Meet Elliot. Please Don’t Waste His Time.

An event-attendee persona, based on Valuegraphics research into professionals who attend events regularly as part of their work

Elliot is 41, works in operations management, and has been to enough conferences to know exactly which ones weren’t worth his time.

He’s part of what we call the Family-Driven Workers, a group that makes up 44% of the people sitting in your sessions right now, nursing conference coffee and pondering whether this particular event was the right call. We know what makes Elliot tick because we studied him, using our billion-data-point database that catalogs what matters most to people. Elliot reacts to everything based on the values of Financial Security, Family, Employment Security and Personal Growth. All four, all of them urgent, all of them pointing toward the same place.

Home.

He’s not here because he loves conferences. He decided, after some internal calculations based on his values, that this event might make him better able to provide for the people who depend on him. And so he’s placed a bet on your ability to create a program that gives him more of what matters most.

Length is the first deal-breaker. 67% percent of Family-Driven Workers named an unnecessarily long event as a dealbreaker. A total cost that feels unjustified came in close behind at 51%. Speakers they’ve already seen at other events this year (or that are saying the same pre-packaged things) rank at 44%, and Elliot has seen a lot of speakers. He remembers the ones who gave him something new he could use on Monday morning.

Sealing the deal turns out to be simpler than you’d expect. He wants real time to actually talk to people, not just stand in a cocktail-hour scrum: 62% of Family-Driven Workers called that a dealmaker. A schedule that reads like a schedule instead of a Jenga puzzle matters to 37%. Moreover, he needs a general sense that whoever designed this event understood something about his life.

His time has competing owners. Some of it, the part he’s really invested in, belongs to the people at home.

Get that right, and Elliot comes back next year. He tells colleagues. He becomes the delegate that every event planner wishes for, filling every seat.

This is the first in our series of profiles of the people who show up at your events, and what they actually need from you. Get the full report at www.davidallisoninc.com/eventguide.

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David Allison is a keynote speaker, author and CEO of a research firm. His interviews are based on the results of the Values Identifier, a product of Valuegraphics.