Guest Article
Seven Steps to Greater Trade Show Sales
Guest Article By Tim Young, CEO, Techmar Communications, Inc.
We sometimes forget that trade shows are a direct response medium as surely as direct mail and telemarketing. The primary purpose of participating in a trade show is to obtain qualified leads that result in sales. As a service to Marketing Solutions regulars, I asked Tim Young for permission to republish his recent article on trade show dynamics and the importance of lead follow-up to justify the considerable investment these shows represent. [GD]
It seems that companies spend, as the late Carl Sagan might say, "billions and billions" on trade shows. But most of the money appears to be spent on promoting, exhibiting and traveling, with very little spent on follow-up.
Try these seven steps to leverage your trade show investments to get more sales.
- Use your booth to qualify prospects.
Visitors walk large convention centers with little time to assess who you are and if they should visit your booth. This is, of course, particularly true if you don't have a house-hold brand like IBM or Microsoft. But it's even true for them, since they risk being flooded with nonqualified premium collectors. There's nothing wrong if your booth's message says exactly what you're looking for. At the 1998 DMA Fall Conference, I visited a booth that said, "If you're a hi-tech company looking for a direct marketing resource in Europe, stop." Sure, that booth had fewer visitors than the one with the model signing autographs, but the visitors were much more qualified.
- Qualify the visitors.
Determine your initial qualification criteria. These could be a position in marketing within a large technology company. Then, determine your ideal prospect profile. This would go beyond the initial criteria to include companies who outsource services in your category and who have a current need. You need to decide up front what you're looking for and train your team to go after only those prospects.
- Capture lead qualification information.
There are a number of ways to do this, all with their advantages and disadvantages. Some firms use badges to scan, using tools provided by the trade show sponsor. Others have their own qualification forms or kiosks that they use. Some collect simple business cards and write on the back. All of these work if you have the right follow-up process. For example, the advantage of business cards is you have contact information -- email, direct line, fax number -- that is virtually guaranteed to be accurate. You definitely don't always get this with scanning badges and forms. A hybrid systems sometimes used is to import the entire database of registered attendees and use their own qualification form with a business card stapled to it. You team check off a few qualification questions, and the original record is looked up on the system and the qualification information is appended.
- Be aggressive.
If your sales cycle is complicated and lengthy, you can't sell them at the show. But you can capture the information needed to follow up and produce a valuable sales opportunity Therefore, this isn't the time for small talk. Talk to as many people as possible and attempt to initially qualify them. If they qualify, probe further to determine if your ideal prospect profile is achieved. Your team must be engaging and greet every possible visitor.
- Don't have too much collateral on hand.
Some companies bring all their sales collateral to their booths. Then, when a prospect expresses interest, it's given to him. This not only means the prospect carries around your materials (as well as your competitors') for a couple of days, but he also takes away a valuable follow-up opportunity. For qualified prospects, make sure you get their contact information, whether it's scanned in, on a qualification form or on a business card.
- Follow up quickly.
If you process the leads from your trade show each day, you can send each prospect a fulfillment kit that will be on his desk when he returns from the show. Several days later, follow up with a telephone call to make sure he received it and begin to nurture him through the sales cycle. What is his role in the decision process? Is there a current need? Who else is involved? What solution does he currently have and what else is he looking at? All this information needs to be centralized in the response management system to enable follow-up and measure results.
- Build an integrated response management program.
At the end of the day, there are two side of the house that need to be satisfied. Sales departments need more sales. Marketing departments like this too, but need information to measure results (to see what's working and what's not) and need the ability to drive future sales through upgrades, cross-sells, etc. That means you need an integrated system to capture leads from trade shows ( as well as ads, direct mail, the Web). This can be done inhouse or out-sourced. Either way, someone has to own the process and you'll need to invest in systems and processes to make it work. The result will be one central response marketing database that helps you nurture prospects through the buying cycle, gets more sales and close the loop. that way, everyone wins.
Trade shows work, but only if you follow up. The goal should be to get sales, not to get visitors. Often, trade shows aren't the end of the sales process, they're just a key part. To get sales, you need a follow-up system designed to build relationships and nurture them through the buying cycle.
With offices in Boston, San Jose, TX and Brussels, Techmar Communications, Inc. is a leading provider of high-end, fully integrated response management services. Founded in 1995, the company's strategy is to help business-to-business companies convert prospect inquiries into sales. Techmar is available on the Web at www.techmar.com. Tim Young can be reached at tyoung@techmar.com. This article also appeared in the 11/23 issue of DM News (www.dmnews.com)
