company culture. InsideSales discussed the importance of understanding predictive analytics and how it’s helped shape the election. An incredible lineup, including DOMO CMO, Heather Zynczak, held a panel discussion about women in tech. And for perfect comedic relief, we lightened things up with a sketch from Kevin Nealon of SNL fame. Not surprisingly, the day after the Lynyrd Skynrd show, attendance to the keynote sessions dwindled a bit. I was impressed that that didn’t dampen the energy of the show or the quality of the presenters’ talks.
“Hey, can I snag one of those?” was a line we heard a lot as we unloaded our bouncy ball supply at our booth. It was before the show had officially started, where the handful of people that were already at their booth were looking for things to do. Amazingly, some top sales execs were the ones asking for these, instantly launching the balls across the room the moment we passed one over. It was a fantastic conversation starter—for those of you looking for marketing swag ideas.
It’s clear that InsideSales.com shares a lot of deep, meaningful relationships with our Utah tech community as a whole, and continue to spread those quality relationships to more enterprises, such as Microsoft and Salesforce. Our whole sales and marketing teams were in awe with the announcement of their new product, Playbook. It’s exciting to be sharing the energy and momentum around their new launch.
Check out Accelerate17 when it comes around. If you’re in the B2B sales or marketing arena, it’s a great opportunity to make meaningful relationships and share best practices with peers and leaders. To learn more about us, click the Watch Demo button below.