I would have talked my client out of this trade show.
Here’s how to tell which events are worth your time
before you say yes.
The Booth Was Full. Everyone Was There for the Air Conditioning.
How Do You Decide Which Events Are Worth Attending?
Not every event deserves the same level of scrutiny. Match the depth of your evaluation to the stakes: a free local meetup barely needs a second thought, while a paid keynote or major show deserves a real look at who will be in the room, who is running it, and what it will cost you beyond the ticket price. My Criteria framework breaks this into five areas: audience fit, organizer quality, reputational risk, commercial terms, and ongoing intelligence after you’ve said yes. Run an event through those as well as others that matter for your business before you commit, and you can skip the ones that aren’t aligned with actually growing your business.
Written by Jonathan Dunnett, Speaker Growth Strategist
How Do You Decide Which Events Are Worth Attending?
Not every event deserves the same level of scrutiny before you commit to it. The right approach is to match the depth of your evaluation to the stakes of the decision: a free local meetup barely needs a second thought, while a paid keynote or major trade show deserves a real look at who will actually be in the room, who is running it, and what it will cost you beyond the ticket price. My Criteria framework breaks this into five areas: audience fit, organizer quality, reputational risk, commercial terms, and ongoing intelligence after you have said yes. Run any event through these before you say yes, and you stop wasting time on shows that were never going to pay off.
A client of mine had already signed up to speak and exhibit at a trade show before we talked: as I mentioned above, had we spoken first, I’d have talked them out of it.
The show was open and tickets were free. It was billed as a “business show,” but free tickets? Not a good sign. It was in a hot city, in the middle of summer. So the floor was full, sure, but a lot of that traffic was people looking for an air conditioned room to stand in for twenty minutes. Most were not buyers, and it showed in the results.
My client still made the best of it and got some opportunities out of it. But are they going back again? You can probably guess.
Not Every Event Deserves the Same Scrutiny
Here’s something many speakers get wrong about deciding where to show up: they treat every event the same. A free local meetup and a $15k sponsored keynote get evaluated with the same five minutes of gut feeling (“I’ve always gone,” or “everyone will be there”). That approach doesn’t make sense. The depth of investigation should be proportional to the stakes of the decision.
A free show gets a quick gut check: if it’s close by, it doesn’t cost anything, maybe it makes sense (if you’re not busy, but that’s a choice to make). Aside from your time, events deserve to be evaluated on the merits they bring your business, whether you’re speaking or not.
That’s the whole idea behind Criteria, my framework for making decisions about who and what you engage with. I built it for vetting speaking opportunities. It applies just as well to deciding which events are worth your time in the first place.
Who’s Actually in the Room
If you’re speaking or exhibiting on an explicit invite, this is simple: is there a real fit with who’s engaging you? But a lot of shows require more digging to understand who’s actually going to be there.
Thankfully, apps help these days (more modern shows have them). Often registration lists can be had, from those or otherwise. In the worst case, you can put together a list manually through networking, examining hashtags, outreach, and so on.
There may be five specific people you can identify ahead of time whose presence would make going entirely worth it, and you can work to get meetings with them before you ever walk the floor. Ten thousand mediocre attendees and five who matter can be a great trade. Ten thousand bad-fit people and you’re just hoping for the best? Not ideal.
The Pay-to-Play Trap, and Its Cousin, Speaking for Free
Early-stage speakers get offered stages: buy a ticket, get thirty minutes with the crowd. In these cases, the organizer usually can’t tell you who’s actually going to be there, and that’s a red flag. Without a confirmed list you can work ahead of time, that stage isn’t worth much no matter how cheap it is.
Speaking for free runs on the same logic. I wouldn’t make a habit of it, but it can be worth doing strategically: real non-monetary compensation (a quality video recording you can use elsewhere), or a room that’s genuinely full of your ideal customers, the way that room of 500 was in a story I told recently. The eight leads that came out of that room weren’t nothing, but they should have been a bigger number.
How to Read an Organizer Before You Sign Anything
Ask a prospective organizer directly: “What would you expect from me, and what should I expect from you?” How they answer tells you more than their website does.
The best organizers I’ve worked with are almost suspiciously well organized, and once you’ve seen that pattern once, you start recognizing it on a discovery call before you ever sign anything. The bad pattern is just as recognizable: an organizer whose only real question is how cheap they can get you, or “Oh, I’ve got that somewhere in an email.” Type B event organizers exist, and some of them are great, but that’s a yellow flag worth noting.
Build Your Own Criteria From Your Own History
Think back to a show that went badly. What actually made it bad? You’ll start to recognize which events are worth attending and which aren’t as you consider this. Maybe there was no director-level attendance. Maybe there was no internal champion, and the whole thing was a checkbox exercise from the start. Write that down as a rule for next time as you build your own ideal event criteria. (If you want to go deeper on this idea generally, I’ve written about negative criteria as a decision-making tool on its own.)
Then do the same with a show that went well. Maybe it had real matchmaking built in before the event even started. That can be a great addition to your positive criteria. As you build it out, you’ll start to recognize what makes a good event versus not.
The Event You’ve Gone to for Ten Years
This is the one that trips people up most: you just keep going. You tell yourself it’s for the business, and sometimes it genuinely is. Sometimes, though, it’s because you love seeing the same three people every year, and the food’s great, and that’s a completely fine reason to keep going. Just be honest with yourself about which one it is: is this a social opportunity, or a business event? Just be honest with yourself about which it is, because it changes which events are worth attending for the business.
Know Where You Are, and What That Means for How Business Gets Done
I’ve seen this “it takes longer than you think, and you’re being tested the whole time without knowing it” pattern outside speaking too. A Canadian company I know went to the same trade show in Germany for six years without landing anything.
Going into year seven, they’d decided: one more shot, then they’d stop. A contact they’d built a relationship with over those six years walked up on day one and handed them a purchase order on the spot, and told them he’d wanted to see if they were actually serious about the market before he’d do business with them: time was a part of their evaluation and decision criteria. They’d been in a multi-year evaluation the whole time and didn’t know it.
That’s what “ongoing intelligence,” the fifth piece of Criteria, really means. The evaluation doesn’t stop once you’ve said yes.
Where This Leaves You
If you’re tired of guessing which events are worth attending, that’s exactly what an Event Strategy Sprint is built for: running your next event through this before you commit to it.
I want to make more of my events
If you’ve got an event coming up and you’re not sure what a real plan for it looks like, Event Strategy for Speakers walks through the before, during, and after in more detail. And if you’d rather build that plan with someone else in the room, the Event-Prep Sprint is built for exactly this: a working session before you get on the plane, not a debrief after you’re already home wondering what you missed.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is it ever worth speaking at an event for free?
Sometimes, though I wouldn’t make a habit of it. It can make sense when you get real non-monetary compensation (such as a quality video recording you can use elsewhere) or when the room is genuinely full of your ideal customers. If neither is true, the stage probably isn’t worth your time, even though it costs nothing.
Should you pay to speak at an event?
Be cautious. If an organizer offers a stage in exchange for a ticket or fee, ask who will actually be attending. If they can’t tell you, that’s a red flag, because without a confirmed list you can work ahead of time, a stage isn’t worth much no matter how cheap it is.
How do you find out who will be at an event before you commit?
Start with the event app (more modern shows have one) and ask for the registration list, which can often be had. If not, you can build a list manually through networking, hashtags, and outreach. Even identifying five people whose presence would make the trip worthwhile gives you something to work with, and you can try to book meetings with them before you arrive.
What should you ask an event organizer before you say yes?
Ask directly: “What would you expect from me, and what should I expect from you?” How they answer often tells you more than their website does. A yellow flag is an organizer whose main question is how cheap they can get you, or who says “Oh, I’ve got that somewhere in an email.”
How do you know if an event is worth going back to?
Compare what you got against your own criteria, not how the event felt. Think back to what made past shows good or bad (director-level attendance, an internal champion, matchmaking built in before the event) and write those down. Also be honest about whether you keep going for the business or for the people. Both are fine reasons, but they’re different decisions.