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. 

Ah, the good intentions of New Year Resolutions!  People resolve to start doing things that they know they should be doing, but don’t, either because they’re too difficult or dull.  Well, there are some essential trade show activities that fall into those categories!

Trade Show Marketer’s New Year Resolution #1: Follow Up On Your Leads

The first and foremost resolution you can make is to simply follow up on your leads.  Following up on leads is almost like flossing your teeth or doing maintenance on your house: you know you need to do it, but are still reluctant.  Following up on the leads gets overshadowed by all the other parts of your job that were neglected while you concentrated on organizing and going to the show.

Trade Show Marketer’s New Year Resolution #2: Measure Your Results

Measuring your trade show results is another worthwhile activity to choose as a New Year’s resolution.  Measuring your trade show results can be complicated when you have a long sales cycle, have multiple lead sources to allocate credit for any sales to, or you can’t easily get access to the data you need.  So it is both difficult and (compared to exhibit design and creating cool pre-show and at-show promotions) kind of dull.  Yet without demonstrable results, your entire trade show program is in jeopardy.

Trade Show Marketer’s New Year Resolution #3: Update Your Trade Show Exhibit Graphics

With so many logistics to take care of, it’s easy to put much of our trade show program on autopilot and avoid the grief of getting new exhibit graphics. Yet, over time your marketing messages changes.  Is the message on your trade show displays still relevant to the message that you’re using in your other marketing programs?  What message is currently on your website, direct mail, print ads, and your blog?  When all your messages reinforce each other, you are much more likely to be remembered. And when you exhibit at trade shows that serve different vertical market industries, do you take the time to adapt your graphics to better appeal to the different audiences?

How do you make resolutions stick?

These three are worthwhile trade show New Year’s resolutions.  Yet, like all resolutions, they are easy to start, yet much harder to maintain.  How do we maintain them?

“One challenge with New Year’s resolutions is that people often set unrealistic goals. They can quickly become frustrated and give up,” says Dr. Linda Nebeling, an expert in behavioral change and nutrition at NIH. “Any resolution to change needs to include small goals that are definable and accompanied by a solid plan on how you’ll get to that goal.”

Here are some ideas to make your resolutions stick:

Make it achievable

 This list has only 3 resolutions, not 30, so it’s more achievable.  You can even just pick one resolution from this list that matters most.  And achieve what you can within your control – for example, if you don’t manage the sales force and can’t get them to cooperate, you can follow up directly with the trade show leads you generated to see if they met with your team or if they bought from you.

Break your bigger goal into smaller activities

For example, if the idea of measuring your results fills you with dread at the size of the task, then break it down into smaller activities.  Make a schedule.  Plan a step for each month, and give yourself a reward for each small step.  So for the first month you outline each step needed to measure your results.  The second month, get the list of all the leads into one place, be it a spreadsheet or a database.  And so on.  Then give yourself rewards for completing each step along the way.

Focus on the benefits

When we focus on the obstacles, we give problems more weight than they deserve.  Put more energy into ways around obstacles, and especially on the benefits you’ll get when you achieve your new goals.  Adopt and continue with these three trade show New Year’s resolutions, and you’ll generate more leads, more sales, enhance your company brand, and make yourself more valuable to your company.  Keep these benefits in mind and the obstacles will look smaller.

Make yourself accountable

It’s harder to shirk from your New Year’s resolution when you’ve told someone else.  “I tell my clients to have a trade show team and hold each other accountable, just like you have a workout buddy,” said Michael Flavin, account executive, Skyline St. Louis.  Tell your boss you want to do this as part of your job improvement.  Then your boss will hold you accountable.  Even writing down your resolutions makes them more real.

It takes time to build a new habit.  Give yourself time to turn wishes into actions into habits.  I hope this will be a happy new year for you!

This blog post was sparked by Michael Flavin, account executive at Skyline Exhibits in St. Louis, who interviewed me about trade show New Year’s resolutions for his blog. 

For more help achieving your goals in 2012, read the What’s Working In Exhibiting white paper.  This 32 page book will give you insight to the most effective strategies and tactics exhibitors are using today to boost their results and stretch their budgets.  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!

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!

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.

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.

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.