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.
Great article. Completely agree with the challenges you've outlined. One of the biggest reasons I've seen is that there is insufficient information collected at the show. All leads are equal which is clearly not the case. Collecting more information and bucketing leads into opportunity is key.
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