“Lunch and Learns” are a terrific way to generate new leads, form relationships with partners and strengthen your brand. If you’ve ever been to a Lunch and Learn, you’re familiar with the format: nice, complimentary meal, maybe a glass of wine, and a sales pitch about the host company’s latest and greatest product. It’s a tough invitation to turn down, which makes it one of the most effective marketing tactics.

If your company is hosting a Lunch and Learn, and you want to take it a step further, take the sales guy out of the equation and change your format to a “Client Panel.” Instead of a sales pitch, which can become tired, focus the lunch on your star clients and the success stories they have using your products or services.

Here are five tips for hosting your own Client Panel:

1. Book your best (and happiest) clients.

It may seem like the most obvious part of the process, but it is the most important. A mediocre client is going to give mediocre feedback about your services … or worse. You want your clients to sell your business for you, so having a stellar, first-hand review from someone you do business with will be very impressive to all of the prospects in the audience.

2. Think strategically.

Booking your best and happiest clients is only half of the equation. You should also select your panelists based on who has relevant experience in the service you are trying to promote with your lunch. If you want the focus of your lunch to be about your BDR service, for example, all of the clients on your panel should have experience with this product offering. The event itself should be educational, but the selection of each panelist should be strategic.

3. Plan ahead.

Start planning your Client Panel at least two months ahead of time. Not only do you have to convince three of your best clients to come give testimonials on your behalf, which can take days of back-and-forth emails and voicemails, but you also have to find and book a venue, negotiate details with the venue and promote the event to find your target market. Compound all of this against your normal work schedule, and you’ll be very happy you started planning so far in advance.

4. Follow up and over-communicate.

Do not let your panelists bail! Send them reminder emails, touch base with them during a service call–whatever you do, don’t let them forget. Let them know that you are counting on them by politely over-communicating how excited you are to have them featured in your debut Client Panel! This will set a high expectation and make it harder for them to back out.

5. Have questions prepared.

This is not a normal Lunch and Learn; it is a discussion. The whole point is for your clients to sing your praises, but they can only do that if people ask questions. Depending on the size of your audience, there may be a couple lulls in conversation, especially as people are eating. Usually if you let the silence linger long enough to be uncomfortable, someone will ask a question. But sometimes, that someone has to be you. Have a list of relevant questions prepared to ask your panelists: “How has the File Sync and Share solution changed the way you do work?” “What was your security situation like before you implemented OpenDNS?” These kinds of questions will spark inquiries from the audience and get the conversation back on track.

When a Client Panel is done right, everybody wins. Your clients feel like rock stars for sharing their successful business practices, and you get to sit back, relax and watch them sell your services for you.

Courtney Durler is a Community Coordinator at eFolder. Guest blogs such as this one are published monthly and are part of MSPmentor’s Cloud-based File Syncing and Sharing Infocenter.