What 100 Accounting Marketers Admitted Out Loud in Palm Springs
At the AAM Summit on May 18th, I led a session called Driving Sponsorship ROI and Firmwide Buy-In. We packed the room. And what happened inside it was better than anything I had planned.
Two live polls. Three table discussions. Real debate. And a level of honesty that doesn't usually show up in conference sessions.
The polls told a story worth sharing.
When asked how their firms evaluate whether a sponsorship worked, most attendees said they rely primarily on partner feedback. Nearly a third admitted they have no formal evaluation process at all. Not a flawed one. Not an inconsistent one. None.
When asked what most reliably derails firmwide buy-in for sponsorships, the room was nearly unanimous: getting partners to actually own the follow-up once everyone flies home.
That answer sparked the most animated debates of the session. Because everyone in that room has lived it. The sponsorship gets approved. The event goes well. Good conversations happen. And then the inbox takes over, the urgency fades, and the follow-up that was supposed to happen in 48 hours quietly disappears.
We talked about how to qualify a prospect when you have 30 seconds in a booth. How to get more out of a private breakfast with 30 attendees and only two firm representatives. And why the post-event follow-up plan seems to collapse the minute the plane lands.
The biggest takeaway from the room, and I'd argue the most important thing any firm can internalize about sponsorships, is this:
Sponsorship ROI is rarely decided at the event itself. It's won or lost before you arrive and in the 48 hours after you leave.
That's not a scheduling problem or a bandwidth problem. It's a planning and accountability problem. And it's almost entirely solvable.
The Three Tools From the Session
Several attendees asked me to make the session handouts available after the conference. They're here, free to download and use.
They were built specifically for accounting firm marketers and the partners they work alongside. They work as a system, before the event, during it, and in the weeks that follow.
Conference Sponsorship Go/No-Go Evaluation Checklist Before you commit budget to any sponsorship, this 25-criteria checklist walks you through five categories: strategic fit, budget and ROI potential, partner champion and internal ownership, activation opportunities, and timing and execution readiness. Most firms approve sponsorships on gut instinct and partner enthusiasm. This gives you a structured way to make the decision, and defend it.
Event Conversation & Lead Capture Guide This is the tool your partners need before they walk into any sponsored event. It includes a tiered question framework, four must-ask questions that qualify fit in under three minutes, and five deeper questions for conversations that show real promise. It also covers how to close every qualified conversation with a specific next step, and how to capture what you learned before the details fade. Because they will fade.
Sponsorship ROI Tracker & Leadership Report This is the document most firms never build. It tracks your sponsorship from pre-event goals through 12 months of pipeline activity, and it generates a ready-to-present leadership report at the end. It includes four scheduled checkpoints, an individual opportunity log, and a renewal recommendation framework. If you want to stop defending your sponsorship budget and start presenting a track record, this is where you start.
These tools won't fix a sponsorship program on their own. But they will give your firm a foundation that most of your competitors don't have, a plan before the event, a process during it, and a way to measure what it actually produced.
If the conversation in Palm Springs resonated with you, or if you're working through some of these same challenges at your firm, I'd welcome the conversation.
