Imagine this:  You had a great show, with a flood of booth visitors and a pile of leads.  And yet after the show, your fine effort fizzled into nothing because your hard-earned leads sat gathering dust atop someone else’s desk.

Lead management is the least visible, yet most important final stage of your trade show marketing.  To help you bring this essential step into the light, here are the 10 best tips that I’ve gleaned over the last two decades:

• Seek to get not just leads, but qualified leads, so that your field sales force will value them and follow up.
• Train your staffers to qualify leads at the show according to high, medium, and low qualified levels, and then label them as A, B, or C leads.
• Do more lead follow up!  Have a lead fulfillment plan prepared before the show starts.
• Don’t rely on just a business card from trade show booth visitors: Have a lead card or electronic lead retrieval system so you have enough space to record details on your booth visitors’ wants and needs.
• Do more lead follow up!  Get your sales and marketing management to stress the importance of lead follow up — and even put some teeth into repercussions if they aren’t.
• Have one person responsible for lead fulfillment, data entry into your CRM database, and lead transfer to sales.
• Do more lead follow up!  Build more frequent touches with leads after the show (via calls, emails, or mailers).
• Prepare before the show to be able to quickly send fulfillment right after the show — even during the show. Include in the process the ability to customize fulfillment to include what the visitor specifically asked for.
• Do more lead follow up!  Check in regularly with your reps to report on lead progress.
• Watch out for the critical link that is too often broken:  What booth visitors reveal to your booth staffer and what your booth staffer responds is not passed on to the field sales rep, which causes lack of motivation for lead follow up and frustration with the booth visitor.

So much of good lead management starts with proper preparation of your booth staffers.  Yet what happens after the show is just as important — but gets less attention once the urgency of the show is over.

I hope you enact some of these 10 tips and get even more value from your trade show leads.  Your company has invested so much to get them — make sure you succeed at this critical final step.

This article is one of a series on Top 10 Tips for various key trade show topics:

> Top 10 Tips For Trade Show Promotions

> Top 10 Tips For Trade Show Exhibit Design

> Top 10 Tips For Trade Show Booth Staffing

Lead management is just one piece of the puzzle for successful trade shows.  Read the What’s Working In Exhibiting white paper to find out more tips and tricks to get the most out of your exhibiting experience.  Click here to request your free copy. 

Congrats — you’re no longer the trade show rookie.

You’ve trained your booth staffers to work the aisles.  You’ve asked for (and received) a trade show display with bold images and clear messaging.  And you know how to put together a trade show promotion that gets more people to your booth.

Been there, done that.  Now, you’re ready for something more.

So here are 6 advanced trade show strategies and tactics you can use that will stretch – and grow – your trade show program:

1.  Select Vertical Market Shows

All too often exhibitors can get caught up with doing their best in front of their competitors.  So they invest substantial time and capital in a large trade show booth at their main industry show.   And while plenty of potential customers can attend your big industry show, some, more savvy exhibitors have left that crowded battlefield in pursuit of only their very best prospects.  You can, too.  Find the shows, which may be smaller, where your best vertical market clients gather.  Once there, re-examine your whole approach.  Can you focus your exhibit graphics message and promotions to appeal more directly to that vertical market audience?  Do you have employees with greater expertise in that vertical market you can bring as booth staffers?  And is there more than one vertical market worth this extra effort?

2.  Exhibit At International Shows

It’s most likely that if you are reading this, you are an American.  (If you are not, pay no attention to this – you already are much more likely to exhibit internationally).  Over the last few years, there has been a surge in U.S. companies testing the waters overseas – especially since the GDP growth rate worldwide has been double the growth of the United States.  Exhibiting internationally is a worthwhile way to grow your business – and it’s definitely an advanced strategy.  You have to deal with customs (both the laws and the culture), time zone, language and currency differences, and starting over from scratch, since your company and products are probably unknown there.  If you want some help getting started, Skyline offers a free white paper called International Exhibiting – click here to get a copy.

3.  Set Appointments For Meetings In Your Booth

Exhibitors’ objectives progress through a sequence:  First they exhibit to get awareness of their company, brand and products, second they exhibit to get leads, and finally, they move up to exhibiting to get lengthy face time with their clients and best prospects.  Focusing on meetings requires a new way of thinking.  You have to see your trade show program not as an isolated marketing touch point, but as a key component in your selling cycle.  You have to work with your sales team to identify and entice known attendees to set aside considerable time to meet with you while they are at the show.  You need promotional activities that will resonate with people who already know you, and you want them to really come to your booth.  You need to bring higher-level employees who can advance the sale, and the people who your clients want to take time to see.  Your exhibit design changes, too, because you are more likely to add an element of hospitality.  This strategy leverages the face-to-face nature of trade shows to their fullest.

4.  Add Video and Interactive Technologies

Whether it’s a video on a monitor, flat screen, or an iPad, you can create more visual stopping power and give your staffers presentation and demo tools with video and interactive technologies.  Videos that are short, punchy, and have high production values get attention.  Exhibitors with highly technical products can grow into interactive technologies to help their staffers tell a detailed, consistent story, while keeping attendees more engaged.  The advent of touch screens and iPads make them even more appealing and user-friendly.  Creating content and sourcing these tools require a new skill set that many exhibit managers simply don’t have.  That doesn’t mean it can’t be done, just that they have to work with either their company’s ad agency, or go looking for vendor that has experience making videos especially for trade shows, and interactive technology that helps booth staffers be more convincing.  One tip: design your trade show exhibit with the technology in mind from the beginning, rather than trying to bolt on the tech after the fact.

5.  Tie Your Lead Gathering Closer To Your Company Database

You’ve gone beyond just gathering business cards from your trade show visitors – you get a scan from their show badge that adds some vital qualifying data, or even use your own lead cards to write down more information you gleaned while talking to them.  Now go even further, and tie your lead gathering tighter to your company’s sales and marketing CRM database.  Perhaps it’s getting the data file from the lead retrieval machine you rented from the show, and importing that right into your database.  Or it’s buying (rather than renting) your own lead retrieval machines that you ship to every show, which has a consistent lead format you define for easier importing into your CRM.  Or maybe even using laptops or iPads that, with Internet access in your booth, let staffers enter leads directly into your company database in real time.  That way you can prevent mistakes from bad handwriting, get a head start on reporting results, have a better chance at tying leads to sales, start fulfilling the leads before the show ends, and most importantly, forward your A-quality leads to the appropriate sales rep for immediate follow up.

6.  Measure More Of Your Trade Show Activities

Go beyond just counting leads, and even measuring the ROI of your overall trade show program, and use measurement on a more granular level to help decide how to actually improve your trade show program.  Count the qualified leads each booth staffer brings per hour, so you can decide who staffs the next show, and who stays home.  Measure the impact that major parts of your program give (such as promotions, presentations, interactive technology, and sponsorships) versus their costs, to better allocate your budget at future shows.  And if ROI is not your objective, find a way to measure your objective anyhow, like using surveys before and after a show to measure the brand impact your show program created.  Also, rather than looking at each measurement in isolation show by show, start comparing each show to one another, and at each show over the years.

Which strategy of these strategies is best for you?  Meet with your team and brainstorm which ones will garner the greatest boost for your efforts.   Then dive into these advanced strategies and tactics. You’ll increase your results, grow your skills, make yourself more valuable – and make your job more interesting!

If you’ve used these advanced strategies and tactics yourself, how did they work for you?  Are there other trade show strategies you graduated to once you’d mastered the basics?  Share your experiences with us in the comment box below.

Get more great ideas on advancing your trade show program with the What’s Working In Exhibiting White Paper, in which over 170 exhibitors told what they were doing to improve their trade show results.  Click here to get your free copy.

Skyline hosted webinars called “What’s Working In Exhibiting” on July 13th and 14th, 2011.   Thank you so much for your participation and your questions about how to get the most of of trade shows, be it promotions, show selection, booth staffing, lead management, and more.

As promised, here is the pdf of the actual presentation content.  (If the pdf viewer is not loading on your browser, you can go to the actual pdf file by copying and pasting this URL into your browser window: skyline.com/images/webinars/WhatsWorking_July-13-2011_Webinar.pdf

During the seminar we offered several items.  If you did not attend or did not ask during the webinar, just click to request your copies:

• Measurement Made Easy CD computer program
• What’s Working In Exhibiting White Paper
• Info on Skyline’s portable displays and modular inline exhibits
• Info on Skyline’s custom modular island exhibits

Thanks again for attending!

How can you up your game to take advantage of new technology in improving your data flow to support your show marketing ROI?  Here’s one way that is starting to appear on show floors currently.

Tablet computer data input processes are going to become a great new tool for trade show exhibitors.  They will combine lead qualification, presentation, and lead capture into a single, simple mobile package that can be carried anywhere on a show floor.  Because the need for paper data recording is eliminated, they will also offer a ‘green’ alternative to having to carry printed collateral material to and from the show floor.  They will tie right in with current trends toward more electronically based messaging in exhibit environments and other cutting edge technological developments.  And, being more cost effective, they will provide a great way to help stabilize the cost gaps created by uncontrollable expenses like shipping and drayage.

Sounds great, doesn’t it?  And it is!  But, it can still offer daunting challenges when the technology is not quite ready.

(Almost) Flawless Data Entry Directly From The Trade Show Floor Into CRM

One of my good customers recently altered their in-booth information capture process to allow them to input lead data in real time directly into their database as they gathered it.  They intended to shorten the lead management process to allow them to fulfill their lead requests even as their visitors were walking the show floor.

Each staffer had a tablet computer (in this case, an iPad) that they carried with them as they initiated contact with a visitor to their booth.  They would qualify the visitor and show them a brief presentation about their information systems on the tablet.  They would input the visitor’s key facts and interests as they spoke to them, using the tablets as a virtual lead card and as a guide for further conversation.  Staffers would also provide their own feedback on the contact without having to resort to hastily written notes with illegible handwriting, making the contact more cost effective (fewer lost leads due to incomplete data).

The plan was to send the data directly to their CRM, eliminating the need for additional handling of the data.   However, they hit an unexpected snag with the input process, impeding their effectiveness in achieving this goal the first time they took it out on the road.

Their iPad tablets had used an ‘app’ that would allow them to transfer the data easily.  Unfortunately, they found out as they were working the system on the show floor that the ‘app’ was for an iPhone and didn’t work well on the iPad units.  Also, the ‘app’ would not interface correctly with their CRM program and the data would not transfer.

They created a ‘band aid’ that got them through this show, by using the tablets to input the contact data directly into their website information request page and notating the source of the data for future reference in the additional information block.  It still had to be manually imported to their database after the fact, but was at least a quick, workable fix for that show.

The upshot was that, while the method was valid, the data transfer process was not.  They are now acquiring an ‘app’ that will act with their CRM program and which will allow better transfer of captured information.  The process was still very effective overall and, they feel, will be even more workable, once they have the correct programs in place.

You can definitely impact your show floor data management process by going this route, but be aware that there are still issues typical to the introduction of any new technology that you may, in the short term, need to contend with.  Make sure you have an alternative method in place, just in case.

Trading in your lead cards for tablet PCs is only one of the many changes to trade show marketing for the future.  To find out more, read The Evolving Role of Exhibit Marketers white paper.  Click here to request your free 36 page copy. 

Skyline hosted webinars called “10 Mistakes Exhibitors Make” on May 11th and 12th, 2011.   Thank you so much for your participation and your many excellent questions about improving your trade show marketing.

As promised, here is the pdf of the actual presentation content.  (If the pdf viewer is not loading on your browser, you can go to the actual pdf file by copying and pasting this URL into your browser window: http://www.skyline.com/images/webinars/may_2011/10MistakesExhibitorMake_SkylineWebinar.pdf

During the seminar we offered several items.  Click to request your copies:

• What’s Working In Exhibiting White Paper
• The Trend to Custom Modular Exhibits White Paper
• “Measurement Made Easy” Trade Show and Event Calculator CD
• Info on Skyline’s portable displays and modular inline exhibits
• Info on Skyline’s custom modular island exhibits

During the webinar we also mentioned a blog post about planning that you may find useful:

Trade Show Planning Timeline: Manage Your Logistics AND Marketing

Thanks again for attending!

Your boss, and especially your boss’s boss, want you to measure your trade show ROI.  But with your longer B2B sales cycle, you won’t know the sales generated from each show for months, maybe years.  And that’s assuming you can get access to the sales data in the first place.

So here are 5 things you can measure during and right after your show.  Things that matter.  Things that will help you not only justify your program, but drastically improve it.  So if and when you finally do get actual sales numbers, they’ll be worth measuring.

1. Qualified Leads Per Show

Chances are you are already counting the number of leads you get at each show.  For example, at the XYZ show you got 100 leads, at the ZYX show you got 200 leads, and so on.  Raw lead counts are a starting point, but you can go one step beyond.  Train your trade show booth staff to consistently rate each lead for quality.

While there are varying methods to qualified leads, here’s one you can use, or adapt to your own needs:

• “A” Quality Leads:  Have budget, authority, need, and a short time frame to purchase.
• “B” Quality Leads: Have authority and a future need, but no approved budget.  Or, have a need, but no authority or budget.
• “C” Quality Leads: Have authority, but no need or budget.

You can choose to compare only “A” quality lead counts from show to show, or “A” and “B” quality lead counts from show to show.  This one step alone will enable you to better judge the value of each show on your schedule.  And you’ll have a better metric to judge a show right immediately after it’s over.  You can even go the next step and compare the number of qualified leads per dollar spent per show.

With this metric in hand, you can decide which shows to expand in and which to cut back on.  And of course, this only matters if your main goal is lead generation.

2. Number of Leads Per Staffer

You may think you know who your best booth staffers are just by looking at them.  They’re your friendliest people, who can chat with anybody, right?  But during the show you’ll be too busy running around your trade show display to notice they’re actually just chatting up their fellow booth staffers, or ingratiating themselves to the top company brass.  Or worse, they are not able to convert visitors into leads, because they simply don’t know enough about your clients’ needs or your products.  So what do you do?

To determine which staffers are your real stars, count how many leads they took each day.  That means you have to include a spot on your lead cards for staffers to put their name or initials.  (And be careful about two staffers with the same initials!)  If you don’t use a lead card, you still need to find a method to identify who took each lead.  Want to measure even closer?  Calculate how many leads each staffer takes per hour they staffed.

I’ve seen staffers who looked like wallflowers, yet took 400% more leads than other, more sociable staffers.  If you count every staffer’s total leads, you will then know which highly productive staffers to bring back for future shows.  And make a huge difference in your results.

It’s good to check written leads very early in the show to ensure each staffer is at least writing their name or initials on them.  Otherwise, after the show you have to become a handwriting expert!

3. Completeness of Leads

You want more than just quantity, you want quality.  So check your leads during the show to see if each booth staffer is writing complete leads.  Find a booth staffer who is just writing their name on the lead card?  Take them aside and show them what’s missing: Lead quality level, comments about what the visitor’s main problems are and how your products solve them, and what the staffer promised the booth visitor they’d do next.

Help your staffer see that if they invest an extra couple of minutes recording what the client said and what they promised the attendee, your field sales person will know which leads are truly worth following up right away, and which to nurture over time.

You can measure the completeness of your leads starting an hour or two into the show.  And it will boost your results so they are worth measuring.

4. Qualified Leads Per Booth Staffer Per Hour Worked

If you have done #1, #2 and #3, now you can also readily calculate this.  It’s the number of “A” or “A” and “B” leads a staffer takes on average per hour they staff your booth. This is like the slugging percentage in baseball that combines batting average and number of extra base hits into one statistic.  When you find staffers that take an above-average number of qualified leads per hour, show after show, make sure they’re on your varsity traveling booth staff team!

5. Ratio of Leads Generated By A Promotion Compared To That Promotion’s Percent of Your Show Budget

Trade show attendees only visit about 5% of the exhibits at a show.  Promotions are your secret weapon in the battle against limited time and other exhibitors.  You need promotions that incent attendees to leave the aisle, enter your booth, and engage with you.  But there are nearly infinite choices, some good and some bad.

At one show we gave away a free trip to Hawaii – quite an investment – but while the mailer and trip cost 10% of our show budget, 60% of our leads either brought the pre-show mailer about the trip into the booth, or were stopped by the offer in the aisle.  Spend 10% more to get 60% more leads?  Any day.  Calculate this ratio with all your promotions, and you’ll figure out which promos to repeat, and which to leave in your desk drawer.  All you need to do is identify which leads were initiated by the promotion.

Your efforts to measure your trade show results don’t have to be held hostage to your long sales cycle or an inaccessible sales database.   These 5 measurements will help you make immediate improvements in your trade show performance.

This article originally appeared on www.tsnn.com within the Thought Leader Blogs section.

Get serious about measuring your results.  Get the Measurement Made Easy CD, which contains 19 calculators, including #1 above.  You put in the data, and it calculates, stores, and even prints reports of the results.  Yours free by clicking here.

Skyline hosted webinars called “What’s Working In Exhibiting” on January 12th and 13th, 2011.

A big thank you to all the attendees for their interaction during the events.  Both Bill Lauf, my co-presenter, and I were grateful for the number and quality of the attendee questions.  We may answer a few of those questions again as future posts in this blog.

As promised, here is the pdf of the actual presentation content.  Click on the blue “Fullscreen” link below to see it full size.

During the seminar we offered several items.  Click to request your copies:

• Measurement Made Easy CD, Trade Show and Event Calculator
• What’s Working In Exhibiting White Paper
• Info on Skyline’s portable displays and modular inline exhibits
• Info on Skyline’s custom modular island exhibits

Thanks again for attending!

Companies spend significant manpower and budget producing hard copy materials they bring to trade shows, hoping that everyone who picks up a flyer or brochure will read it carefully. The reality is that most attendees that receive materials on-site will end up tossing them. This is an unfortunate result and a wasteful practice.

Make Your Collateral Work Harder

So how do you ensure your marketing materials are actually read?  In most cases, it’s wiser to send materials after the crowds have dispersed.  It’s natural to want to give everything you have to anyone who visits your trade show display, but you’ll get better results by placing a well-timed email after your prospect has had time to catch their breath, delete unwanted messages and shift back into gear.  Why?

1. People are more likely to read the literature when they’re at their desk.  These days, snail mail stands out. At their desks, people have more time to review it in a leisurely fashion.   Most people attending trade shows are rushing around the whole weekend trying to see as many people as possible and they just don’t have time to read through everything.

2. It’s more likely your literature will find its way into the appropriate hands if you mail or email it.   If you send it via email or mail, recipients will most likely forward it on to others who might be interested or who are in charge of procuring the products or services you offer.   They’re also more likely to open a file based on your literature for future reference.

Don’t Let Your Trade Show Message Get Lost In The Crowd

3. Your literature won’t get lost in the shuffle.  At trade shows, visitors have tons of literature shoved into their hands by dozens of companies.   Do you really want to be just one more flyer or brochure in a stack that’s overwhelming?  Mailing or emailing materials a week after the trade show means you’ll stand out.   Your material won’t be just one brochure among many.  Waiting a week also sets your material apart and readers will have more time to review your materials and digest the information.

4. Scientific studies have proven that repetition improves recall.   Potential customers who visit your tradeshow booth may or may not remember your company name after the event is over, but the chances they will recall who you are and what you have to offer increases dramatically if they visit your booth one week and receive company literature the next week.  Jogging their memory with a short, personal note included with your literature will also make readers feel appreciated.   Everyone likes to be remembered.

When Less Is More

5. Your trade show area will look cleaner, neater, and more professional if you don’t have stacks of material lying all over the place. Having the right literature is great, but if you have stacks of paper sliding over or a messy array of literature, it can confuse visitors or simply turn them off.  In many cases, a “less is more” approach is best.

6. This is the best reason of all: Mailing your literature gives you the ideal opportunity to get valid contact information from everyone who visits your booth.   Simply ask for each person’s name, address, and email so that you can send them your literature and any additional information they request.   You’ll get far more leads if you have something to offer after the trade show is over.

Mailing or emailing your company literature a week after the convention or show is over can become one of the best marketing decisions you’ll make this year.  Avoid collateral damage — and leave your brochures at home.

Learn more ways to get better trade show results with your booth staffers. Click here to get your free copy of the 48-page Booth Staffing Guidebook, filled with useful articles, checklists, and worksheets.

You’ve got a tremendous investment, not only in money, but also time and hopefully training in marketing your business at trade shows. Don’t get in the way of your own success!

Here are the 10 mistakes I see exhibitors make again and again:

1)      Underselling your company with bad graphics: All too often I’ve seen companies represent themselves at trade shows with a patchwork of a “display.” I’ve seen vinyl banners wrapped around foam board, dented or dinged up displays, and a variety of hodgepodge displays.  Represent your company in the best light possible.  A less-than-professional appearance does not give your prospect confidence in you or your products and services.  This type of display will send prospects running to the competition.

2)      Putting way too much text on your display:  You’ve got literally seconds to get someone’s attention as they stroll around the show floor.  No one will stop to read a lot of text.  Please understand that you cannot tell your entire company story on your tradeshow display.

3)      Not promoting your presence at trade shows: So you’ve got a great looking booth and you all ready to go.  So where is everyone?  Why don’t you have any traffic coming into your booth?  What have you done to promote your presence at the show?  Let your clients and prospects know about your trade show appearances by using an e-newsletter and social media.  Plan the launch of a new product/service around a show to create a buzz.  Send invites directly to those prospects that you may not have connected with in the past.

4)      Not training your booth staff and discussing proper expectations: So your booth staffers are sitting down instead of engaging with prospects.  Are they more concerned with playing games, texting, or chatting away while prospects stroll right by your booth?  Make sure you set the proper expectations before the show.  Don’t make the assumption that because you have professional sales people they will understand the nuances of how to work in a trade show environment.  Staff your booth with people who are as good or better than you!

5)      Not listening to your prospects needs: Don’t be so excited to get your message across and sell your product that you miss out on important info about your clients needs.  Also, be sure to be aware of body language and pick up any visual cues that may help you understand your clients’ needs even better.  Take advantage of everything that a face-to-face interaction has to offer.

6)      Depending on a fishbowl to bring in qualified leads: Lose the fishbowl!  Is this type of giveaway really giving you the qualified leads you are seeking?  Be an expert provider of solutions and you don’t necessarily need a generic giveaway contest to drive traffic to your booth.

7)      Hauling too much literature to your booth: Most of the literature handed out at trade shows doesn’t make it past the garbage can in your prospects’ hotel room.  Instead, write “Show Sample” on a copy of your literature to display at the show, and then get your prospect’s contact info to email or mail the info to them after the show.  It will also save you the expense of shipping your heavy literature around.  This gives you a great call to action to follow up with your prospect after the show.  Explore technology to get information in your prospects hands.  QR codes and mobile marketing platforms are great ways to do this.

8)      Not planning for trade show success: We don’t plan to fail, we fail to plan! In talking to clients who haven’t seen the results they were expecting, this is something that is very prevalent.  If you don’t have a good plan in place you won’t be able to show an ROI to justify future shows and all you’ve really done is waste a lot of time and money.  Discuss timelines with your trade show marketing consultant, get feedback from industry peers, do your homework.

9)      Not informing your exhibit service partner: Make sure that the service/I&D crews handling the logistics of your booth understand what’s going on with your booth.  Get them a lists of shows for the year so that your booth gets from one show to the next, deciding which shows you have time to ship to the advanced warehouse and which events you may have to ship direct to the show.  Discuss any unique items such as products in the booth, monitors, height limitations, etc.

10)  Not following up on leads: Though is seems like a no-brainer, you need to make sure that your leads are called on in a timely fashion.  Discuss next steps, quoting, future meetings, and provide any additional information they need.  It’s time to deliver on the promises and the expectations that you have set at the show.

Mistakes of course are common and learning from them is the key.  What mistakes have you made as an exhibitor or have you seen that can help your peers?  Share with us in the comment box below.

Learn more ways to improve your trade show marketing results with the 32-page white paper, What’s Working In Exhibiting, yours free by clicking here.

B2B marketers want more than just a big pile of leads.  They also want higher quality leads.  Leads that are more likely to convert into sales.  Leads that their sales force will crow about, not complain about.  Leads that will create far more revenue than it cost to generate them.

If that’s what you want, too, you are not alone.  In a new MarketingSherpa study, a whopping 78% of B2B marketers agreed that “generating high quality leads” was a top challenge, much higher than the 44% who said “generating a high volume of leads.”

Trade show marketers share this need urgently.  “I recently hosted a Lunch and Learn for my veteran exhibiting customers,” said Victoria R. Conti, CTSM, from Skyline Genesis Event Marketing, “and the main topic everyone wanted to discuss was how to increase the amount of qualified leads from a show.”

Sounds like Job #1.  So without further ado, here are 8 ways to increase the quality of the leads you get from visitors to your trade show booth:

1. Select Shows with Attendees Who Better Match Your Prospects. Ask shows vying for a spot on your trade show schedule to supply detailed attendee demographics.  Look at their attendees’ job titles, industries, company size, location, and if they have it, average annual budget.  How many of each show’s attendees would make great prospects for you?  And what percent of the show’s attendance do they represent?  Compare show by show, and consider only the shows that bring more of your target audience, or a higher percentage.  That way you can have more time interacting with qualified attendees in your booth, rather than weeding through visitors who will never buy from you.

2. More Focused Pre-Show and At-Show Promotions.   First, to attract only the part of the show’s attendees that match your target audience, offer giveaways and gifts that appeal only to them (such as a free cost-savings calculation) rather than something that appeals to everyone (such as a free iPad).  Shift your giveaway budget from a lot of lower quality items for the masses, to fewer, but better gifts you only offer to big-time buyers, and only if they visit your booth.  You and your sales team can also put more effort into reaching out to top prospects before the show to invite them to your booth or to a meal with top company execs during the show.

3. Better Qualify Your Leads During Or After The Show.  Find out from your sales people before the show what information they need about each lead – and then get it!  Put those key 3 to 5 questions on the lead card, and train your booth staffers to ask those questions directly, or to listen for (and write down) those answers during their conversations.  Based on those questions, agree ahead of time what makes a hot lead, a good lead, or an unqualified lead, and then ensure that booth staffers rank leads accordingly (such as A, B, or C).  After the show, your sales people will know which leads are hot, and be more likely to follow-up.  You can also call after the show to qualify your leads before passing them on.

4. Invest In Your Booth Staff. The higher quality your booth staff, the higher quality your leads.  So no more trade-shows-as-on-the-job-training.  Victoria Conti agreed, saying, “In our Lunch and Learn, we agreed that the most effective way to get more qualified leads is to make sure your staff is trained and armed with great open-ended questions, knowledgeable in recording their answers, and comfortable with the sales process on the trade show floor. Being able to gather information quickly and efficiently is the key skill.”

5. Be More Persuasive. Create interactions that help attendees imagine how you can solve their problems. Invent a demonstration that gets attendees engaged and involved rather than passive and bored.  Tell stories about your happy clients who faced similar problems. Create an experience that engages multiple senses.  Whatever you do, take advantage of the face-to-face nature of trade shows to move prospects further along the buying cycle.

6. Design More Specific Trade Show Display Graphics.  Say very directly how you benefit clients and what niche you fill.  For example, instead of “Enterprise Software,” you say “Human Resources Software for Professional Services Companies.”  You might even further define your sweet spot and say, “Human Resources Software for Engineering Companies.”  That way the leads you do get are more likely to be leads you can close.  Choose more specific images, too.

7. Bring Up Objections Yourself In Your Booth.  Don’t wait for after the show to reveal your shortcomings; raise the most common objections yourself.  If you are more expensive, farther away, less experienced, or less than perfect in some way, be up front about it.  (But be sure to give reasons you can overcome those objections, too!)  The attendees that are still with you after that will be worth giving to your field sales reps.

8. Don’t Give Every Trade Show Lead to Sales. If you have ranked your leads by how qualified they are, consider only giving those leads that are sales-ready.  You may have leads ranked A, B, and C, but only give the A and B leads to your sales force, and put the C leads into your database for ongoing marketing until they are also ready for sales.  If you do start taking this approach, be sure your sales force knows you’ve made the change.

Trade shows deliver higher quality leads than other marketing mediums.  Visitors to your booth pay their own way there, demonstrating both interest and buying power.  You can demo your product and competitive advantages face-to-face, moving prospects quicker along the buying cycle.

Now, by using one or more of these 8 methods, you can get even higher quality leads from the trade shows you exhibit at.

What have you done to get higher quality trade show leads?  Share your story in the comments box below.

Learn more ways to get higher quality trade show leads with the 32-page white paper, What’s Working In Exhibiting.  Click here to get your free copy.