Small Changes to Trade Show Follow Up Leads to Big Success

The recent Exhibitor magazine article “The Myths of Lead Management” confirms what most everyone knows – 98% of exhibitors collect trade show leads. And while 70% have a follow-up plan in place, almost as many are less than enthusiastic with their results. Overall, the survey seems to say that exhibitors focused on trade show leads follow-up in greater numbers than was previously thought and most understand that trade show success is dependent on how well it is done.

In most cases, trade show management is tasked with the collection of the leads and it’s under their watch that the leads are qualified. The follow up, however, is the mission of sales and marketing in 88% of the companies surveyed. Analysis of this process shows that a disconnect is created when sales and marketing are not involved with the process until after the show. The sales department must take part in the creation of the qualifying questions and help define the prioritization rules, while the marketing department needs to create and manage the follow up process.

In addition, there are a number of other problems that can affect the trade show follow-up process:

• leads from trade shows come in large batches, and processing these large amounts of info can be tedious and time consuming

• qualification data is not collected and / or a lead prioritization process does not exist

• trade show leads get lost when merged in with other leads generated by the marketing department

• trade shows don’t happen every day so the required systems and procedures are not always in place or get “rusty”

• sales reps don’t want to leave their pipeline of qualified leads to cold call into a bunch of unqualified contacts

• the data from each show is different and not everyone is equipped to handle the various formats

To address these problems consider formulating a plan. Focus your resources on the problem by either:

• Establishing a separate trade show response function to address the leads immediately after the show rather than dumping them on the marketing department. Successful marketing executives agree that trade show leads seem to get lost when merged in with other leads.

• Outsourcing all or parts of the process to an organization or an individual specializing in trade show lead collection and follow-up.

Prioritize the leads:

• To get the most out of your trade show investment you must get to the “hot” prospects before your competitors, who all emerge from the event with the same list of leads.

• Being first requires an exhibitor to collect consistent qualification data to use with a prioritization methodology or rating system that points their follow-up efforts to the high priority leads.

• Without a prioritization approach every lead looks the same.

Insure the leads going to sales are High Priority by implementing a multiple-touch approach:

• Trade show follow-up probably should include an email, a personal validation call, and a direct mail piece to the high priority leads before ever sending them to sales.

• Contacting your leads with more than one method can increase the effectiveness of your trade show follow up and help insure that when the sales force is engaged they are focused on converting prospects to customers rather than cold calling into another list of names.

Trade shows are too expensive to not have a detailed follow up process with automated components that insure you are fulfilling every request and calling the leads that are ready to buy your products. With trade show operations responsible for lead data collection and follow-up falling to sales and marketing, it is extremely important that a well thought out follow-up plan be in place to overcome the natural communication issues. Add to this the sense of urgency generated by the competition having the same set of leads exiting the show and it becomes clear that a focused rapid response effort is required to make the most of the trade show investment. There are plenty of success stories that are the result of simply having a plan.

Trade Show Follow Up - Email

by: Kevin Ehlers

One of the easiest and cheapest trade show lead follow up methods is email. While some industries don't prefer to communicate via email (doctors, for example), almost everyone has embraced email as a primary form of business communication.

When constructing the copy for your post show email, you need to keep a few things in mind. Here are a few trade show strategies for email follow up:

1. Stand Out - Because email is such a standard form of communication, we all receive a lot of messages every day. If you send a long winded email people will just delete it and move on. Use graphics that catch their eye and try to keep the best parts of the message at the top so they show up in the preview pane.

2. From/Subject - Use the From and Subject lines to brand your company. This way even if they don't read the whole message your company still "registers" with the prospect.

3. Timing - Sending the email directly after the show is imperative while your company is still fresh in your prospects' minds. Keeping your name in front of them will help increase trade show sales.

4. Use a Call to Action - Present an offer or entice them to contact you in some way.

5. Send a relevant message - If you use a lead scoring system, send a different message to the hot, warm and cold leads. If you use lead retrieval software, send them product specific messages based on their interest on the show floor. Including their local sales rep's contact information is a nice touch, too.

Quantity vs. Quality

“So how many leads did we get?” This is normally the first question everyone asks when gauging the success of a trade show. Unfortunately, if you are looking to increase trade show sales this is the wrong question. The question should be, “how many leads did we get that are ready to buy something?”

If you are giving away a trip to Hawaii, you will collect a ton of trade show leads. But how many of your 1,000 leads are interested in your company vs. interested in going to Hawaii? Unless you have a good trade show lead qualification process, you may never know.

Regardless of your promotion, it is imperative to qualify the leads onsite. There are a few different ways to accomplish this. One way is using the show provided exhibitor lead retrieval system. Most of the systems out there offer 20 custom qualifiers. For some companies, this is more than enough to determine which leads are good and which are looking for a freebie. If your needs are more robust, you can use third party trade show lead retrieval software. There are a few third party companies out there. Most of them are very reliable and offer just about everything you could want to qualify leads.

Once you qualify the leads you can implement a lead scoring system for lead rating and employ a good trade show lead management program. Then you should be able to answer the more important question of how many good leads you collected at the show.

Exhibitors Lose Out

I've noticed lately that trade shows are including less and less contact information on the attendee badges. Shows in the corporate sector are listening to their outspoken attendees and removing email addresses and phone numbers from the attendee badge. For other reasons, I can only guess at, contact info has become less complete, leaving out zip codes, and even company names at some shows.

At the show, companies that scan the badge with trade show lead retrieval system typically will have no way to add this info to the data file. This lack of contact info is often not noticed during the trade show lead generation process.

The main effect of this is during the trade show follow up process, this missing information is noticed by sales, and often causes them to think the lead is cold. Why wouldn't sales just use Google to find the phone number, or email address? The answer to this is that a lead that has a name and address with no qualifying information is exactly the same as a cold call. Obviously I'm making the assumption that the leads aren't qualified, but I see a lot of leads that are collected by the show system, and 99% of them contain no qualifying info, if you don't customize the qualifying questions.

How can you avoid this problem at your shows? Using lead retrieval software that allows you to add contact info would be a good start. But either way, you need to find out how much info will be on the badge before the show starts. Notify your staff that the HOT leads should be asked for email and phone number information, and while they are at it, add qualifying info for the HOT leads. One last idea is to contact the show and ask them to start including the info you need to justify exhibiting at their show.

The Secret to Trade Show Lead Collection and Follow Up

I was recently reminded that there is a "secret" to a successful trade show lead management program. Last week, one of our customers exhibited at a show in Las Vegas. At this show, they had a huge booth, and typically collect between 300 and 400 leads. They are a multinational corporation, and just like every other exhibitor, they expect to collect a certain number of hot trade show leads, and to have those leads turn into sales after the event.

Dealing with the large amount of data that was generated at this show reminded me how such a simple goal can be very difficult to execute. As you can read about in the other blog entries, we have strategies for trade show lead collection and trade show lead management, so I won't go into that here. What I will say, (here is the secret) is that without someone to push the leads through the process after the show, you are not going to get the results you expect.  My advice is either hire someone to guide you through this process, or assign someone in your organization to accomplish this task.

Most companies that we talk to have trouble with all facets of the trade show lead generation and management process, and this is mainly due to a lack of planning and follow through. Bottom line is that if nobody is put in charge of this process, then the leads are not going to turn into sales on their own.