Business meetings: how to organise your own matchmaking event

Anyone who has attended a few of these events eventually does the arithmetic and realises that organising them is a business in itself. That is true, but the numbers only work if the operation works. This is the route, from the first step to the first edition.

What you gain by organising

Authority. Whoever runs the event is introduced to everybody and becomes the name people remember in that circle.

Network. You meet every company in the room, not just the ones at your tables.

Revenue. This is the part that depends on arithmetic, and it is worth doing the sum with realistic numbers rather than expectations.

The revenue calculation, done properly

Gross revenue is participants multiplied by the ticket price, plus sponsorship.

An example with round numbers: 50 participants at R$ 200 gives R$ 10,000. One sponsor at R$ 3,000 takes the total to R$ 13,000.

Now the costs. Venue, catering, printing badges and material, sound and projection, support staff, travel and payment processing fees. Say R$ 6,000. That leaves R$ 7,000 before tax.

The break-even point matters more than the profit: with R$ 6,000 of cost and a R$ 200 ticket, you need 30 participants to break even. That is the number to track week by week while you are selling.

And a warning: larger events multiply the revenue, but they also multiply the fixed cost and the complexity of the operation. An event for 200 people at R$ 300 adds up to R$ 60,000 of ticket sales, and it also demands a staffed check-in, a more robust sound setup and an operation that does not forgive improvisation. Start smaller.

Step 1: define the audience before anything else

Answer this: who buys from whom in this room? If you cannot name five plausible buying pairs, the selection is wrong.

Selections that work: a supply chain with anchor buyers, business service providers, companies from the same territory, or complementary companies serving the same customer. See your audience at a business matchmaking event.

Step 2: cut costs through partnership

For a first edition, fixed cost is the enemy. Instead of renting a venue, look for a space that gains from your event: a restaurant in a quiet slot, a coworking space, a chamber of commerce, a virtual office.

Put it in writing on one page: the access time, the number of tables, who handles the sound, who charges for what, and what happens if the audience is smaller than expected. See using idle spaces.

Step 3: settle the design before the invitation

Three variables talk to each other: participants, tables and seats per table. At a table with S seats, each person talks to S minus 1 people per round. With R rounds, they meet R × (S minus 1) people.

Example: 48 participants, tables of 6. That is 8 tables and 5 new people per round. Across 9 rounds, each one meets 45 of the other 47 people. With 3 minutes of speaking each, a round takes 18 minutes plus 2 to change over: 20 minutes. Nine rounds give 3 hours of activity. Add check-in, the opening, the break and the close, and you have the real running time.

Only then can the invitation be written, and it should carry the number: "45 business conversations in one afternoon". See how many rounds fit your event.

Step 4: observe before you execute

Attend two or three events organised by other people, watching as an organizer would. Note down: how long check-in took, how long each table change lasted, what happened when somebody was missing, how the organizer explained the format, and what participants complained about during the break.

An afternoon of watching saves months of trial and error.

Step 5: prepare the operation for the day

This is where a first edition usually suffers. You need:

• a table distribution built without repeating anybody;
• a badge with a number and a table sequence for each participant;
• control of speaking time, breaks and changeovers;
• an audio alert audible at the back of the room;
• an instruction visible on a screen;
• a plan for rebuilding the distribution when somebody is missing.

That last item is the most critical and the most underestimated. A proportion of your confirmations will not turn up, always.

In Rodada de Sucesso, the planning stage shows what your design supports with measured alternatives, the agenda is generated with zero repetition as a hard rule, and the operation controls time, breaks and changeovers with audio alerts and a second projection screen. When somebody is missing, the minimal-adjustment recalculation redoes what it must without touching the rounds already held. At the end, out come the badges, the table map, the lists, the executive report and the indicators.

First-edition mistakes

• Too large an audience. Thirty people well handled produce a second

edition. A hundred badly handled end the project.

• Announcing the format before checking the design. The number of rounds is

a consequence.

• High fixed costs. A rented venue with no guaranteed audience is the

shortest route to a loss.

• Not asking for supply and demand at registration. Without it, building the

tables is a lottery.

• Closing without announcing the next date. The best moment to sell the

second edition is while the room is still full.

Afterwards: turning it into a series

A single edition is an event. Four editions a year is a business. Send the participant list within 48 hours, collect feedback and use the indicators in your next proposal.

Continue with how to run a business matchmaking event and generating recurring revenue with monthly events.