How to Market the Morally Broken and Sociologically Depraved: A Guide to Selling Your Local Hacker Conference

punch in the numbers to the corresponding person you would like to speak with say hello in an excited but non-threatening voice I've talked to a few of you people on the phone it's a little threatening and a little scary I know and then you use your mystical powers of persuasion you know your bag of [ __ ] tricks and then you thank them for their generous sponsorship money because one thing you've got to remember people very very easily hit that delete button it's so easy and so fast to do especially I mean come on we all know how many emails do we get a day I mean I I I probably get about 80 emails every day and I probably

delete 75 of them without even looking at what they are and especially if you put name me your conference let's say geran sponsorship yeah I I have no idea what that is bye-bye but if you actually get them on the phone it is much more difficult for someone to say you know Screw you in person again it's a horrible thing to do nobody likes picking up the phone I mean it's it's the scariest part it's I know because I about cry the first few times um it's it's a personal thing it you can start to take it rejection very very easily you get Tongue Tied you know you can screw yourself over by sounding like

a complete [ __ ] and you're going of the first few phone calls sounds like a big boat I like boats they approve yeah so if if you're worried about sounding like an idiot you just need to get over it and just accept the fact for the first few phone calls you are I probably still do I know I do but it's all good you know and now one of the things that I used to do is don't get too excited when you get someone's voicemail you're like yeah you know that side of relief thank God they're not there um so you leave your your your message your carefully crafted message seriously they're not going to

call you back they aren't and you're just going to have to call them back again later so and then one of the things that we that I've had to do is you know everyone's got call waiting and they don't want to not call waiting call her ID it it's the tequila again so and they're going to see that they don't know you and they're not going to pick up the phone keep track of when they're not picking up the phone you can it's not illegal to learn when people take their lunch hours just because you know someone's schedule from am to P PM there's nothing wrong with that just make sure you strategically call them

eventually they're going to pick up now I talked to before about having your sales pitch this is one of the things you need to do and make sure you practice it over and over again just like before you talk up in front of anybody make sure you go over and over again and again one of my little tricks that I like to do I keep little note cards just like those because I tend to forget minor things like the the date of the conference I know it's in

September the end of September I don't have a sticky note on me but it's the second year doing this and again I know where I'm going to screw up and see it's all good right but that's one of the things the more you talk the more you're going to find out where your own personal pitfalls are and the things that you are going to tend to forget and then you just learn to compensate for that even if it is little sticky notes no one on the other end of the phone is going to know that you have a sticky date with this is the name of my conference because I forget it it's no one knows but you and now

you and one of the things that we don't want to forget through all of this is that no one likes to feel stupid nobody does except for this guy so make sure when you're calling people and talking to them and giving them the details of the conference what kind of people are going to be there blah blah blah don't talk over the heads which is good for people like me to call because my technical term is thingy and everybody understands what thingy is but when you start getting too technical with people they no they don't like it and they're not going to write you a check so again yes it is selling yourself very hard so now we've got our UNR returned

emails little bit of research now we're going to start calling those people to don't return our emails because we're just following up right we're not being irritating yet and yeah again they're probably going to tell you piss off to your face but again you've covered every angle and again I can't stress this enough um you're going to get a lot of rejection uh it's one of the things you just have to suck up and by now you should be getting used to this and not crying yourself to sleep half as much again it still hurts but let's face it if it was easy getting money everybody would have a conference and everybody would not have a problem paying for everything but

it's hard so we've exhausted all of those areas time for a little change in Direction maybe you've got a few people to say yes yes but we still need a lot more cash so start accidentally emailing the wrong departments um like oops I contacted you I met someone you know in sales or I I met someone in your marketing department they'll redirect you don't worry and now this means that you can call and ask for that person directly and practice your new Mad Skills right you've been practicing this speech over and over again now you have actual direct lines to people and you got to remember there's nothing wrong with stereotypes at least when they're to your advantage so use

them so if you're a woman men tend to think you look like this even if this is closer to the truth or this I don't know if you guys seen this movie this movie is funny so again if you're scared terrified at the thought of rejection after rejection I do freelance it doesn't bother me people call me bad things it's all good so started getting some money little bit of money in got some sponsors which is great you guys start thinking like how can I really Jack these people for more cash because if they're going to give me 500 why aren't they going to give me a thousand right they've already said yes contact the sales department you've

been dealing with the marketing maybe some sales but contact the sales department because what is their job to sell you [ __ ] yes they're going to contact you they're going to call you over and over and over again because they really want to talk to you but hey it's easier than picking up the phone right and sometimes they even want to buy you lunch I mean seriously score I don't know how many times I've I taken out to lunch and it's freaking awesome I didn't pay for it they sit there and they kiss your ass and tell you about their products which is great you know this is great another it's another thingy I don't pretend to be technical

it's all good that's why I have that guy you know more than thingy and one of the things you also have to remember is now that you got the salespeople on you upsell upsell upsell upsell so they've already decided yes I want to sponsor you super duper um offer them private Wi-Fi premium SP Booth location um or even website ad ordering if that's something that the company can provide you know whatever you think that can add value bigger ad space things that aren't going to necessarily cost you very much but that somebody else will want to pay for because they find you know Big Value in that and they know they're going to hit more of your

attendees that way um ask if they want to put things in Swag Bags again it's nothing that's going to cost you anything your attendees are going to love it because you've got more goodies for them but it also gets your sponsor's name out giving them more value for putting into your conference and yeah with the Swag Bags it's it's a pain in the ass to fill those things it really is it sucks but hey again they make your attendees excited your sponsors happy because they've got their name out to a whole bunch more people and then you can usually use your skills to get free help we just G on we throw a couple free

tickets at people if they fill Swag Bags and it works especially some students you know on ramen noodle budgets it's all good and then don't forget the all powerful offer of exclusivity you know tell people um that another company selling what they are selling hasn't signed yet because again you're not going to just contact the one place you're going to contact all 10 right yeah I so make sure you tell them that you can offer them just them the opportunity to be the only sell of the thingy and not only they thinking of signing that sponsorship agreement with you but now they want to do it faster because they want to beat the 10 other

thingy people and now they want to do it for more money it seems greedy y I know it does seems like you're jacking someone for more money it does kind of is but it really is a fair trade um by offering exclusivity to the thingy maker you are limiting yourself to just that one sponsor now now you have shut the door on the nine other sponsors you're just going into an agreement with the one this is kind of a risk you got to kind of do your risk assessment and look at things a little bit more hand because you may end up losing money or you may find out that this was the best deal you

ever made it's one of the things you just have to kind of look into and if it doesn't work out one year change it next year and now an important thing to forget that's really easy when you're under all of this pressure you know crap my venue wants their money shoot I need to start putting deposes and other things you know the weight of this is just enormous um sleepless nights it's a lot of pressure but one thing like I said you cannot forget during the whole thing is to be excited I know it seems like the simplest thing but seriously be excited like Len said when you're on the phone smile you're scared to death to sell

yourself but my God be really excited like this is the most outstanding spectacular badass event in the world because it is it is at least if it's G but no it is it's your event this is something that you thought up of this is something that you're a part of please do not forget to be excited about this your job is to convince these sponsors that they are going to be losing out if they don't participate and nobody likes to lose money and again this is what you need to convince them that they're going to do if they don't have boo space or advertise with you you need to make sure that you convince them that they are

going to lose out on you your 10,000 attendees and make sure you remember to use free market capitalism to your advantage if you get one specific business to spons to you make make sure you tell another like their competitor that they are there but offer them a bigger ad space for more money again upsell upsell upsell that is your Ace in the Hole right there and remember do not say no to anybody that's horrible someone can't afford Booth space simple um offer them the opportunity to be on your website only because again they're still getting visibility um and don't be afraid to make special deals with people we do that all the time um cash is Cash no

matter how big how small the thing is get everybody involved no matter at what level the the company that gave you a hundred bucks this year might be your $10,000 investor next year you don't know the customizing of sponsorship packages is really important um I know one thing that we do for geran we have our cookie cut ones and most people do they send them with Your sponsorship package but other people a lot of places like okay well we want this but we want a little bit of this make sure you can do that be flexible when you're trying to sell them on the idea of giving you money put that in your emails make sure like yeah we

can customize special deals just for you because it's me the whole thing the whole I'm special thing it makes sponsors happy and gives you money because everybody likes to feel special They did something specific for me and let's face it all this begging you doing this is hustling and hustling is hard work it's if this is something you think you can do in your free time think again I work 40 plus hours a week I have two kids three um my husband works several jobs I love you baby I'm I'm super busy but this is something that I also do this is do this first thing in the morning before I go to work this is something I do on my

lunch out hour this is what I do when I get out of work while the kids are running around being crazy after they go to bed and are hopefully sleeping this you're going to working some crazy ass hours I mean I've sent up emails at like 2 o'clock in the morning yet and it it is what it is this is this is not something that if you think I'm just going to do this a couple hours every day it's not gonna it's not going to work you definitely get in you have to definitely get out what you put in to this kind of situation so no half ass again so now you've got many kind and

generous businesses to open their wallets for you you're finally feeling like yeah I'm in the green and after all this you should be I mean you've put your ass on the line you have asked people from Toys R Us Down to the Village Market to give you money now how are we going to get people to in the seats that's your next problem because again the sponsors gave you money they're expecting return on their investment if Len comes that's cool but if he's the only one that sucks hey I don't know you're special but you not just Len sounds like but you're but you won't be there either oh we have too much fun so one of the things that we need to

do is get the word out nothing fancy nothing over the top get people to hand out flyers like you've seen circulating everywhere you know seriously I keep that [ __ ] in my car you never know what you're going to do I spam the [ __ ] out of people I fly the crap out of people get your name out Shameless marketing wear your own t-shirt get your friends to wear t-shirt yeah no no you got to lift up the shirt I don't want people to attack talk about your con at other cons hey hey hey this is my second one here more fun slides and there's another one see getting the idea just m yes you would think but it's it's

deliberate and then email people lots and lots and lots and lots of people don't have more than 10 friends that's okay do what you do or let's think here we're promoting a hacker conference right flexible moral people how could you obtain lists of people uh uhuh maybe use your resources that's right that's right not that I'm promoting legal activity or whatever but whatever you do on youro time that's my disclaimer it is what it is remember LinkedIn this is like the biggest scam on the internet use yeah see everyone laughs everybody knows this [ __ ] it is scam use it to your advantage okay maybe it's not the biggest [ __ ] another one of

these sneaky remember utilize social networking to its fullest absolute fullest these are untapped resources that that people just don't spend the time to get a good return on they're like well I sent five tweets nobody retweeted me really is that all the effort you're going to put into it then you don't deserve any retweets you don't I mean seriously people do not use these nearly enough to realize their full potential I've had questions before I can't tell you exactly how to do this or what we do we do have to keep some Trade Secrets keep y'all coming to our event or just borrow later I don't keep secrets well yes loose tweet sink Fleet I likes the

booze so another way to make yourself Sparkle and Dazzle into the eyes of people looking well why do I want to go to this conference versus this conference because like every weekend come on there there's a conference somewhere right that we can all go to or sit at home and drink so what we want to do is like get someone from Canada to come to conference bam you're an international Affair now holy [ __ ] and Canada can we see Canada from here I mean my God how hard is this but how do we get the average person to come people like shiny objects and sparkly things like things are a little bit pricey no I'm not talking about

iPads though I do like those Billboards if you pick one on the highway with high traffic you're going to hit a ton of people and get a huge return on your investment it was amazing we were scared to death when we first called and found out how much Billboards wor I was like ho holy [ __ ] you want like $4,000 for like two weeks the hell I'm not making that kind of money then you're like all right you sign your contract give me a pretty picture they put up and our website traffic just went through the roof not only were people looking at us now we even had we're starting to get more people contacting

us for sponsorships people that originally told me to go get [ __ ] they're calling me now we saw your billboard you did that's awesome would you like to give me money they will and then another way to do is exploit people's fears of being hacked you know seriously it works a lot of people are retards let's just face it um we're all thinking it I'm Gonna Save

it I've been called a [ __ ] and much worse before this ain't nothing so contact the local news channel and play up the fear like what I did I called Fox 17 38 whoever the hell else was in our area and go oh my God there's a conference coming around did you guys heard there's a ton of [ __ ] hackers coming to the town they're like oh my God are we safe I don't know are we safe oh my God guess what I'm on the news they call me would you like to do an interview what yes I would thank you and web traffic for that day bam people scared as [ __ ] but again it got your name out

there didn't it no press is bad press it's the truth again people might think I'm an idiot might think I'm a [ __ ] but that's okay you remember the the pretty sparkly shiny shirt that says ger it's all good pay for radio time it's great um any you you work your deal you can even negotiate to get a radio interview you can pay anybody to do anything and that's what I did um I sent the talking points ahead of time to this one radio station I wanted to cover with the DJ you know he was going over them before the interview you know which is a good thing to do you're thinking like and

this guy's sharp we're going over this [ __ ] and then I I got the most [ __ ] [ __ ] question of all time are you guys like LifeLock you you can't make the [ __ ] up you know at first I thought are you [ __ ] [ __ ] am I like LIF lock epic fail epic loser but you know I'm professional somewhat force my happy smile you know you're like well not exactly you know don't tell them that they're complete [ __ ] but they're not really right and then he just had to keep going on after that it was a a little tough thank God he didn't ask them we were online holy

crap it's just one of those things you have to remember you know your teacher always tell you there's no such thing as stupid questions that's right it's just stupid people I'm not nice so if fear doesn't work get a local Employment Agency to come and arrange to have recruiters and head hunters there it's it's a great thing to do you know especially the economy we're looking at here in Michigan United States in general um everybody wants to make more money me too so be that bridge between your attendees and that better job you get people that want to come now and make sure you tell people bring your resume you know we've got people that

are going to be hiring and so now you're doing a great part of the community you're not just some grub money grubbing [ __ ] you're actually doing a good job um and it's great it it it's a wonderful way to network and helps other people Network and everybody's happy they're going to give you more money to come next year forward thinking thinking for next year and feel the other things you have to remember to do free beer I don't know how many people I've met in the hallway today giving out our gon stuff we got free beer [ __ ] yeah I'm coming they heard nothing else I said except for free beer it's all it took like me see

this is what we're going to have and see I I told you I forget the dates 27th and then 28th there it is offer them free food like gan's going to have we want you to come prizes can anyone seriously raise their hand and say I don't want to win a prize yeah that's what I thought everybody likes free [ __ ] prizes prizes prizes like we're gonna have who saw that coming lockpick Ville Village oh my God this thing was this thing was a great sell Not only was I exploiting people's fears of being hacked but we can pick your [ __ ] locks and we're going to rob your ass people were scared to death lockpick

Village was a buzzing happening place I mean the news channel came there in the morning not giving a [ __ ] who we were or what was going on where's lockpick Village yeah don't that way got in the news again and it cost you nothing but people saw you and they're going to come yeah we're going to have it again this year too woohoo another fun thing to do it seems to be a more common theme now to shoot and Destroy come on everybody likes to shoot gun blow [ __ ] up it's fun like we're gonna have this year I love Gan and seriously now everybody wants to come you got the great mixes you got

prizes food beer an awesome time with great people tonight Network so this first the first year I did like I said I I was scared to my toes never done this I talk to suppliers I'm that [ __ ] on the phone asking for their stuff to be returned I've never had to go and ask for money before but actually out of quite a few things that we've done here made some good contacts for next year it was actually a a wonderful event we um sold out and forgot turn off event bright sold extra tickets and then of course we don't turn anybody away from the door that's just rude um it was a lot of fun

um our vendors were happy our attendees were happy we were happy and we actually had sponsors that were trying to give us money up until the day of the con I know I said don't tell anybody no but if you actually have them have nothing to give them you have to tell them no but Forward Thinking again that's a selling point for next year I sold out a sponsor chases you better Act Fast right so my hustling paid off working on it for this year so yeah we had awesome people attending there we had people lined up the doors waiting for our patented t-shirt distribution system to hand skanks to give them their t-shirt I paid them they

were it's all good happy people see again know your demographic no who's coming um people were excited for everything that we did um everybody likes beer and boobs so and everybody people were there like said they were there to get good seats to the conference to the talks that we had people it was just awesome so we all had a great time and who wouldn't want to do it again this year we do I learned a lot and so I like this picture just because we're getting bigger we're better than yes last year we got two whole days this year scared to death to try to fund that let me tell you so far so good I'm it was it was

overwhelming this year is going to be awesome still horn myself out for a little bit of cash because bigger is better we want to put more in those little goodie maybe we want to put more in those goodie bags want to put more in those goodie bags we want to make it right I want to make sure that it's just bigger and more awesomer than next year and totally will be right you saw all my cool little slides so again you got your tickets why the [ __ ] not get on your phone get on the g.org buy your tickets it'll be fun so so thank

you