Read and follow Rule #4!
4. Leads….Generate. Distribute. And – Follow Up.
Do you do pre-show mailings? Do your salespeople make phone calls and personally invite their customers to your booth. Does your entire team work hard to insure that you get all the right customers – and potential customers – to your booth?
Well…the time for that to happen is NOW. Develop a plan to insure you maximize booth attendance, confirm who is coming, and then be prepared for when they will arrive. If you can, confirm a day/time they will be at your booth so that you will be prepared. Hoping a target customer will come by your booth and stop is not a strategy.
When those key potential customer contacts have visited your booth, and then distribute those leads to all the proper people in your organization – both headquarters level and regional level.
Too often, we hear stories that the local personnel who make regular calls on a customer are never informed that they visited the company’s booth. Or, that the sales manager stuffed the customer’s business card into her pocket and never informed the local sales rep of the customer’s visit.
AND….MAKE SURE YOU USE AN ELECTRONIC LEAD RETRIEVEAL SYSTEM.
It’s amazing to us when we hear that people do not choose to use one of these. There’s simply too many ways for the critical customer follow up to “fall between the cracks” when you don’t have an electronic system to insure booth visitors get proper post-show attention. So…go ahead and stuff the business cards into your pocket….AFTER you scan their badges!
Finally, have a follow-up plan to insure that 30, 60 , 90 days after the show you make sure your valuable leads have received literature, a sales call, or whatever other post-show follow up is necessary. Follow up. Follow up. Follow up. Studies show – and our own research within the hospitality tabletop category confirm it – that the majority of the leads generated never receive follow up. If you’re not going to follow up with people who visit your booth….why bother going?
You’ve invested a lot of resource to attend and exhibit at this show. You want to make sure you get good value for your time, effort, and money.
So, NOW, is the time to check those last-minute items that can often mean the difference between a good show….and, a GREAT show!
