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. 

If you think you are doing a great job following up on your leads, unfortunately, the visitors to your trade show exhibit may not agree.  What you consider good lead fulfillment may look very different to them.

In a blog post on her Trade Show Institute blog, Traci Brown tells a sorry tale about her visit to the AIBTM show, where she happily had lengthy meetings with over 20 exhibitors.   Unfortunately, after the show, only one exhibitor truly followed up with her.  Sure, the other exhibitors followed up with big glossy brochures, email campaigns, and the like.  But they were all generic follow up messages.  Only one exhibitor had specific follow up that answered the specific questions she raised while in their  trade show booths.

Why is that?  Because most exhibitors’ lead fulfillment process is simply not designed for individualized lead fulfillment.

Most exhibitors get leads, and if they are somewhat prepared, they have pre-set fulfillment packets ready to go before the show starts.  Then after the show, they put names on letters and send them out.  It’s all they have time to do.  But at the trade shows, we don’t meet with generic leads, we meet face-to-face with real, live individuals.  Individuals with specific needs, that if you ask and listen, they’ll even tell you right at the show.

The First Missing Link: The Transfer From The Booth Staffer To The Field Sales Rep

The first missing link in most exhibitor’s generic lead fulfillment is passing on to the field sales rep what your trade show visitors told you.  And that all starts with your booth staffer.  Your booth staffers must capture what your visitors said is their situation, and what they were looking to solve.  Your booth staffers must also write down what they promised your booth visitors would be the next step – someone will call to set up an appointment, we’ll send you info and prices on the new products you liked, and so on.  Without knowing what your booth staffer promised, you can’t fulfill on that promise.  And when that conversation is accurately and concisely captured, it must quickly be routed to the appropriate sales rep, so they can take the right actions after the show.

The Second Missing Link: The Fulfillment Package

The second part of fixing trade show lead fulfillment is customizing what you mail or email.  You have to be willing and able to customize what you send to your booth visitors based on what they said to your booth staffers.  At minimum, your cover letter should say that your company “was pleased to meet you at the XYZ show, and that you’ve enclosed your requested items, and that our company representative will soon follow up about your needs discovered in our booth.”  You only send the company brochures related to the products your booth visitor asked for.  You don’t send 10 product brochures, when they only showed interest in one product.  And for sure you send the brochures for that one product!

If you want to truly fix the broken link in your trade show lead fulfillment you tailor each followup letter to directly respond to your booth visitor conversations.  Writing in the letter that your booth staffer learned you ask for ____, and so we will be sending you a price quote/calling for an appointment time/talking with our engineer about your project/gathering up samples to show you, or something else appropriate for the next step.

“We can’t do that, can we?”

Now, I hear your objection to this:  ”We don’t have time for this high level of customized lead fulfillment!  Our booth visitors expect an answer fast!”  Yes, booth visitors do expect a quick answer — but as Traci’s experience shows, even more they want the right answers.

But you can pull this off.  You just need to also qualify your leads while in your booth.  Your “A” leads are your best leads – immediate needs, have a budget, and authority to buy.  So the smaller portion of “A” leads are the first ones you fulfill, with letters and products customized to their requests.

Then, fulfill the “B” leads, which may have a need, but not immediately, and perhaps without an approved budget.  Once those are out the door, then fulfill your “C” leads…which may get the more generic “Thanks for visiting our booth at the XYZ show” letter any how, because that’s how far the conversation went.

More effort?  Certainly.  Worth it?  Definitely.

Fix another link in your trade show leads process by measuring your results with the Measurement Made Easy CD, yours free by clicking here.

Skyline hosted webinars called “The Value of Trade Shows” on August 10th and 11th, 2011.   Thank you so much for sharing your comments and your questions about how to get the most of of trade shows, be it lead management, trade show exhibit design, 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: http://bit.ly/qwqt9G

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:

• The Value of Trade Shows White Paper
• 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!

Do you have sales people who are “volunteered” to staff your trade show booth?  While you welcome the good help, there are some things that could make sales people great help. So here’s an open letter to your sales people who will be staffing your trade show displays.  Share it with whomever you wish!

Dear Sales Guy,

You have been hand-chosen to staff our booth at our next trade show. We picked you because you have so many of the skills and knowledge we need:

• You know our products inside and out, our competitors, and most importantly, our customers.
• You’re friendly, have good people skills, and aren’t afraid to strike up a conversation.

These are essential skills for a booth staffer.  However, there are some…issues…that I’d like to address, and hope that these 9 points will enlighten you and help you be an even greater staffer in our booth:

1. Rise Up To The Challenge:  You can help us reach more prospects face-to-face over the next 2-3 days than you’d be able to see in more than a month of field selling.  We’ve invested substantial marketing dollars to drink from this sales fire hose.  So be focused and engaged, and help us grow the company.

2. Your New Quota:  While staffing our booth, you have a new quota: 2 qualified leads an hour.  So leave the office behind and concentrate on helping us achieve a successful show.

3. Shift Gears:  The trade show isn’t the same as field selling.  You don’t have 20 minutes to chat about the local football team or what you did last weekend.  In that short time you’ve lost too many potential leads who walked by the booth.  You’ve got to build that relationship quickly so you can then qualify them. Present only the part of our story they care about, and then close on an agreed-upon next step.

4. Talk To Attendees:  Throughout the show, keep focused on engaging potential prospects, not the other company employees. When you chat up our company big wigs in the booth, you’re actually taking two booth staffers out of action.  Better to impress them by hustling to get the most qualified leads. Even better, wait until you get your very best lead of the day, then introduce them to our company CMO, VP of Sales or other high-titled booth staffer.  You’ll impress the booth visitor, and our top execs, at the same time.

5. Quality Leads:  Don’t complain about the trade show lead quality; improve it.  Just as every cold call you make doesn’t ring the cash register, not every visitor to our booth is an immediate sale.  So rate the leads, A, B, and C quality, and help prioritize lead follow up by your teammates, and ensure the best leads don’t get lost in the pile.

6. Set Appointments:  Call your best clients and prospects to schedule meetings at the show.  Use the trade show to your advantage.  For prospects you haven’t been able to get an appointment in their office, you may get face time with them in our booth.  Once there, you’ve got all its visual proof, our top execs, and our new products to advance the buying cycle.  Or invite your clients, to up-sell or cross-sell them on our proven products they haven’t bought yet.  Tell me who and what times and I’ll set aside meeting space and corral whoever you need on our end to meet with them.

7. Ignore Territories:  Work hard to turn visitors into leads, no matter if they are from outside your territory.  We’ve invested too much to have you not give your all because you won’t benefit 100% directly from the lead.  Remember that we’ve invested a lot in training, salary, and benefits to help you succeed as a company sales person.  And that somewhere soon, at another show we exhibit at, there’s another company sales person who is hustling to get a lead for you.

8. All The Leads, Please:  While this may not apply to you, please, please, please don’t pocket your very best leads from the show. The sales you get will not get credited to the show, and so we may not be able to justify exhibiting the following year.  Which would mean fewer high quality leads for you in the future.  And if I can’t prove sufficient ROI from the show, I could even lose my job.

9. Follow Up:  Follow up on our trade show leads immediately after the show. You’ve been away from your own accounts for a few days, and can’t wait to get back into your usual groove.  But remember that we’ve invested about $200-$300 per lead, and that many of these leads will buy from somebody.  That might as well be you – so if some get assigned to you, keep following up with them.  Better yet, when they do buy from you, let me know, so I can better track our trade show ROI, and keep improving our programs.

I’m grateful to have you on our booth staffing team.  Your skills, knowledge, and positive attitude will help us leave the show with a much fuller pipeline of future sales.  I hope you don’t think me too forward for writing you this letter.  Please keep an open mind and take these suggestions to heart.  Do that, help us succeed, and I’ll go to the wall for you.

Sincerely,

Your Trade Show Manager

For more ways to take your booth staffers from good to great, read the Booth Staffing Guidebook.  This 48-page book is filled with insightful articles, worksheets, and checklists to get the most from your staff at trade shows. Click here to request your free copy. 

Do you always feel like you could be doing more with your trade show program?  You’re not alone.  What may surprise you is how your exhibiting evolution may follow the exact same 3 steps as other exhibitors:

• First, exhibit to raise awareness of your company, brand, or products.
• Second, change your exhibiting goal to generating leads.
• And third, switch to focus on holding meetings in your booth, especially with clients.

This insight hit me while reviewing survey responses from exhibitors sharing what they are doing differently in their trade show programs.  Most exhibitors said they were focusing on one of these three objectives.  What struck me was how exhibitors repeatedly transitioned from one goal to the next, progressing more along this continuum of engagement.   I’ll share those quotes shortly.

Step 1: Exhibit to Increase Awareness

Here are quotes from some of the exhibitors who talked about how they exhibit at trade shows to increase awareness of their company brand:

• “We are looking at it as more of a marketing tool to make our presence known to the market.”
• “Using it more to get name recognition.”
• “Primary purpose is to gain name recognition.”

Understandably, some exhibitors that focus on branding do so because they are new companies, new to trade shows, or entering new markets:

• “Using them as a branding effort in new markets rather than sales tools.”
• “We’re just starting to use trade shows.  It is an opportunity for us to introduce our company to market sectors adjacent to our focal markets today.”
• “We did not do trade shows 2 years ago, we are looking for more exposure.”

Step 2: Exhibit to Generate Leads

After exhibiting to generate awareness for a while, trade show marketers get the itch to do … something more.  Here are three exhibitors who spoke of that transition from awareness to leads:

• “Primary focus is on generating sales leads whereas before it was more brand awareness.”
• “Using it as a true lead generator as opposed to just organizational branding.”
• “Looking for qualifying leads more than generating exposure.”

This transition only works in one direction — no one said they wanted to shift from generating leads back to raising awareness!  Other exhibitors also focused on lead generation:

• “Relying more and more on trade shows for lead source.”
• “Gathering more leads.”
• “Using to generate leads.”
• “Collecting and tracking leads.”

Step 3: Exhibit to Hold Meetings & Relationship Building

The next transition is from gathering leads, to holding meetings with key clients and prospects in their trade show booth:

• “More for maintaining relationships rather than bringing in new leads.”
• “We are using them more to set up meetings at the show.”
• “Trade shows/industry conferences have become greater opportunities to deepen existing client relationships and meet face-to-face for the first time in some cases, rather than primarily make new contacts.”

Many exhibitors even said they focus their trade show activity on meetings just with clients in their trade show displays (although over time, if you do not also gather new prospects, eventually you will run out of customers!).

• “Appearance at shows is more about reconfirming existing customers’ choice in our product, retention, meeting many customers in one setting and connecting with possible business partners, than they are about sales.”
• “We are more focused on our key customers.”
• “Account maintenance.”

Meetings in the booth seem to be a more effective use for trade shows.  We asked exhibitors to share how their organizations view the effectiveness of trade shows, and those who focus on meetings rated trade shows 13% higher than those who focus on awareness, and 32% higher than those who focus on lead generation.  Moreover, more exhibitors in our survey said they focus on meetings than either awareness or lead generation.

In this day and age when it’s so hard to get face-to-face with even our clients, it makes sense to focus on setting up meetings with your best clients and prospects.   You want to make sure you’ve got a strong relationship with your existing clients, keep them up to date on your latest offerings, and potentially cross-sell to them your other products.  And a longer meeting in the booth avoids the pitfalls of taking a quick lead on the show floor that fizzles into nothing when your sales force has a tough time getting a follow-up meeting after the show.

Not to say there weren’t other objectives that exhibitors focus on.  Some highlighted networking, some mentioned generating sales, others about a greater focus on R.O.I.  But these three – Awareness, Leads, Meetings – were by far the most common, and appear to be followed by exhibitors in order.

So where are you on this ladder of trade show objectives?  If you’ve been thinking you can do more at trade shows, maybe it’s time to stretch your program, and reach for the next rung.

For more information about how you can climb the ladder of trade show objectives, read The Value of Trade Shows. This white paper tells how exhibitors said they are increasing their trade show participation, why they value trade shows, and how they are exhibiting better at trade shows than before. Click here to request your free copy. 

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. 

When you ask the average booth staffer about trade shows, their first thing that comes to mind is long hours, sore feet, some fun, and work piling up back in the office.  This may be true, but needless to say we do shows for the benefits that we receive by way of lead counts and exposure in the market place.  Below are some of the “secrets” that can help unlock the potential of shows for you.

1.  Exhibiting without Borders: Staff in the aisle where the attendees are walking by.  It seems like where the booth carpet meets the aisle carpet, often becomes an impenetrable ”line in the sand” that staffers rarely venture past.  We all want to be “out of the box” in the way we think, so consider the exhibit space as “in the box,” and the aisle as “out of the box.”  This is where it gets a little uncomfortable, but if we can get out there and engage people as they come by, this will result in remarkably higher lead counts.  I staffed an exhibit yesterday where an attendee was going to walk by the exhibit without stopping and I engaged him, only to find out that he has operations on 3 continents and represents about a 5 million dollar sales opportunity for our client.  This guy was going to walk right by the tradeshow booth!  The only reason I pulled him in was because I was in the aisle.  The business is there and we need to be in the aisle to get it.  Sometimes the show may ask you don’t staff in the aisle, but go ahead and do it until they tell you otherwise.

2.  Watching gets you a Goose Egg: Engage attendees… period.  Recently I attended the nation’s largest trade show and did some stat counting on the trade show floor.  With one exhibit, I watched 74 attendees walk by a 60′ section of exhibit in 10 minutes, with only 2 of them being approached by the booth staffers.  The results speak for themselves: 2.7% of attendees were being reached by the staff during the time I kept track.  Why would the results be so low?  Simply put, it is because they did not engage attendees.  The opening line that works for anyone, in any show, is “What brings you to the show today?”  That question can’t be answered with one word (yes, no, or fine) and will require the attendee to stop and think about their response.  Now the door is open to qualify them and move onto the next step.

3.  Divide and Conquer: Surround staffers around in-booth attractions to get the maximum benefit from your investment. Having a game or some type of entertainment is a tremendous method for generating high traffic in your exhibit booth space and at your hospitality suite.  The key to any attraction is to engage and qualify the attendees while they are waiting for the attraction or when the attraction is completed.  Many organizations pay a tremendous amount of dollars for a great in-booth attraction, only to have attendees escape with no interaction with the booth staff.  We need to surround the attendees and make sure that we get an opportunity with them.  Another method to insure interaction is to tie the in-booth activity to the qualifying process.  We should work with the magician, trick shot pool guy, robot, or game organizer to make sure they can work into their script a qualifying question that we can see.  Not that this is any of us, but when it comes to in-booth activities, it seems that the norm in the trade show industry is to attract attendees, only to have the staff not participate in their role of interacting with the attendees.

4.  Play Zone, Not Man to Man: Create zones in your exhibit space that each staffer is responsible for.  Depending on the size of your space, you may have 5′x5′ (or 10′x10′) zones in an exhibit space that each staffer is responsible for.  Often, staffers will congregate at the main approach the exhibit and then leave a portion of the exhibit unstaffed.  Assign zone 1 to staffer “A” and let them know that this is their space and they are responsible for it during their time slot.  You are much less likely to have a staffer slip off with some prospect to chat and abandon their post.  This creates personal accountability as well, and does not allow leads to slip by the “back door,” never to be engaged by a staffer.  In addition, this technique naturally solves some of the problem of staffers congregating and talking to each other, rather than to attendees.  Creating zones can work in the largest and smallest of exhibit spaces.  It does, however, require a sufficient number of staffers in the space.

5.  Pre-Set Appointments at the Show: The primary reason we attend shows is to talk to people that can influence the sale of our products and services.  What better way to insure that we get the chance to talk to the right people than to set a specific time to talk to them at the show.  One of the keys to making this work is to do confirmation calls the morning of show to confirm the appointment and give landmarks that make it easy for them to find you.  You will need to get their cell phone number so you can catch them at the show.

6.  Make Your Giveaway Part of What You Do: Try to find a way to tie your giveaway into what you do.  This might be a direct tie-in; for instance if you are Apple, you would likely give away an iPad or a similar giveaway that is directly tied to what you do.  Many organizations are service-oriented, and in that case you might offer a percentage off their first purchase or a free on-site assessment.  If you want to give away something that is unrelated, that could work too, if the only people eligible are those who are qualified to make decisions about your products or services.  This means that attendees that are just “trick or treating” for all your free giveaways only get a Jolly Rancher and in order to register for the premium drawing, you have to be qualified.

7.  Trade Shows, Nightclubs and Mixers: Trade shows are strange.  What I mean by that is there are very few places where you stand around trying to talk to strangers and garner enough interest from them so you can tell them what you have to offer.  This process is uncomfortable and the only other places you may find yourself doing this is at a nightclub or an after-hours mixer put on by some association.  It is uncomfortable and one way to ease this angst is to find a couple of hand-picked people from your staff to be designated crowd gatherers.  They clearly need to be more out-going and gregarious than the rest of the staff to qualify.  Make it their job to be in the aisle staffing and to hand off the attendees to other people staffing the exhibit space (this does not exempt others from engaging or staffing in the aisle).  They are not responsible to do anything, but catch the attendee, qualify them, and hand them off to the staffer who can get into the details of the possible project.  After the hand off, they go back into the aisle to get some more attendees.

8.  Practice Catch and Release: Once we engage attendees, we find out that many are not qualified.  At this point we need to employ the practice used by many fishermen called “Catch and Release.”  We caught them, now we have to gracefully let them go.  The easiest way to do that is say “Thanks for stopping by, and I hope you have a great rest of the show.”  We are now able to gracefully let them move on and you are now free to engage other attendees.  In this process it is good to bear in mind that we don’t want to hand out our giveaways until we know they are qualified.

9.  Bring Only the Staffers that Want To Be There: The best person to staff exhibit displays is the person who wants to be there.  Picking staffers has to start with a basic criteria being met.  The staffer should want to be there.  If the staffer does not want to be there, they will not represent the organization well.  This becomes especially important, knowing that 85% the results that your organization receives is directly tied to the experience that the attendees have with your booth staffers.  Regardless of position, from CEO to the Janitor, we need to have someone who will represent the organization well – and that starts with the person who wants to be at the show.

10. Have a Huddle Every Morning: Each morning, of each day of the show, have a booth staff meeting.  Before the chaos of the show begins, gather your staff and have a pre-show meeting (roughly 1 hour prior to the start of each day).  At this meeting you can give an update on the quality of leads coming in, kudos to the best performers, announce any mid-stream adjustments, timing of activities, and update everyone on how well you are doing against the goals that have been set.  On an individual level, set specific target goals for each staffer so they have something to shoot for and compete against.  This can be given prior to the event or can be handed out at the event.  Also, this is a great opportunity to discuss the “best practices” in exhibit staffing, along with the 10 deadly sins of staffing (this may have some variation by company depending on your goals).

There is no better teacher than our experiences and observation.  These top 10 secrets are derived from both sources and if we are able to learn and use these top 10 behaviors and attitudes, we will surely double our lead count at our next event.

Learn more about how to staff your booth and increase your trade show lead count.   Click here to get your free copy of the 48-page Booth Staffing Guidebook, chock-full of helpful articles, worksheets and checklists to help your booth staffers thrive on the trade show floor.

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.

Congratulations!  You’ve just finished your latest trade show and now have a big pile of leads.  But there’s no time to rest – you still have two more races to win:

1. The sprint to get your leads fulfilled in the minutes, hours, and days after the show, and
2. The marathon to keep following up your leads for the weeks, months, and even years after the show.

Let’s look what you need to do to win both the sprint and the marathon.

1.  The Sprint of Trade Show Lead Fulfillment

To win the sprint, quickly send out your fulfillment packets, and get the lead information into the hands of the right sales person.  Here’s how:

Get Lead Fulfillment Packets Out Fast (But Not Too Fast)

You can speed up the delivery of your lead fulfillment packets in these 6 ways:

1. Have your fulfillment packet planned and ready before the show starts.  That includes a written cover letter, and enough printed brochures (especially for new products launched at the show), envelopes and postage on hand for the anticipated lead count.
2. Pre-assign one or more people to transfer the lead information quickly into a computerized contact management system.  How you do this depends on how you record leads at the show.  If you just gather business cards, you need to either type or scan them into your database.  Same thing if you use lead cards, although you should then have more qualifying data that takes more time to type.
3. If you use an electronic lead retrieval from the show, after the show you should get a data file that you can import into your CRM database to speed up data entry.
4. Hire a temp if it’s just you and you won’t have time to type all the leads yourself – it’s so worth it!
5. If you are using lead cards or gathering business cards (most exhibitors don’t data-enter their leads at the show), bring pre-addressed overnight packages (one for each show day) and send back the day’s leads to the person who will type them in.
6. Really want to go faster?  Email your fulfillment letter right from your trade show display, and attach pdf files of the product literature with it.  But that may be too fast, as your prospect is likely letting emails pile up while at the show, and will be going back to a big pile of snail mail right after the show.  You may be better off timing your fulfillment packet to arrive about half a week after the show has ended.  But you can still send thank you emails right from the show, to demonstrate your speed of service.

Motivate Your Field Sales With Complete Leads

However, fast lead fulfillment will be wasted if you just toss the leads over the transom.  You’re not just providing a name and address; you’re sharing a story.  Give the details that help sales people to be motivated and equipped to follow up.

Let your sales people know which show you took the lead at, when and where the show was, and what your company was showing.  Also provide the lead quality level, which products they showed interest in, and how interested they were.  Include any comments attendees made, about their pains, their needs, their preferences, and their buying plans.  Let your sales people know what promises the booth staffer made (literature to send, discounts offered, a meeting request) – and if you’ve already fulfilled the promises, or if it’s up to the sales person.

Why the extra effort?  To show respect to the trade show lead – you’ll honor your promises to them, and they won’t have to repeat themselves again.  Plus, after meeting around 20 other exhibitors at the show, they may not even remember what they said to you.  Most of all, the complete story will entice your field sales to make repeated follow up calls – much more than just a name and phone number will.

2.  The Marathon of Trade Show Lead Follow-Up

Now that your prospect has received their fulfillment packets, and the sales people have the leads, it’s time to pace yourself for the ensuing marathon.

Keep In Touch With Prospects…And Their Assigned Sales People

Lead follow-up depends on organization and a good team.  Try these 3 ideas:

1. Schedule sales follow up based on lead quality. At the show, rank your leads according to A/B/C quality, and then after the show you can stagger your personal follow up by the level of lead quality.  Your sales people should first follow up on “A” leads right after the show, and keep trying to reach them until they’ve been able to set a date for a follow-up meeting, presentation, or price quote.  When the initial blitz of “A” leads is done, then follow up on “B” leads, although not as frequently.  And when you’ve called all the “B” leads and set them in motion, then it’s time to call on the “C” leads.
2. But not all follow up happens with a sales person on the phone.  Integrate your trade show leads into your ongoing marketing communications campaigns, be it newsletters, seminars, open houses, direct mail drops, and more.  Better yet, add them to a drip campaign that sends customized messages based on what you learned about them at the show, such as their industry, company size, or specific needs.
3. Schedule dates on your calendar to regularly check in with field sales on the progress of leads.  Have they been developing deeper relationships with the prospects you met at the show?  Ask them which leads they had meetings with, sent proposals and price quotes, or made sales to.  And if they bought, what did they buy, and how much did they spend?  With complete data like this, you can then calculate your trade show ROI (Return on Investment).  Want those meetings to mean more?  Invite the highest-level person you can to attend these meetings, someone who understands the potential value of trade shows – if the leads are followed up.  If you are really fortunate, you’ll have a sales manager who is tracking this every day, ensuring that the sales force is in regular personal contact with your trade show leads.

Trade show lead follow-up is more difficult than preparing for a trade show, because there is no deadline like the show date to keep everyone focused.  But if you approach follow-up with the mindset that it’s both a short and long-distance race, you’ll have a better chance of winning more business from your trade show leads.

How have you sped up your lead fulfillment, and paced yourself for ongoing lead follow-up?  Let us know in the comments box below.

Good lead follow-up gets you more from your trade show marketing investment.  Learn even more ways to boost your results in the 32-page White Paper, What’s Working In Exhibiting.  Click here to get your free copy now.

For most exhibitors, lead generation is their #1 reason for exhibiting at trade shows.  Exhibit marketers want leads to replenish their sales pipeline, bring in new and repeat customers, and generate sales revenue. 

So to help stoke the lead generation fires, here are 100 ideas to get you more leads at your upcoming trade shows, divvied up among 5 main areas: 

Get more trade show leads by how you select shows

1. Go to more trade shows outside your local region
2. Go to more trade shows, in your best vertical markets
3. Go to more trade shows, in foreign countries
4. Go to fewer trade shows, but put more effort into booth staff preparation and promotions for each remaining show
5. Exhibit at trade shows where your buyers are
6. Track leads to determine and expand in the shows with the best ROI
7. Evolve show selection to match changes in company’s best vertical markets

 Get more trade show leads with your exhibit design

8. Get a bigger booth
9. Get a booth space closer to the hub of traffic, or by a bigger competitor
10. Get a corner booth space
11. Backlight your trade show display graphics
12. Design your exhibit to more boldly and clearly say why attendees will benefit from working with you
13. Put fewer elements on your exhibit, but make the remaining images and messages bigger and more concise
14. Use graphics with images and benefits that appeal more directly to attendees at your vertical market shows
15. Put benefit statements on your trade show exhibit graphics
16. Replace your tired old display with a new trade show exhibit
17. Make your exhibit architecture more inviting to enter
18. Pick more exciting colors on your exhibit
19. Bring fewer products, such as only your most popular products, to minimize clutter
20. Get a taller exhibit
21. Add more lighting
22. Put messages on your flooring
23. Avoid an exhibit that looks like everyone else
24. Keep your booth neat and clean throughout the show
25. Move interesting equipment and technology to the outside of the booth
26. Use a theme that gets attention and memorably ties into your competitive advantage or offering
27. Match your exhibit message to your other marketing materials

Get more trade show leads with pre-show promotions

28. Send an inexpensive postcard offering a free gift in your trade show booth
29. Run a banner ad on the show website
30. Send a pre-show email blast to your clients and top prospects located close to the show location
31. Put stickers with booth location and show info on all outgoing mail
32. Email invitation to a pre-show microsite with targeted messages and offers
33. Have your sales people invite their prospects to visit your booth and set up meetings in advance
34. Send an email invitation to the show’s pre-registered attendee list for this year, and the registered attendee list from last year
35. Use social media to reach more attendees
36. Send half of something of value to attendees before the show, and promise to give the other half in your booth
37. Contact your industry press and tell them about the innovative new product you will be introducing at the show
38. Put your booth number on all your pre-show promotions: email, mail, ads, website
39. Design more creative and compelling pre-show promotions to cut through the mailbox clutter
40. Invite top prospects to lunch or dinner at the show
41. Send a pre-show promotion offering a more valuable gift in the booth, but not to the entire list, but only to the subset of show attendees that match your target audience
42. Send free tickets to the trade show to clients and best prospects
43. Post your trade show schedule on your website with a link to sign up for appointments
44. Ask the show for additional promotional opportunities

Get more trade show leads with at-show promotions and activities

45. Introduce a new product at the trade show
46. Add motion to your exhibit
47. Offer food, especially if it smells good, like baking cookies
48. Offer drinks to your booth visitors
49. Give your attendees something entertaining and fun to do
50. Do an engaging demo in your booth
51. Get your client to hold your product
52. Go beyond sight to appeal to attendees’ sense of smell, sound, taste, and touch
53. Add interactivity
54. Run presentations or video loops on large video monitors
55. Offer healthy food, not just candy
56. Put out a candy or chocolate dish to slow down attendees long enough to engage them
57. Offer in-booth massages
58. Give a free sample of your product
59. Give a free sample of a product made with your product
60. Hire a celebrity for your booth, where the celebrity is popular with your target audience at the show
61. Hire a celebrity lookalike for your booth, where the celebrity is popular with your target audience at the show
62. Giveaway something useful to your target audience
63. Hire a performer, such as a magician, to attract attention to your booth
64. Have a raffle, sweepstakes, money machine or a game
65. Hold a press conference if you have newsworthy news
66. Sponsor something highly visible at the show
67. Have a contest for attendees in your booth
68. Get signage in the show hall promoting your booth presence
69. Offer a show special or discount
70. Get someone from your company to be a speaker at the show
71. Give presentations or educational sessions in your booth
72. Do door drops that target only show attendees at their hotel rooms
73. Pay to include an invite or a gift in the official show bag each attendee gets
74. Put an ad in the show book
75. Brand your staffers with outfits or similar attire
76. Offer one really big prize (worth thousands of dollars) to get more attention

Get more trade show leads with better booth staffing

77. Bring more booth staffers
78. Bring booth staffers who actually want to be there
79. Hold a contest to reward the staffers who take the highest quantity of qualified leads
80. Leave your wallflowers at home
81. Train your booth staff how to work a trade show booth
82. Communicate to your staff the company’s goals and your expectations of them in the booth
83. Don’t use booth staffing as a training ground for brand-new employees
84. Ask visitors open-ended questions and listen to their answers
85. Get faster at recording each lead by not writing down every visitor’s name and address, but instead using a badge scanner
86. Have enough badge scanners to avoid lines with your booth staffers in busy times
87. Bring crowd gatherers (not booth babes)
88. Smile
89. Keep your booth staffers fresh by giving them regular breaks
90. Learn to more quickly disengage with unqualified attendees
91. Thoroughly train your booth staffers on the new products you are introducing at the show or just introduced recently
92. Make friends with your neighboring exhibitors, and refer attendees back and forth
93. Bring your top management to booth staff, and tell attendees they will be there
94. Get staffers out of the bowels of your booth and out to the edge of the aisle
95. Don’t sit down in your booth, unless you are talking with visitors
96. Don’t hide behind tables
97. Instead of giving away literature, offer to mail it to attendees, and get their contact info
98. Prepare your booth staffers with several good engaging questions
99. Arm your booth staffers with answers to common objections
100. Train your booth staffers to know your products and how they solve your clients’ problems

Which of these 100 ideas will you choose?  Perhaps you are already doing several yourselves.  Some can be combined to be used simultaneously.  It’s a long list, and there’s no way anyone can do all 100.  Some of them even contradict each other. 

Yet as Bob Milam advises, while knowing a lot of tactics is useful, knowing which tactics to use and when to use them is even more useful.  Determine your strategy first, then choose among these trade show tactics the most appropriate ones to support your strategy and generate more leads. 

Also, while I’ve listed many tactics to get more leads, of course you need to also strive for getting higher quality leads.  And if you can do both, go to the head of the class.

While 100 is a big list, it’s certainly not everything.  Please share your own tips for generating more leads at trade shows in the comment box below.

Want to learn more ways to boost your trade show lead counts?  Click here to get your free 32-page What’s Working In Trade Show Marketing White Paper to give you insights into proven methods for boosting your results and stretching your budget. ]]> http://www.skylinetradeshowtips.com/100-trade-show-lead-generation-ideas/feed/ 15