A stranger at Web Summit accidentally gave us a feature
I didn't know no-shows waste 15-40% of every sales team's calendar until I met a stranger at Web Summit.
I was standing by our booth when someone wandered over and started asking about what we're building at @Meet-Ting. I assumed he was just curious.
Then he mentioned his company loses a lot of time to no-shows across his sales team. I asked how many.
"We get 10,000 inbound demos a month."
He walked off eventually, and someone came over to me and said: "Do you know who that was?".
Turns out he was the Head of Sales at a European unicorn.
We stayed in touch. And that conversation became a feature!
We call it 'No Show Recovery'.
Ting watches your calendar. If it notices the other person didn't show up, it asks if you want help rescheduling - automatically, inside the same thread.
When you're running 10k sales calls a month and 15-40% don't show, recovering even 1-5% is hundreds of meetings saved and potential $$$s.
Other lesson, talk to people as if you want and expect nothing in return.
I'm almost 100% sure we had the conversation we did because we were both equally interested without agenda.
I hate it when I feel people are working me over. You can feel that energy...
Anyway, see the feature in action below.
Thanks for reading,
Dan
Replies
This is such a nice example of what genuine discussions with strangers can spark at events. I wish more people went to events to have these types of chats, instead of being 100% focused only on sales.
Congrats on what you're building with Meet-Ting! Keep it up.
Meet-Ting
@andreitudor14 Me too, it was the only nice and agenda free chat I had, was actually wary of talking to people by that point! I'm glad I stuck with it as he was great and now the product is better. Thanks for the good vibes!
Ufff, I love this! It's the reason I prioritize attending events - nothing beats a genuine connection, even if they're quite hard to build at events these days, as everyone comes with an agenda.
Glad to hear it was a random conversation that sparked a new feature for Meet-Ting! At which Web Summit edition did this happen? 👀
Meet-Ting
@ruxandra_mazilu It was Lisbon end of last year. I don't think we'd go again, it was only the day we were presenting where we had a few good chats, if it wasn't for this meeting I think we'd consider it a waste of time and resources! Most people told us to go Slush instead this year (if you want to meet founders, builders, customers, less sales, corporate)!
@dbul (sad face for the waste of resources part) - I get it tho! It can surely be like that, but I feel event organizers are getting more and more aware that they need to facilitate genuine connections, not just IRL opportunities for anyone to push their agenda.
I really enjoy Web Summit (been to Lisbon and Rio so far), but I've lately seen more return (connection-wise) on smaller events. At the big names, I feel most of the participants either see it as an important opportunity or make a somewhat big investment to be there, so it's natural to have a more sales-oriented vibe.
Super curious about the vibes at Slush tho! Never been, but I've only heard good feedback from friends who attended (other startup founders).
Meet-Ting
@ruxandra_mazilu I think we'll try to go this year, also heard about some good events in Berlin - if you go to Slush, try to remember to let me know!
@dbul will let you know!
If you want to test with one more event this year, the CEE countries have a lot of nice events (I would directly recommend How to Web in Bucharest as a Romanian haha, but there are lots of really well-organized events throughout the CEE that are worth checking out)