This is the second in
a two-part article for Chief Marketing Officers of B2B organizations that use
tradeshows in its marketing mix. The first article focused on the selection of
shows and planning, and can be read here.
You’ve done your homework about which shows you’ll invest
you time, money and staff resources. Now it’s time to plan your show
activities. While all organizations are different and goals vary, some general
rules include:
Define your goals in quantifiable
terms. Examples include:How
many total new leads do you want? How many presentations do you expect to
be made the primary job titles, type or size of company that you want to
influence? How many meetings with key major prospect decision makers do
you want to conduct? How many of these meetings do you want pre-scheduled?
Make sure you’ve planned a pre-show
marketing campaign to your current customers and most important prospects
that may likely attend. Make sure they’ll know you’ll be there, entice
them with what they’ll see and attempt to set-up meetings. Use your
company’s pre-show advertising to drive prospective customers to your
website (set up a request for appointment webpage with a dedicated landing
page so you can track results).Your CRM system is key to program success.
If you need additional prospects, consider using outside lists. It is
critical for your company to be on the “A-list” of your most important customers and prospects that
visit at the show. In one event, an exhibitor used a combination of their
own customer file plus a highly targeted segment from event organizer’s
registration database to create a postcard mailer that promoted a fun
special offer. The results were a 300% increase in highly targeted booth
visitors.
Make sure your booth graphics are
current and clear. Too many show attendees have just a few hours to
see an entire event. If your booth graphics are confusing or cluttered,
buyers may be confused and move on without stopping to meet your team. If
you reuse the same booth each show, get an independent second opinion and
consider refreshing the artwork.
Ensure your booth team is trained on
latest and most important products relevant to the show’s target market.
If your products are technical, bring engineers to staff the booth
alongside sales people.
Conduct a short booth selling skills
session. Booth selling is not like other sales. Your people need to
quickly engage attendees, qualify them and deliver a well considered sales
message. If an attendee is not qualified, politely disengage, so you’ll
have more time to speak with appropriate potential buyers.
Record all qualified leads and
identify the specific follow-up action items required. A written or
digital record is critical, so that you can track follow-up and quantify
show results. Inform your sales managers that you’ll be following up with
him/her and be looking for detailed updates/insights. Make sure these
notes find their way into your CRM system for future follow-up.
Assign and empower a “booth leader” to
oversee the onsite activities. Allow the leader to make modifications
if necessary (e.g. change booth schedules, create signage onsite), provide
feedback/training on delivery of sales messages, discipline staff that is
not engaged correctly, etc. Consider offering a separate incentive to
meeting specific objectives that are critical for show success.
Insist on holding daily pre-show and
end-of-day meetings to share experiences, issues, opportunities, show
gossip, competitive intelligence, etc. You’ll build team-work and share
valuable insights.
Provide your booth team incentives for
achieving your goals. Even modest incentives give your team a chance
to demonstrate their abilities and ingenuity. Examples might include
qualified leads per hour, requests for follow-up for important prospects,
most leads from your 25 top prospects, etc.
Schedule rest breaks to keep your
booth team fresh. Shows are hard on the legs, voice and back. Your
team will be much more effective if they can have some down-time.
Banish cell phones from your booth.
You have but one chance to engage buyers. Don’t allow your team to miss
these attendees that walk by your booth. Also, consider eliminating
chairs--it increases the approachability of your booth team. I recently
observed an unfortunate situation--all of one exhibitor’s 6 member booth
sales team on cell phones at the same time. In just 5 minutes, 60
prospective customers walked by without once being engaged by the sales
team. Have your team use break time to make telephone calls.
Never break down your booth before the
show ends (even if your team is bored and the show seems dead).One exhibitor told me that in the last
15 minutes of a recent show, a prospective customer who never had time to
return telephone calls stopped into his booth with a $1 million dollar
purchase order. The client had only been able to get to the show in the last
2 hours of the final show day because his business was so busy.
Use the “slow times” to meet with
other exhibitors. You’ll be surprised at the number of deals and
alliances that are created at shows. Your team may also be able to gather
competitive intelligence that might otherwise be difficult to obtain.
Critical Post-Show
Follow-up
Post-show follow-up of qualified leads is one of the most
important activity you’ll do—and where many exhibiting companies limit their
success.
Send (or email) specific product
information to qualified leads no later than 48 hours after the show
closes. Input the follow-up into your CRM system with a planned follow-up
with a phone call within a week. Nothing delights prospective
customers more than responsiveness.
Make sure that all new leads are added
to your CRM system with a measure of interest and probability of closing. Plan
to drill down with your sales leaders for an update on sales follow-up to
make sure that leads don’t become “stale”. Your focus on sales productivity
will demonstrate commitment and improve the measurability of the show’s
productivity.
Hold a post-show meeting with your
sales and marketing team to identify: what worked, what didn’t and what
you’d do differently next time. Ask for comments in writing, so that
you can revisit the insight for future events.
Don’t automatically renew booths at
shows that have failed to meet your stated business goals. Convenience
and inertia are not good reasons to repeatineffective shows. As the Chief Marketer, consider how you
might better use face-to-face marketing funds that DO deliver.
Increasingly, sophisticated marketing companies are using private meetings
with large customers and prospects for intensive product training and
business networking. While you may give up finding some new leads, you can
more than overcome this shortfall by driving more business with existing
customers.
Summary
Face-to-face marketing at tradeshows enable marketers to put
a human face on their company. Your investment in tradeshows can also shorten
the sales cycle and enable you to meet hundreds of customers and prospects at
one time. By leveraging the intensity of the experience, marketers can
complement more impersonal web and print media. If you use these planning
guidelines for pre-show marketing, create an exceptional onsite presence, and
follow-up appropriately with interested buyers, your tradeshows will provide
extraordinary results.
Howard Friedman is a former vice president of Reed
Exhibitions, group director of Nielsen Business Media (formerly VNU Expo), and
is now the principal of his own tradeshow marketing strategy and business
development consulting practice near Los Angeles. For additional helpful tools,
visit http://www.hftradeshow.com. He
can be reached at howard@hftradeshow.com.
