Measuring your Success from your Trade Show Display

Here’s a simple formula for evaluating the success of your trade show booth I recommend after evaluating a method set forth in Steve Miller’s book entitled: How to Get the MOST OUT of TRADE SHOWS.

First compile the number of leads you accumulated at the site of your trade show display.

This is the first step in a three-step process that will easily and effectively measure the success of your trade show exhibit.  In this formula you will be measuring a set of quantitative goals at three different times throughout the year:  immediately after the show, six months later and again 12 months later (or perhaps directly before you participate in the very same show –approximately one year later).  The goals can range from: fundamentally how visitors to your trade show display responded to the offerings you presented; how well you were able to collect data [short form, notes from brief conversation]; how the leads were qualified and how the leads were followed-up; to mention a few.  Here you can make the list as basic or as complex as you like.  Some of the most achievable goals are to set a specific number of sales you want to complete within six months and then in one year (again based on the leads you’ve generated from your trade show booth space).

 The next step is to make the initial contact with these leads by making a phone call to each.  Keep in mind you want the answer, in whatever form you can receive it, that will validate the goals you’ve set forth.   Did they like the offerings you introduced?  Are they indeed the decision-makers you need to be pursuing?  You know the drill. 

For the sake of this article, let’s say you had a large number of visitors to your trade show booth space. And your goal was to convert five percent of them within six months of the trade show.  You make the calls and you qualify the leads to the highest degree possible.  From here you are matching the prospect’s/suspect’s need(s) and wants with your products and services based on what they might or might not remember from your trade show display.  If the prospect needs reinforcement in remembering the offerings made from your trade show display; you obviously need to email or otherwise get samples and sales literature into their hands at the earliest part of the sales curve.  AND, whenever possible, reestablish the prospect with a face-to-face sales appointment.  Who knows, a demonstration to the prospect’s sales team may be the answer.

Finally, while cultivating these six month leads, you are concentrating on learning the ‘needs dates’ and cyclical sales demands for your products and services for those you’ve identified as twelve month leads.  Let’s face it, timing is everything and a one year sales lead time is not at all uncommon.  Same drill; can you refresh their memory about your offerings from your trade show booth space?  Probably not but it’s a great talking point for their visit to the next trade show that may only be only weeks away.  Either way you are demonstrating your professionalism and exerting your aggressiveness to bring them into your camp.  You CAN measure sales from your trade show participation. It’s accomplished with your dogged determination from the initial contact made at your trade show exhibit space.

Jim Deady (Day-de) owns Showstopper Exhibits, LLC in Richmond, VA.  A thirty-eight year veteran in the trade show display industry, he can make your next display a Showstopper.  Visit www.showstopperexhibits.com; call him @ (888) 440-0377 or email him @ jim@deady.com.

Get the best trade show Follow Up Plan for 5/10/20/40 days

Steve Miller, author of ‘HOW TO GET the MOST OUT of TRADE SHOWS’ offers this simple but effective system to optimize the effectiveness of your follow up from the leads you receive at your trade show booth.

First the information you promised to send to each an every visitor to your trade show booth should have been sent within 48 hours of your return from the trade show. Unless you’ve already set an appointment with those visitors right on thetrade show booth floor you need to call them and establish enough of a rapport to do so. Within five working days after the show closes, Miller suggests ‘your packet of information should be in the hands of the prospects’. I would add, in this day and time, emailing the same information may be equally timely … and faster.

The phone call you place can be even more relevant because you can emphasize you promised to send the material and you are merely doing what you promised while at the trade show booth, and simultaneously ask if they have any questions about what has been sent. Here’s where your sales skills and training come into play; if they have not had an opportunity to view the material you sent (and promised them while they were at your trade show display) ask if you can set a definite time to call back to discuss any questions they may have and how you might be able to work with them going forward.

The object of the 5/10/20/40 Follow Up Plan is that each interval – in successive phone calls at five days, ten days, 20 days and 40 days you have made sufficient inroads to know first whether the prospect/suspect warrants further pursuit or not. You’ll know precisely where you stand with this particular individual/company and if he or she is the person who can make the decision to purchase your product or service or not. The beauty of this plan is you’ll know in a rather short span of time exactly where you stand with this sale and whether it requires further pursuit. From the very day any and all visitors come to your trade show exhibit ; you’ll know the hierarchy of sales decision-making for that particular company. If, in the midst of the 5/10/20/40 Follow Up Plan, you determine you are not talking to the right individual then this series of calls is the perfect opportunity to get the name of the correct individual. A blinding glimpse of the obvious? Maybe; but consider this, the rapport you build with that particular individual may lead to a whole series of referrals, networking possibilities or the actual sale by your systematic compilation of information regarding the organization’s wants, need and desires. After all, these particular prospects and suspects may feel a certain sense of obligation to you for the amount of time you have spent in seeking to help them.

The 5/10/20/40 Follow Up Plan will work for you when it’s effectively tied to your preshow planning and dogged pursuit. You will have turned a three to five day trade show display event into a successful three to five month marketing campaign with more positive results by cultivating new contacts and closing more sales.

Jim Deady is the president of Showstopper Exhibits, LLC in Richmond, VA.  You can view his site: www.showstopperexhibits.com.  Contact him @ jim@deady.com or call him @ (888) 440-0377.

If you don’t follow up; why go to the show?

Trade show participation is all well and good but trade show follow up is the reason you went in the first place. You went, you got excellent leads and now you’re back in the office with them along with all the other work that’s piled up on your desk since you went. What to do?

Here’s Steve Miller’s follow-up plan: Steve is one of the premier players in the trade show display realm and here’s his follow-up philosophy. Start with your preshow planning and make following up the easiest task you’ve ever attempted. During your preshow planning you determine right then and there you’re going to gather as much pertinent information about each visitor you speak with at the show and YOU are going to follow up with each one personally. This means you’ll man the booth, greet and speak with every visitor, gather all the wants, needs and desires of every person who enters your booth and when you get back to the office – YOU are going to spend the next two days fulfilling your commitment(s) to these leads AND calling and speaking directly with each one.

NOTE: Don’t turn this task over to your colleague or fellow office worker – YOU take on this task as enthusiastically as you did getting ready to go to the show and watch your results soar.
This means WITHIN 48 HOURS of your return from the trade show you will have fulfilled your commitment to do what you said you were going to do for that prospect (sending literature, doing research to answer a question, sending samples, you name it). FURTHERMORE, THE FOLLOW UP WILL NOT BE COMPLETE UNTIL YOU CALL and SPEAK DIRECTLY WITH EACH AND EVERY VISITOR from whom you gathered information.

Here’s why: first and foremost any email or snail mail you send this prospect will simply be given a perfunctory observance and ninety percent of the time be overlooked. Remember the prospect has as much work on his desk as you do on yours.
Second: It shows this prospect your visit was important enough to you to want to follow up and continue the conversation about his wants, needs and desires. Besides, if you made a favorable impression, he or she will remember you and your product(s) and/or service(s).
Third: You’ll gain instant credibility. If you said you would send information then you will have already done it. If you haven’t, explain why and send it immediately; both ways you’ve anchored in that prospect’s mind how professional and dependable you are.

And lastly, the phone call gives you a reason for even one more call – to see if they received your information and one more opportunity to develop a rapport as well as further develop a feel for his degree of interest in your product or service.
If you do this faithfully; you can always ask for a personal appointment. This is the ULTIMATE GOAL. FOLLOW UP AND TURN MORE LEADS INTO MORE SALES.

Jim Deady owns www.showstopperexhibits.com and can make your next trade show display more memorable while turning the whole experience into profitable showstopper.

 Call him @ (888) 440-0377 or email him @ jim@deady.com.