We have hired two firms from Marcus Evans Summits
“We hired two firms from two Marcus Evans Summits, and plan to give work to a third one. If I hadn’t attended the Summits, it’s unlikely that we would have taken their calls or hired them. Their services were not on our priority list” said Jon Lamphier, Vice President, Tax and Tax Counsel, Steel Partners Holdings L.P., a speaker and delegate at the Marcus Evans Tax Officers Summit.
What business opportunities did the Tax Officers Summit present you with?
I had the opportunity to meet some very interesting providers. I reconnected with someone I had met seven years earlier in a previous role. She worked at a niche R&D firm and I was very interested in hiring her, but when I left my role we lost touch. We reconnected at the Summit and I reexamined what they do. The firm now assists us with reviewing and documenting our R&D work for tax purposes.
We also hired a property tax specialist I met at my second event. I had the chance to talk to them at the Summit and it happened that we had just received a property tax notice that seemed a bit too high. The firm has now appealed that assessment on our behalf, and we are setting up a framework where our sites can work with them to review and potentially reduce our property tax bills.
In addition, this year we plan to hire another one of the firms for some tax incentives work. We are waiting for the right opportunity to get it rolling.
"We hired two firms from two Marcus Evans Summits, and plan to give work to a third one. If I hadn’t attended the Summits, it’s unlikely that we would have taken their calls or hired them. Their services were not on our priority list"
Would you have hired these firms if they had approached you directly?
I don’t take cold calls or emails. Their emails would likely have gone to my junk folder. Looking at property taxes is useful but it wasn’t on our priority list. The meeting at the Summit was really the catalyst for bringing them on board.
With the R&D firm, although the individual was not new to me, we wouldn’t have hired the firm if we hadn’t run into each other at the Summit. I needed a service provider but I would have probably looked at the Big Four.
Do service providers have a better chance of getting on your radar at a marcus evans event than any other way?
Yes. If I have an existing relationship with an advisor and they reach out to me about a potential offering, I may try to find 30 minutes in my schedule. But making a 30-minute commitment would be a challenge for someone with whom I have never worked, who wants to discuss a need I’m not sure we have.
Is the one-on-one meeting format an efficient and effective way to meet new service providers?
Yes, it is. I was reluctant at first as I thought the service providers would try to “hard sell” services I didn’t need, but that wasn’t the case. In my experience, the 30-minute meetings are the right amount of time to get introduced to what a company offers. As they already have background information on us, the meeting can be very productive.
Having three relationships come out of attending two events is unheard of. I attend other conferences for tax professionals, and I have only rarely hired anyone coming out of them. To have three come out of two Marcus Evans events is quite remarkable.
Compared to other events, Marcus Evans Summits have a lot more opportunities for heads of tax and providers to interact. Conversations are at the right level. At other events many attendees are non-tax people or at various stages of their career. The same is true of some tax professional events, that have a lot of people from the Big Four and a small number of other sponsors for events that aren’t really set up to connect people. At the Marcus Evans Summits I feel that I am attending with my peers rather than in a room of anonymous strangers.
Find out more about the upcoming Tax Officers Summit.
