Breakfast Events: Beat the Algorithm in Business Development

AI is effective in producing outputs. AI, however, is unable to operate in a physical world. In this article, the author underscores the value people put in being around people and recommends best practices to set up breakfast events.

It is hard to resist a good AI automation story. In a recent one, the author set up a team of AI agents to run parts of his business. I paid particular attention to his business development agent because that is the work I do. This agent did research, sent e-mails, and made LinkedIn connections. The kind of activities the author never seemed to have time for. A week in, he noticed something. The agent bumped into roadblocks only the author could overcome. Since the agent was unable to operate in the physical world, it was asking him to complete tasks and report back.

The boss became the worker.

It is one of the problems with AI. It is almost magic at producing outputs, but it cannot operate in the physical world. And when it comes to our business development activities like showing up, walking into a room, shaking a hand, or remembering details like someone’s daughter starting college, the best AI can do is offer best practices.

People Like Being Around People

We saw it this year with the New York Knicks championship run. Just like other cities with successful teams on a roll, bars were full, strangers were high fiving in the streets, and when the Knicks won, public spaces filled up. Unlike other cities, it was all over the news. It is a good reminder that we are social creatures. We like being around each other. In the digital age, in-person experiences seem to have even more meaning than before.

Research tells us buyers of professional services, especially high-trust, high-stakes services like valuation, appreciate more face-to-face contact with the people they work with, not less. While it is true the AI business development agent never sleeps and sends personalized e-mails all night long, it cannot sit across a table from a potential referrer and tell a story about uncovering accounting irregularities in a valuation that led to a favorable settlement for a client. Expanding referral sources is not a digital content problem, it is a presence problem. And presence is not a problem AI can solve.

Knowing all this, my advice to clients is simple: put on more events.

The Event Your Ideal Prospect Does Not Want to Attend

Consider this before we get into the details of my solution. When I tell clients to put on more events, the event they imagine hosting is not an event their prospects want to attend. I have made a chart to describe some of the differences.

Glancing at the list, the perfect event should be attractive to attend, promise peer interaction, not be salesy, make attendees feel smarter when they walk out of the room, and make us look good without breaking the bank.

An event like this is challenging to host, but not impossible. We can come up with a process that fills the room, leaves attendees wanting more, and develops new referrers and referrals.

Getting over the difference between what we want and what they want is the gap this article bridges. We will set up a process that should optimize your comfort and easily fit into the calendar. For your invitees, it optimizes for connection, safety, and gives them a bit of intellectual pleasure. The result is new business opportunities for everyone involved.

All we have to do is set the table.

The Breakfast Event

A breakfast event is not a seminar. It is not a CPE course, and it is not a thinly disguised pitch with bagels. Done right, it will facilitate an intellectual conversation between peers over coffee that just happens to be hosted by us.

These are the goals:

Get people in the room. Mornings are underused real estate on most executives’ calendars. A 45-minute breakfast is a far smaller ask than lunch, a dinner, or the worst, an evening that competes with family time.

Create a place where people can talk. Unlike a presentation, webinar, or a panel, a small group in-person breakfast is engaging, does not have a mute button, and limits awkwardness between people. Conversation happens because there is nowhere else for energy to go.

Give us a legitimate reason to reach out, both before and after the event. “I’m putting together a small breakfast on [topic], and think you might find it useful” is a warmer opener than almost anything else in a business developer’s toolkit. It does not feel like selling because it is not.

Done right, breakfast events will produce business. Not because we stand on stage and ask for it, but because we are making ourselves and our firm memorable and useful in an unthreatening way around prospects and their peers.

What It Takes to Run a Breakfast Event

I am going to tell you about some of the pieces required to put on a good event and give you some advice on overcoming the hard parts, but this is not a script. The perfect fit between your topic, your market, and your firm are yours to uncover and honestly, a big part of what makes this kind of event feel authentic. (See my book, “The Human Beings Guide to Business Growth” for more on finding the perfect fit.)

The main elements we will be focusing on are the location, the topic/format, the list, and the promotion.

The Location. Where you hold the event makes a difference. An invitation to a cabin at The Masters is different than reserving a chair for someone at the Holiday Inn Express. Here is what I have learned:

• The room. I recommend finding a centrally located room that has banquet services. A private room at a well-regarded restaurant is as effective as a posh hotel conference room. Unique venues help, but do not let the search for the perfect space hold you back from promoting the event.
• The food. Coffee first, last, and always. Get food but a lot of executives are not big eaters at 7:30 in the morning, especially if there is a chance they will be talking. Get some fruit, a light pastry, or maybe granola. Bottles of water are nice but tell the staff your people need coffee. Nothing distracts like an empty coffee urn.
• The size. Twelve to 18 people. Think of a college seminar, not lecture hall. Fewer than 12 and you risk conversation stalling. Getting more than 18 and people default to listening. We want interaction.
• The arrangement. As a small working session, use a flip-chart easel in the front of the room, and arrange the tables so everyone can see. I have done U-shaped and two to three tables arranged perpendicular to the easel, and both work well. Avoid a classroom setup because we want attendees to interact with each other, not listen to us talk.
• The length. The working session will be 45 minutes. Get there early, start on time, and wrap up with five minutes left. Some people will linger, but I find most appreciate you sticking to the schedule.

The Topic/Format. This part causes the most anxiety in planning an event. What you talk about and how you talk about it makes a difference. A discussion about the importance of expert credibility and economic reality in equitable distribution disputes brings in a different audience than hearing stories from Greg’s European cathedrals trip.

• The topic. It does not need to be business valuation. In fact, it is often better if it is not. We survey key members of our invite list ahead of time with two or three topic options and let them pick or suggest new topics. We do not need to be the star; we just need to know enough about the subject to facilitate a conversation. We host the discussion and summarize the best points. Let them talk.
• The format. I am a fan of introducing a framework around the topic right out of the gate. A framework that requires labeling like a 2×2 grid where you define X and Y, or a three-part Venn diagram that needs the intersections defined. (This is why we use a flip chart on an easel.) Walk them through an example to start, then give them 10 minutes to talk. Prep three, maybe four of these.
• Take notes. Your job as the facilitator is to summarize and synthesize. Occasionally you will need to redirect the group, but it is rare. Collect input, answers, and comments on the flip chart. We will be using this for follow up after the event.
• Open and close. Surveying attendees of events like this you learn that the two most important parts of the event are how it opens, and how it closes. If you do not have an opening and closing or are stuck, use this: open by asking for introductions and one thing they hope to get from the morning. (“Just here to listen” is a completely acceptable answer.) Take notes on their expectations. Write them on the flip chart. With five minutes to go, close by reviewing each of the expectations. Did we meet each one, yes or no. It sounds simple, but as an attendee, it feels organized and is memorable.

The List. I should have put this first. Your list of invitees is so important. Inviting a group of people who are familiar with you and your work is a lot different than inviting a group who have never heard of you.

• The list makeup. Each event should be filled with similarly titled attendees. CEOs of small companies get a lot from being next to CEOs of other small companies. It is not unusual for invitees to ask you who else is going to be there. My first event, I invited the CEO of a large regional company. When I called to follow up, he took the call and asked for the list. I read the attendees and halfway through he said, no thanks. At a later event, I brought in a well-known speaker. Guess who was front and center? Make sure most of the people you invite consider themselves peers.
• The mix in the room. Aim for roughly a third of attendees to be existing clients. They will do something for us that we cannot do for ourselves while staying true to our goal of not selling. They will vouch for us during the welcome, during the discussion, and outside the room. All without us saying a word.

The Promotion. How do you find events you want to attend? It is a mix of ways, like referrals from peers, postings, ads, etc. Promoting breakfast events will work the same. I will describe some tactics that work whether you are promoting this on your own or have staff that can help you.

• Secure an interesting attendee. We are going to invite a mix of clients and prospects. In every list, we have three or four interesting people others in our list want to see or meet. Get their committal to attend and ask for permission to include them in the promotion of the event. People are funny. We want to be with others, but we want to know who is going to be there before we go. This lets us give them a few names and boosts attendance. (By the way, these interesting people are great to run topics and dates by, so make your process easier by finding them to start.)
• Send a postcard. Once you have your first attendee and a topic, design a postcard with both of your pictures on it. Put the topic and four bullets outlining what attendees will walk away from the event with. Make the RSVP process easy.
• Follow up with calls. Get your 18, but do not stop there. Tell a few more people that there is not room right now, but you will keep them on the list. Once you get the hang of the first breakfast, scheduling three breakfasts a year is not hard to do. Build a list of future attendees. Promise to share the materials from the events.
• Double check all RSVPs two days before. Make it clear that they are taking a seat that can go to another if they cannot make it. Your extra people will come in handy here. It is not unusual for people not to RSVP and show up anyway. I wish it were different, but this is especially true of younger attendees. They hate to be tied down, I guess.
• Follow up. This is where most well-run events quietly lose their ROI. The event itself is not the business-development activity. The invitations and follow up are business-development activities. Use the content generated in the event to create follow up materials. Pictures of the flip chart scribbles, expectations, and summaries are great to share. When you send them and call to check in, you will get new business. It always happens.
• The cadence. Run three of these before you judge whether the format works. Something important is to resist inviting the same people twice. Attendees universally enjoy repeating the experience, but the entire value of this exercise is expanding who you know. Recycling your new and existing network defeats the purpose. The first one is the hardest. Two and three are much easier.

AI Can’t Touch This

Hosting a breakfast event is not complicated. It requires us to be willing to set a table, ask good questions, and get out of the way while people talk to each other. That is precisely the kind of work that resists automation because it is fundamentally relational. An AI agent can help us draft the invitations, create lists of prospects, build the topic survey, and even summarize the event afterward. It cannot sit and listen to lively discussion between smart people. It cannot notice that the woman in back looks hesitant to contribute, but at our encouragement gives the room a piece of knowledge that changes how they do business. That is something only we can do.

Business development in this profession has always been, at its core, a contact sport. The firms that remember this are going to keep winning work long after everyone else has automated their way into a very polished, very empty pipeline.

Greg Chambers is Chambers Pivot Industries, a sales and marketing consultancy that helps firms grow their businesses through sales practices that are a perfect fit for their firm’s size, personnel, and demeanor. He has written two books: “The Human Being’s Guide to Business Growth” and “The Sales Momentum Mindset,” and has been sending “The Right FIT” newsletter to readers for over 10 years.

Mr. Chambers can be contacted at (402) 709-9962 or by e-mail to greg@chamberspivot.com.