An association’s top-tier corporate partners were invited to the VIP banquet at the association’s annual conference as a benefit.

But the corporate partners didn’t get much value because there were 500 people at the banquet and the corporate partners were unlikely to find seating with the members they were most interested in meeting.

Therefore, we used matched seating to add value for our corporate sponsors.

I asked each corporate partner for a list of members they would most like to sit with at the VIP banquet. Since our staff was doing the seating charts, we could make this happen. (I advised the sponsors to avoid sales pitches … to talk with members about challenges and solutions.)

⏩ The sponsors were delighted with the conversations they had with people they wanted to reach.
⏩ Members were delighted that they had conversations with corporate partner execs with whom they had shared interests and could suggest solutions to members’ challenges.