Event ROI keeps getting blamed on the event team, but the real breakdown often starts once leads land in sales' hands. This episode traces exactly where that handoff falls apart, and who should actually own it.

What we get into:

✅ The sales handoff moment where most event pipeline quietly dies

✅ Burnout as a structural failure, not a personal one

✅ A one-line test for whether your team is actually ready to exhibit

Event marketers are asked to prove revenue impact from programs they don't fully control, and this episode goes straight at that tension. Matt is joined by Annalee Addesso (Global Experiential Marketing Manager at Caterpillar) and Erin Lease Hall (Director, Event Strategy and Experience at DrFirst).

Erin's take is blunt: marketing can hand over the numbers, but if sales doesn't track or follow up on the leads, "our hands are tied." Annalee adds the leadership layer, describing executives who love events but keep asking teams to do "less with more."

Together they dig into what it actually takes to turn event ROI into a shared business metric instead of a line item event teams defend alone.

If your post-event debriefs keep landing on the event team, this episode makes the case for asking a different question first.

Your CMO wants strategy. Your trade show is in three weeks. Your team just lost a headcount. Sound familiar?

Ashley Keating runs the entire events and field marketing function at CallMiner: trade shows across the US, Canada, UK, and now Central Europe after a 2025 acquisition, plus webinars, field accelerators, and a newly expanded multi-city customer conference.

All of it with a team of three.

In this episode, she gets specific about the tension most senior event marketers live in daily: expected to think at the CMO level, but still deep in execution. She and Matt talk about how that reality shapes everything—who you hire, how you measure success, and how you keep your seat at the table when budgets are scrutinized.

Learn:

✅ What "agile" actually means when hiring for a lean events team and why traditional event experience can work against you

✅ The field accelerator model: how Ashley uses intimate, targeted micro-events to move key accounts and protect her budget

✅ Why strict pre- and post-event process is the only thing standing between your program and a budget cut

Stop running events. Start running outcomes.

----------------------------------

Connect with Ashley Keating
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/akeating7/

Connect with Matt Kleinrock
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/matt-kleinrock-9613b22b/

Company: https://rockwayexhibits.com/

🚨 Register for the show: https://tinyurl.com/EventMarketingRedefined

Most event marketers know when a stakeholder's direction is off. Few have the line that turns that instinct into influence.

In this episode:

✅ The strategy session Felicia interrupted to ask one question, and how it reshaped the entire agenda

✅ A hard number versus a changed conversation, and why she'll defend the second one to a room full of CFOs

✅ Her exact sentence for challenging stakeholder direction without starting a fight

Felicia Kaban, Director of Event Experience & Production at Kenvue, spent years going along with stakeholder direction even when her instincts said no. That changed once she started asking a harder question in planning meetings: what are we actually trying to change?

She tells Matt about the leadership strategy session that forced that shift, why she measures event ROI in decision speed instead of dashboard metrics, and the specific line she now hands to event professionals who want to move from stakeholder alignment as a checkbox to stakeholder alignment as a strategy.

Tune in if your next planning meeting needs fewer order-takers and more advisors.

----------------------------------

Connect with Felicia Kaban
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/feliciakaban/

Connect with Matt Kleinrock
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/matt-kleinrock-9613b22b/
Company: https://rockwayexhibits.com/

🚨 Register for the show: https://eventmarketingredefined.com