"[Change] starts with people. Building trust within the organization, getting [the staff] to buy into the vision, the new revenue streams. Giving up what they know and think they're good at can be frightening. You have to convince them that it's absolutely necessary and they can trust you."

Fittingly, a panel of three highly successful CEOs and a fourth who served as moderator opened SIPA's historic 40th Annual Conference earlier today. Ironically, a question about your biggest mistake brought out some of the best advice.

The three panelists and moderator are:

My article yesterday on theSkimm emphasized that the two founders originally set out to help their audience solve a problem "that we thought our friends were having. They're super smart, have great jobs, but don't know what's going on [in the world]."

"People pay for what they want, not necessarily what they need," Lynn Freer, president of Spidell Publishing, said recently. "[We] really need to understand this. At the checkout counter, dothey want granola or candy, People Magazine or The New Yorker, chewing gum or vitamins? Don't use valuable real estate [or] webinars to sell something people don't want and don't want to pay for."

"Companies do not ask customers what they want [enough]," Arno Langbehn, CEO, B. Behr's Verlag GmbH & Co. KG in Hamburg, Germany, told a large SIPA audience two years ago in a wonderful keynote. "'We are not in the coffee business serving people,'" he said, quoting a successful brand. "'We are in the people business serving coffee.' Customers only buy when they see themselves [getting] a benefit from it."

A new survey by the Center for Exhibition Industry Research (CEIR) has revealed some interesting correlations and disconnects when it comes to events. It is especially something for SIPA members to take notice of because the respondents were 420 U.S.-based professionals who attend at least one B2B exhibition/conference each year.