Use Your Exhibition Displays To Convert Show Leads Into Sales
Exhibition displays are highly effective in providing exposure for a company’s products and services. For that reason, exhibitors invest considerable time and resources into creating the perfect exhibition displays, and then added effort advertising and promoting their trade show booths in order to attract prospects.
Oftentimes the substantial amount of work and preparation is done in vain, because the leads acquired during the exhibition are mismanaged from start to finish. To convert more event prospects into leads and more leads into sales, exhibitors must avoid three of the common mistakes made during trade show marketing.
Chasing Unqualified Leads
Many sales teams forget that all prospects are not qualified to make a purchase or to become customers. To avoid wasting unnecessary time and expenses by chasing leads that are unable or uninterested in doing business, prospects should be pre-qualified during their show, while visiting your exhibition displays. Many exhibitors focus primarily on acquiring a list of contacts and some business cards without envisioning the bigger picture.
Finding the proper balance between capturing a prospect’s qualifying information and keeping their interest is essential. Trade shows are normally loud and busy, and everyone present is rushed, with short attention spans – booth visitors may neither have the time nor the interest in completing long surveys or capture cards.
However, there is no need to make them waste their time or yours on a long survery – in any industry, for any product or service, there will be a core piece of information that will help weed out the qualified prospects from the unqualified. For example, if your company sells certain sports equipment, when someone stops by your exhibition displays, ask them if they play that sport, or are shopping for a gift for some that does, or are interested in learning how to play that sport. If they’re unlikely to ever need your product, thank them for stopping by, and move to the next visitor. Identifying these key qualifiers will help your sales team immensely, at the show and afterwards.
Inefficient Lead Management Systems
Imagine that you have great looking exhibition displays, and that they receive unprecedented amounts of visitors during your next trade show. After the show, the leads are passed over to a few sales people or staff for follow-up. Weeks or months later, none of the hard-earned leads have converted into a sale and it is now difficult making contact with most of them. What could have possibly gone wrong?
The follow-up process needs to be carefully and strategically planned and executed. The marketing staff and sales personnel should be held accountable for the outcome of the lead campaign, with strict requirements, deadlines and progress reporting. If there are no deadlines or measurements, even the most qualified and motivated prospects will not become buyers – simply because most often, they won’t even be contacted!
Information Capture Issues
Exhibition displays aren’t meant to be pieces of art, and the trade show is not really an event. The graphics and the display stand are supposed to be attractive, to help pull in visitors, but the trade show and your trade show display itself are part of a process, not the end result. Other than helping to brand an organization, a trade show booth without an effective information capture system is nearly useless.
Get the highest return on investment by investing in an electronic lead capture system. These can be rented during the exhibition or purchased via retail channels. A lead retrieval system allows companies to scan the visitors’ badges when visiting their trade show displays.
The system captures information from each prospect and creates a digital record that can be uploaded into a computer’s contact management software. Lead capture systems help to increase the amount of time a visitor spends and interacts at your exhibition displays, and are available for computers, kiosks and several mobile devices. Check out the “apps” available for your staff’s smartphones!
To recap, converting more trade show leads into sales will require a little more effort by the sales team, marketing staff, management and IT staff. However, avoiding the simple mistakes mentioned above will allow any company to leverage their success with their exhibition displays, earning more return on their investment overall.
Companies that exhibit at trade shows need to set up a process that only allows the most qualified prospects into the lead pipeline. Once they have a qualified prospect, companies need to be able to capture pre-qualifying information effectively. Finally, they must ensure that there is a prompt follow-up after the show. Following these simple steps will guarantee that the investment in the trade show, travel, trade show banners and exhibition displays will pay off, generating prospects, leads, sales, and a great ROI.
For more, check out our article on how to get more leads and how to get the biggest bang for your buck out your trade show displays.