FUNDAMENTAL STRATEGIES DRIVE TRADE SHOW SUCCESS
“Before, during, and after” are all important
By Linda Kazares, Publisher and Consultant, ConnectedIn Media
Many exhibitors make a common mistake—they spend more time and effort on booth design and location than on pre- and post–show strategy. By following certain fundamentals before, during and after the show, exhibitors ensure their success-- more qualified leads, higher sales, lower overall costs, and shorter selling cycles.
Fundamentals for Success:
1. Vision with achievable goals
2. An outstanding pre-show plan
3. Trained personnel
4. Enthusiasm during the show
5. Excellent show follow-up
Vision with achievable goals
A successful trade show event begins with a vision. Your vision needs to be endorsed by an executive sponsor—a high level executive who will actively support the teams charged with turning goals into operational realities before, during, and after the trade show. Whether you are the sponsor or need to select an executive in your organization to be the sponsor, crafting and communicating the vision is the first step toward successful implementation of your event.
Without a vision that everyone involved can internalize, the rest of the trade show activity is just an exercise in financial and resource consumption.
Goals can range from increasing sales leads to the number of post show articles written about your company. Establish objectives by asking these two questions:
1. Why are we exhibiting?
2. Who are the best people to participate?
Set guidelines for what the company expects to get out of the show and define your measurement criteria. It may not always be measurable in specific sales volume. Trade shows, unless the product has been pre-sold, are not the place companies with complex sales cycles go to find and close new business on the spot. Exceptions include many retail products and impulse products at consumer-oriented trade shows.
Qualify your objectives by answering the following:
• Why is exhibiting important at this stage of the company’s development?
• What do we expect to accomplish?
• Branding?
• New leads?
• Affirming our size and presence in the industry?
• Entertain clients?
• Meet other exhibitors?
• Press attention?
• Other?
• Is the time spent on the trade show—from planning to taking sales personnel out of the field—the best use of this time and resources? If not, what’s the option?
The goals established drive everything else. Setting them down on paper and integrating operations, marketing, and sales with the process improve the chances you’ll reach your target.
Prepare a vision statement as if it were a company mission. Then develop the trade show plan to fulfill that vision.
After defining your reasons for exhibiting, it’s easier to develop measurement criteria. Use that information to evaluate your success after the event. And remember, it may take months and months to really measure success.
AN OUTSTANDING PRE-SHOW PLAN
Core to pre-show strategy is the plan for conditioning prospects to want more from your company, and to find it at the trade show. That can be done in a variety of ways including monthly e-newsletters, regularly scheduled webinars, your web site, and, with more generous budgets, direct mail and print advertising.
E-newsletters and webinars are extremely effective at placing your company in the right place at the right time. They’re typically more cost effective than print. Plus, both tools can be interactive, allowing your company to develop a dialog that predisposes prospects to want to learn more about doing business with your company.
Direct mail is effective if your company has in-house lists or the trade show’s registration list for RSVP booth meeting invitations and a related webinar series. Generally, print advertising is only good for the show if the company has a new product or an important announcement, but it doesn’t work to drive visitors to the show.
TRAINED PERSONNEL
Who should be on the exhibit floor? Let your star performers shine. In fact, make booth duty a privilege. Only the best are allowed to participate. If your goals are sales, make sure you have sales people on the floor. Then give them the leads they generate, or a cut of the deal when it closes.
If the event is a branding tour or product launch, key executives are requisite along with the PR specialists who can handle the press, field questions appropriately, and direct inquiries to the right people on the spot. This is no time to swipe a card and get back to them later!
When do you do training? Constantly and early is best. Pre-script your booth language, visitor qualification techniques, and problem handling. Start imbedding your scripting with teleconference calls that set the tone a few weeks out. Then ‘invite’ the booth staff to attend pre-event meetings at the show site. Bring in a professional from outside the company who has experience in booth strategy, lead qualification, motivation, and refreshing sales techniques.
The truth is that really good people will know that supporting the company by participating at the right events (right events being key) is the right thing to do. They’ll shine for you. And you need to make sure they’re treated well. Give them the impression you understand the importance of their role in the company.
ENTHUSIASM DURING THE SHOW
Paint happy faces on the booth personnel if you have to, but make sure they all appear to be enthusiastic about being there and meeting the attendees. Better yet, make sure they want to be there. Burned out booth personnel who would rather be someplace else just aren’t going to do the best job for the company—no matter how much you wish they would!
Linda’s Seven Rules for Great Booth Enthusiasm
1. Only the best sales reps are allowed to participate (and get the resulting payoff)
2. Differentiate your company, put suits on these people
3. Remove anything a sales person can sit on
4. Train, coach, train, motivate, train, respect
5. Job share booth duty
6. Give them something to shoot for—rewards, goals, recognition
7. Put some fun into the experience
If you have a heavy exhibit schedule, rotate personnel. And if you don’t have enough personnel, consider reducing your trade show participation. You might even find that by being more selective, you produce a better return on your investments.
EXCELLENT SHOW FOLLOW-UP: Go after those leads now!
After 15 years of attending Comdex and, more recently, working for the company that produced the show, it was astounding for me to see how many companies simply left their leads on the floor—like garbage. Develop a serious, measurable follow-up campaign.
If you’ve developed a webinar and an e-news strategy, you’re already halfway there. These are superb tools that can sit at the heart of a post-event marketing campaign because they are measurable, impactful, and cost effective. They are also communications vehicles that are easy to align with your event messaging. For instance, your next e-newsletter can feature products unveiled at the tradeshow. The newsletter is also a perfect platform to take the prospects to the next stage of sales interaction. Invite readers (segmented by tradeshow attendees and newsletter only readers) to attend your webinar where they will have an opportunity to have in-depth discussions with product mangers or subject matter experts on any topic you deem important to move the sales cycle along.
Of course, live sales follow-up should happen immediately with ‘A’ leads. Don’t allow the CRM department to sequester leads while they analyze them. Get the leads to the sales producers and follow up—just do it.
TURN KEY STRATEGIES INTO FUNDAMENTALS
Success during trade shows isn’t rocket science. It takes vision, planning, strategic integration, and follow through. If you can’t incorporate every suggestion in this article immediately, make it a goal to add one new tool each time you exhibit, or at a pace that allows the company to integrate it well.
Consider when to introduce follow-up tools into your marketing mix as well. Start with a webinar, then an e-newsletter for regular prospect contact. Once you’ve merged them into your marketing and sales model, you’ll wonder why you didn’t do it sooner.
As you add new tools, keep assessing the strategy. Drop those that don’t work and give new tools a chance to work.
It’s just an opinion but … your company’s success depends on many factors. Make sure the sales and marketing factors measure up to an outstanding standard before you enter the exhibit hall and that your ongoing strategy builds on each success. Enjoy the process!
Linda Kazares is publisher, public speaker and consultant with ConnectedIn Media.
She has hosted and produced hundreds of sales and marketing conferences, seminars, and roundtables on topics ranging from home automation to reseller and retail channel development. She currently publishes a number of B2B and B2C newsletters including Face-to-Face Connect, for hospitality, event and trade show management professionals. She is available for pre-show exhibitor training and develops e-newsletters to drive lead, event attendance and content development. Linda consults with clients on a variety of topics including Sponsorship Program and entrepreneurial development. Linda can be reached at 415.309.6536 or lkazares@f2fconnect.com. Subscribe to her complimentary e-newsletters at www.f2fconnect.com.
EMAIL Lindafor more information. Subscribe to her complimentary e-newsletters on the home page of this website.
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