What will you actually do at MIPIM?

In just 48 days, the global real estate community will convene in Cannes for the annual MIPIM gathering. While the most pressing question facing attendees may be whether it will rain again this year, the biggest question for many is how exactly they can deliver a return on investment and justify the value of the annual pilgrimage to the French Riviera.

We’ll provide some more thoughts in our next article on the value of the event itself in the context of a busy calendar that includes UKREiiF and Expo Real, but if you’ve booked a flight and some accommodation (which is either eye-wateringly expensive or miles away from the venue), here are our five simple tips to remember to ensure that you come home with more than a bundle of receipts for over-priced food and drink.

· Identify your targets – what are you selling, who do you need to meet or what do you want to discuss are all questions to ask yourself. There is no point turning up in a town crammed with 50,000 (or so) property professionals to engage purely at random. Your target audience may only be 50 or 100 individuals, so plan ahead and don’t stand in a bar waiting for the 1 in a 1,000 person of interest to happen to walk in. Consider your pitch, hone your narrative, and analyse the attendance lists, the exhibition lists and social media posts to know exactly who will be town and who you would like to meet.

· Be organised – once you know your targets, reach out to them in advance to set up introductions, share invitations and find opportunities to bump into them. Don’t over-schedule or create a diary that is so rigid you may as well be back in the office, but you should be flying out with a decent number of meetings, appointments and events in the diary.

· Be flexible – alongside the organisation, you also need enough space in the diary to spend time on ad hoc meetings, random introductions and being able to accept the invitation to that lunch on the beach or drinks event that you did not know about. The week is about blending structure and dynamism to maximise opportunities and ensure you are meeting all of those targets.

· Follow-up – the golden rule of any conference or networking event is to follow-up on the conversations and MIPIM, rather than the exception is the absolute example of this. That key contact you met at 2am, who arrived home after an 18-hour networking marathon with a flat phone battery may well not remember who you were the following day, let alone the following week. Make sure you get their contact details, follow-up with them, meet them back in the UK and keep in touch with them for MIPIM next year.

· Be patient – perhaps the most important advice for MIPIM is to recognise the long-term nature of building contacts, business partners and collaborators. Just because you do not deliver a new contract on March 16th does not mean that your trip was not worthwhile. Expand the network, develop new contacts and keep in touch with an expanding group of MIPIM prospects, referrers and introducers over the years. MIPIM as a mindset is not a fixed week in the calendar, but a journey over many years, where you expand opportunities, grow your business and look forward to the next trip where you can catch up with ever more friends, old and new.

If you’re a MIPIM veteran, you will dismiss this advice as basic and something you take for granted, but if you are planning your first trip, make sure you plan ahead, pace yourself and settle in for the long MIPIM ride!

The SEC Newgate team will be at MIPIM again this year and our collective years of experience at MIPIM can be called upon to support you – we have been attending for around 25 years now. We can help you to brainstorm your objectives, refine your story, target your audiences, organise your planning, run your events and even manage your diary. With our understanding of what is possible, what success looks like and how to navigate the streets, venues and quays that comprise Cannes in the second week of March, we are happy to chat about what you need and how we might be able to help.

Of course, if you are more interested in practical advice – pack a phone charger, sunglasses and sun block (for the good days), an umbrella (for the bad day), comfortable shoes and of course plenty of business cards. See you in Cannes!