Conference Matters 142

INTERVIEW

'Ultimately the events team is responsible for the return on investments'

how a partnership works, for example. Then you go a little further. It’s not just to show the bank’s product, because that’s the traditional way of doing it, but it’s also to show how well it works as the partner has got his solutions set up there. Or he has his offering that he can show you.” “That works very well and we’re going to work this way for each of our events. Both our partner and we will attract our audience, so we both create new sales opportunities and can build new customer journeys.” Purpose behind the event strategy “The whole purpose behind our event strategy is to take it a little further, bringing out that value and bringing out long-term investments. Because it’s not a short-lived thing. These con versations happen over months, and you build the relationship first before the partner agrees to your services or your offering.” “Or they come to us and ask to help them to reach their objectives. Then you start having this conversation. That doesn’t happen overnight. It’s something that’s in the works and you invest a lot of time into that. And there is a lot of tender love that needs to go into it, but also skill and expertise.” Return on investment It must be clear that for Rabobank, like any busi ness, return on investment is very important. The bank has a strict process at the events where it

Engagement function What she missed after taking office was a custo mer engagement function. This is something she implemented on June 1st of last year. Events play an important role in this. “You normally get customer insights from a marketing perspective, but you don’t really get insight from your direct merchants, your direct customers, your direct partners. If you hear it from someone else who has experienced it, that’s a different conversation.” “Therefore, we built a model to address that limitation specifically. Now, that model has been working for nine months and it has been very successful. In the last year we’ve had more leads, sales leads, from our events than we’ve ever seen.” “We already had an event leg, but very simple, very low-cost. Since we have had the formal customer engagement structure, we participa ted in major events such as Money 20/20 (inter national fintech event, EN), Horecava and Gastvrij Rotterdam (catering & hospitality tradeshows, EN) and the Webwinkel Vakdagen (webshop tradeshow, EN).” Reason of being there “We do fun things at those events. We make sure we invite the right people, and we ensure that we have a large stand. But the most important thing for us is why we are there.” “And the reason why we’re there, the reason why we’re doing these things, is so that we can make sure, that we really know what’s happening in the market. I always tell my team; you don’t know what you don’t know. We think we know, but we actually don’t.”

“Merchants are different, customers are different, partners are different; they all have different needs and constraints. At these events you can show what your propositions are, and you can show a new product. Like, for example, we showed a demo of our new Tap to Pay solution at Gastvrij Rotterdam long before it went live. We showed the visitors a mock transaction, how to do it, what it looks like, how long it takes.” “That’s why we’re doing this, to engage more and to raise awareness. It’s also PR for us, but it’s also that we want to show the market that this is what we do.” Expert skills “We usually have our partnerships managers on the stand. I’m there most of the time. Our Events Manager Carolien van Leeuwen is there most of the time. So, there’s a good representation of commercially astute people who understand how the business works with very expert pay ment expertise and very expert skills, because we also have a very specialized product suite. So even if someone comes on stage and wants to have a conversation with you, it is a different con versation that you have, compared to someone asking you on the phone about a proposition they found on your website. When you’re face-to-face with a person and you can explain it and you can show it, it’s just different.” “Sometimes we also invite one of our existing partners as a co-host, so that we can illustrate

“I think that the event strategy in our case is not only for our customers, our partners, but it is also how we develop the skills of our own teams. How do we get them to do what they do better? How do we get them to love what they do? How do they live that passion when they go to an event like this? And that they can have a conversation about their love for identity services and this is where they see it going to in the market. You get that enthusiasm and that’s the difference. I think that’s why it works well for us.”

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