A two-day business summit with a hundred sessions is impossible to attend properly, and trying is how owners come home with a bag of brochures and nothing else. The ones who get value decide beforehand which three or four things they are there for and accept that everything else is noise.
Large small-business events typically bundle several showcases under one roof, start-up, franchise, access to finance, cross-border trade, which is useful precisely because it lets you ignore most of it.
Pick the showcase that matches your actual question
Someone deciding whether to buy a franchise should spend both days in the franchise section talking to franchisors and, more importantly, to existing franchisees. Someone looking for funding should be at the finance showcase with documents ready. Attending a bit of everything answers nothing.
The exhibitors are more useful than the sessions
Sessions deliver general information you could read. Exhibition stands put you in front of a person who can answer your specific question, quote you, or tell you their actual terms. Prioritise the floor over the programme, and use the programme for the two or three sessions genuinely relevant to your decision.
Come with your documents and your numbers
Funders, franchisors and corporate buyers at these events can move quickly if you can answer questions on the spot. Turnover, margin, staff numbers, registration and tax status should be at hand. Owners who promise to send information later mostly do not, and the conversation ends there.
Talk to other attendees, not only exhibitors
The person next to you at a seminar runs a business with the same problems and no reason to sell you anything. Some of the most useful information at these events comes from attendees comparing notes on suppliers, funders and what actually worked.
Free events still cost you
Two days away from the business, plus travel, is real money for an owner who is also the operator. Judge the event on whether it produced a supplier, a customer, a funder conversation or a decision you had been putting off. Public enterprise support that covers similar ground without the travel is administered through the Department of Small Business Development.
Frequently asked questions
How should you approach a large multi-session business summit?
By deciding on three or four specific objectives beforehand and deliberately ignoring everything else.
Are the sessions or the exhibitors more useful?
The exhibitors, because they answer your specific question and can quote real terms, while sessions deliver general information you could read elsewhere.
What should you bring?
Turnover, margin, staff numbers, registration and tax status, so funders, franchisors and buyers can act during the conversation rather than after it.
Is it worth talking to other attendees?
Often more than to exhibitors, since they face the same problems and have no reason to sell you anything.
How do you judge whether attending paid off?
By whether it produced a supplier, a customer, a funding conversation or a decision made, not by how many sessions you attended.
Further reading
Originally published in January 2017. Updated September 2026 into guidance on attending a business summit productively, in place of an event announcement.
