Want to Know How to Make Your Annual Meeting Better? Just Ask!

You’ve spent months putting the annual meeting together, rehearsing all of the presenters, praying that all of the special effects work and the meeting is now over. Not so fast. You owe it to yourself and your company to do research on whether the audience liked and valued what they saw. It’s not unusual that many of the investors who attended your meeting attended other annual meetings, as well. So this is a rare chance not only to get feedback but to benchmark how you did against other annual meetings.

The easiest way to do the research is to use an online survey company and send a questionnaire to all of the attendees. Make sure you ask questions about the entire event. This might include:

1. How was the location?

2. How was the day of the week?

3. Was it easy to get hotel accommodations?

Obviously you want to ask about the meeting itself:

1. Was it about the right length?

2. Did you get all of the information you expected?

3. Would you have preferred more information? What was missing?

4. Were the speakers interesting?

5. Was it easy to hear and see everything?

6. How was the food?

7. Did the guest speaker’s presentation resonate with you?

8. Have you been to other annual meetings in the last few years? How did this rate compared to other firms' annual meetings? How did it rate compared to our meeting last year?

9. Did you learn new and useful information?

Also be sure to leave a section for comments.

You’re going to get valuable feedback which will make next year’s meeting even better!