The International Business Forum

Interview

Sales create success is the slogan of the upcoming International Business Forum (IBF), to be held at Hotels and Preference Hauling Tbilisi on November 3 - 4, bringing together representatives of some of the world's most famous brands as speakers, including Ania Jakubowski, former General Director of Coca Cola; Pierandrea Quarta, Procter & Gamble Global Brand Manager; Haseeb T Hasan, coach for companies like Apple, BMW, Siemens, Barclays; and Gil Petersil, a networking guru, among others. It is to be one of the largest sales forums organized in Tbilisi, and with the starting date fast approaching, GEORGIA TODAY talked to Guga Kobakhidze, International Business Forum Founder, to find out more about the company, their success story so far and what they are planning for the future.

The IBF was founded back in 2015. Tell us how the idea of establishing it originated, and what made you think creating IBF was something that was needed?

The idea of creating IBF came after we invited Brian Tracy to Georgia, who conducted a one-day masterclass “Sales and Leadership.” The event got extremely positive feedback, which gave us the motivation to continue our work in this direction, bringing even larger scale to it. With Brian Tracy’s masterclass successfully organized, we saw what an impact it had on the event participants, and on the success of their businesses. The IBF is a unique platform where you can simultaneously acquire knowledge, establish new connections, expand and grow your business and be in the epicenter of new things happening, as our forum unites various industries, speakers, brands and top managers sharing their experience with the forum participants, which is crucial for the development of business in Georgia.

What are your goals with the IBF?

Our goal is to make Georgia a key player on an international level in business activities, and become a center for such forums. For businesses, entrepreneurs, investors and different industry representatives, we want to create an event that will be highly anticipated each year and furthermore, when companies or individuals think about which forum to attend, we want IBF to be the first that comes to mind, and for that to happen we’ve been focusing and will continue to do so, on the individuals or brands that have vast international experience, on those who are thinking globally across various sectors. Accordingly, we have created a space where people can get information on the latest trends, establish new contacts, develop their business, and, ultimately, create more benefits. In 2018, we’re planning to organize a massive business event like this, which will bring together different industries and enable us to attract both Georgian and foreign participants, helping to boost tourism and economic development of the country.

What have your activities been to date?

The IBF team has already organized events such as hosting Brian Tracey for a masterclass in Tbilisi, Time Lord (David Allen) also in Tbilisi, and of course the IBF Batumi, where we had six famous and successful speakers, namely Pierluigi Collina, N1 Referee by FIFA; rugby legend Sean Fitzpatrick; Marshall Goldsmith, leadership trainer and coach; John King, author of Tribal Leadership; Dananjaya Hettiarachchi, considered to be world champion of public speaking; and Kevin Gaskel, Former CEO of Porsche, Lamorghini.

How would you assess the past business forum and its outcomes?

IBF Batumi was a standout event, both in terms of its format and its outcomes. We’ve added details to the IBF Batumi format that were not traditionally part of business events. In addition, IBF was first to establish a B2B platform entitled 'Brella', enabling participants to find the right contacts easily within the forum. Brella is a Finnish company, a startup with which we’re cooperating with closely. It managed to attract 2,000,000 million investments, meaning they’ll be developing the product further, and we of course will continue our long-term collaboration with them. At the same time, the participants of IBF Batumi and sponsors achieved tangible results, be it expanding their businesses in different countries, or exporting their products, establishing new contacts and starting negotiations, receiving offers locally from large corporate clients and more, which means IBF Batumi achieved its goal, the audience saw what a modern business event with concrete results looks like.

The upcoming IBF Sales Forum is to start on November 3, tell us about the forum and what it offers.

Right now, we’re working on our fourth event, with sales as its main theme. We’ve invited five international and three Georgian speakers, as well as five Georgian companies to participate in panel discussions. The sales forum will be organized for the first time not only in Georgia, but in the whole region. We decided to choose sales as a main focus, since sales are critical for companies, and we also want to assist business growth also.

The upcoming IBF will have the following speakers and panel discussion participants: Ania Jakubowski, Former CEO- Coca-Cola; Pierandrea Quarta, Digital Brand Manager (global), Procter & Gamble; Haseeb T Hasan, International Speaker; Evgeny Kotov, Founder and CEO, Practicum Group; Gil Petersil, Networking Guru; Vakhtang Kordzaia, GPI Holding; David Chikvaidze, Founder, CEO, International Sales institute; Tornike Guruli, Management Academy; Vato Kavtaradze, Windfor’s, Founder and Creative Chairman; Gaga Darsalia, Co-founder, Redberry; Teiko Lominadze, East Point, Tbilisi Gardens – Marketing Director; Giorgi Tushurashvili, Founder, CEO, Influence.ge; and Giorgi Burchuladze, Managing Partner, Livingstone.

Tell us about the actual process of preparing the event and how you manage to convince such high-profile speakers to participate?

One of the most interesting things about organizing such a massive event is, of course, the preparation and planning. It has to be mentioned that we’re doing it on our own, thus it requires a great deal of hard work and lots of energy. Our team works through all the details of the event, starting from communication with the speakers, to the creative part of the forum, from discussing how it should start and how it has to end, so that it leaves the participants with the desire to be a part of the forum again in the future. As for our contacts with speakers, that part also requires a lot of work. We assess their speeches in order to make a selection, and then we shortlist the candidates after speaking with them, followed by the final decisions being made and negotiations starting. The negotiations as a process are difficult enough, since coming to Georgia can be quite time consuming, and we need more efforts to persuade our international speakers to come.

What is the key to your success?

One of the key components of IBF success is teamwork and a shared goal that all of us pursue, and every member of our team puts immense energy and time in achieving that goal. We believe in what we do and we see the results of our work, whether it’s a developed business or new connections established. Often people thank us, saying the speakers at our events played a life-changing role for them. All of that gives us more motivation and power, and assures us that we’re moving in the right direction.

What are your expectations for the event?

From the start, we planned the IBF Sales Forum as the most practical forum, and that’s what our expectations are. That’s how we selected the speakers and we believe that, from the very interesting two-day event, the participants will take away knowledge that will be adapted in their businesses later and help them to achieve better results and more sales.

Any future plans to share with us?

As I already mentioned, we’re working on IBF 2018, planned to be much larger than the previous ones, with more speakers, more themes and more participants. We’ll announce more details later on.

Nino Gugunishvili