Return on Investment

  What is there to learn about trade show ROI from great bakers? The answer: ratios. For example: Bread = 5 parts flour : 3 parts water Cookies = 3 parts flour : 2 parts fat : 1 part sugar The beauty of understanding baking from the perspective of ratios versus recipes is that it opens the baker up to a world of exploration and a higher likelihood of success. At MEET, we like to use this baking analogy when making the case for maximizing trade show ROI. In fact, we like the analogy so much, we’ve designed two cookbooks for our clients: The Sales Management Cookbook and the Exhibitor and Trade Show ROI Cookbook. Here’s a preview of how they work. The Sales Management Cookbook MEET’s Sales Management Cookbook is a great tool for establishing baselines for your existing marketing and sales strategy. Through simple calculations, the Cookbook empowers Managers with key data points such as the average value of a customer, and the ratio of suspects and prospects to new customers. Critical Definitions: Prospect – has a need, money, and is urgent Customer – someone who pays you money For example: to understand the average value of a customer, take your total revenue for the most recent 12-month period and divide it by the number of customers you invoices. No need to over-complicate it—it’s just that simple. To figure out the ratio of how many suspects are needed to deliver a new customer, you’ll need a variety of inputs from within a discrete-time period, including: # of suspects engaged (for example people who approached your booth at a trade show) # of suspects qualified as prospects # of prospects who agreed to a first meeting # of proposals submitted # of contracts signed # of 1st orders From there you’ll be able to determine how many suspects were needed to deliver a new customer. You’ll then be able to use this benchmark data to inform your sales and marketing strategy with knowledge-based decisions around where investments are needed. (For a visual, step-by-step demonstration of how we did these calculations and others, check out our recent webinar: Benchmarks, Goals, Metrics and ROI, Everything You Need to Know About Measuring Trade Show Results or feel free to reach out and we’ll send you a sample.) The Exhibitor and Trade Show ROI Cookbook What makes the Exhibitor and Trade Show ROI Cookbook unique is not simply the math but the science. In measuring for trade show results, it’s critical that you understand two things: The variety of functions in and outside the booth that contribute to trade show ROI. The target of your marketing strategy, which is roughly 1% of trade show attendees, i.e. quality/quantity. Remember, prospects have to have a need, money, and urgency. For more on MEET’s approach to trade show staffing in and outside the booth, check out this post. For more on narrowing your target prospect, check out this post. Understanding the science behind trade show ROI strategy will dictate where and how you measure success. Our Cookbook will help you break down your strategy into a series of activities, goals for each of those activities, and how to incorporate basic data inputs from your Sales Cookbook, e.g. average revenue per customer. For a quick tutorial of how to calculate trade show ROI using this tool, we recommend that you tune into our recent webinar or set up a call. We’re happy to walk you through it. What do MEET Cookbooks spit out? Management gold. Your Cookbook results may indicate that each member of your booth team needs to find one new, qualified prospect every 15 minutes to meet your trade show ROI goals. The beauty of having a clearly defined objective like this is that it makes the work more rewarding, easier to manage and incentivize. Boiling down the practice of marketing to a numerical science opens the doors to a world of results-driven innovation. What’s amazing is how many scaling companies operate without the slightest idea of how their marketing investments are helping (or hindering) to achieve their goals. Cookbook tools have the ability to inform every aspect of your marketing and sales strategies—from goal-setting and event selection to staffing and management. So throw on an apron and get baking. To check out all of MEET’s webinar content on how to successfully scale your company in the U.S. market, subscribe to our YouTube Channel. About
 MEET (meetroi.com) helps international B2B growth companies soft-land and scale in the U.S. through trade shows and in-person events. MEET’s processes help its clients ramp-up sales quickly and maintain a steady stream of high-quality prospects going forward.  Contact Bill Kenney for a no-obligation conversation: bill@meetroi.com or +1 (860) 573-4821.

You might be thinking: “Wow, they’re confident!” In fact, we are. Because when it comes to developing an event selection strategy for our clients, we focus on a results-centered process rather than specific events. Get the process right, and failure becomes nearly impossible. Tell us if you agree. Step 1: Determine your buyer persona In order to begin the event selection process, you need to identify a target or buyer persona. A buyer persona is a semi-fictional representation of your ideal customer. Using whatever technique’s necessary, you should be able to answer the following questions: Age and demographics Role and responsibilities Interests Concerns (What keeps him/her up at night?) Most pressing needs Obtaining answers to these questions will help you to: Make decisions about which events to participate in and how Develop messaging and offers to attract these buyers based on their concerns Step 2: Map event opportunities The next step is to search for events that will put you in contact with this buyer persona. At this stage, don’t worry about perfection—for the time being, more is better. How do you collect this information? Google (use a range of keyword searches to find relevant events) Network (ask friends in the industry which shows they attend) Exhibitors (people who have exhibited at the shows on your list). Ask them which other events they go to and how these events compare in terms of ROI, the organizers, and the audience. Competitors (see questions above).  You can do this anonymously. Partners (who may be able to identify additional events, not on your list) Now it’s time for analysis. Step 3: Create an event scorecard There are many different types of scorecards and the variables used within them may vary based on your objectives. (For a preview and explanation of the scorecard we use with our clients, check out this webinar) The basic criteria, starting with the benefits, include: Quality Score: target audience/total audience %
Because this input is substantially more important than the other factors you’ll be accounting for, we recommend weighting this score. For example, consider making it three times more valuable than your other variables. Quantity, i.e., number of projected attendees Duration (days) Exhibiting floor location as a measure of audience exposure. On a 1-5 scale, how would you rate the projected exposure opportunity with target prospects? Now moving onto the costs: Exhibiting versus sponsorship Travel and staffing Feel free to contact us for more details on how to create a weighted event selection scorecard for your company. Step 4: Make your decision It’s time to decide which events will be entered into your annual strategy. At this point, you should have a ranking of high to low priority events. But you’re not quite finished. Next, you’ll want to overlay this ranking with additional data, such as the date and duration of each event, prioritizing the highest-ranked events within each quarter. Note: your goal is not to create an unlimited number of prospects. Rather, your goal is to create a steady stream of as many prospects as you can handle at one time based on your capacity. There is no reason to create more prospects than you can manage. That is just wasted potential energy. Because marketing and sales do not happen in isolation, it is also important to overlay sales goals. Whether it’s at the end of each event, month or quarter, you’ll want to know the number of prospects needed to reach your sales goals, taking into account the 6-12 month sales cycle. Creating an even flow of events throughout the year is optimal for helping to achieve these goals. Step 5: Embed your event selection strategy within your broader marketing plan While we believe trade shows and in-person events to be the best content marketing opportunity for B2B companies, it’s critical that your strategy is embedded in and integrated with additional modes of marketing. Whether it’s a Lunch and Learn, an executive briefing, or a new product release, make sure that your event schedule complements and leverages these opportunities within your existing marketing cycle. Updates and iterations Congratulations! You’ve completed your event selection strategy. Now don’t go putting it on a shelf to collect dust. You’ll want to refresh your strategy based on measured results and new events that pop up. At MEET, we recommend adjusting your plan once a quarter, extending the projection from that point on so that you always have a 12-month strategy on hand. Have we convinced you? There’s only one way to find out. Let us know if you have questions. For more on how to ensure trade show success in 2020, check out our recent webinar on this topic. To check out all of MEET’s webinar content on how to successfully scale your company in the U.S. market, subscribe to our YouTube Channel. About
 MEET (meetroi.com) helps international B2B growth companies soft-land and scale in the U.S. through trade shows and in-person events. MEET’s processes help its clients ramp-up sales quickly and maintain a steady stream of high-quality prospects going forward.  Contact Bill Kenney for a no-obligation conversation: bill@meetroi.com or +1 (860) 573-4821.

The art of making good conversation has been studied for centuries. And while everyone seems to have their own twist, there is clearly some agreement around the makings of a master conversationalist. According to common wisdom, those with good conversation skills show interest and curiosity in their counterparts. They ensure balance and give and take, and have something interesting to say. Finally, they demonstrate knowledge without proselytizing or being too pedantic. So much of successful networking comes down to mastering good conversation skills. And yet, one of the biggest mistakes we witness at networking events such as trade shows is that people seem to break all the rules of good conversation. Whether you’re an extrovert or an introvert, maximizing your investment in trade shows and in-person events with a finely tuned networking strategy is worth the effort. Here are our tips for ensuring that good conversation translates to good ROI. The value of a good question Trade shows represent a large investment of time and resources. As a result, the pressure to ensure ROI can feel overwhelming. Sadly, it can also manifest into a bad strategy. At MEET, 75 years of experience in trade shows and in-person events have taught us that it’s not what you say as much as what you learn at events that allows you to connect and build relationships. It’s not what you say but what you learn that drives customer relationships. Having a list of good, thoughtful questions to ask those you hope to meet at an event is an important place to start. Simple ones like: Tell me about your company? What’s your role? What are the biggest challenges you’re facing? What are you hoping to accomplish at this event? Are there certain people that you’re hoping to meet? Answers to these questions will help you build relationships with potential prospects and make resource referrals for existing customers. Asking these questions will also help to ensure that you are practicing good conversation skills and strengthening your networking capacity. For more on the value of matchmaking at trade shows, check out this post. Moving toward the center of the room Similar to those high school dances we’d all care to forget, you don’t want to find yourself along the periphery of an event if your goal is to make good connections. Again, whether you consider yourself an introvert or an extrovert, it’s important to recognize that quality connections are made when we push ourselves to engage with folks in the center of the room in tangible ways. Understanding the need for this level of investment in relationship building requires a staffing strategy that empowers your salespeople to leave the booth and flex their talents. Ensuring they are equipped with good conversation skills will help to guarantee their results and maximize ROI. Setting goals to conserve your resources All businesses and most households start the year with a budget. Budgets tell you how to manage your effort and what resources you need to apply. Goal-setting your trade show strategy acts in a very similar way. It helps you manage your effort, and know when you’ve achieved what you set out to achieve. Setting clear goals helps you measure ROI There are many occasions when, one to two hours after finishing up an event, we see people chatting away, trying to make connections. While in some instances these conversations are productive, in most situations these individuals are simply having a hard time knowing when they’re done. People have a hard time leaving an event if they fear they’re leaving money on the table. The more work you do to prepare for an event by setting measurable outcomes, the better you will be at conserving your resources and applying them where they will deliver the greatest return. For more on this topic of strategic engagement at trade shows, check out our recent webinar: How to Start Conversations and Identify Opportunities at Events. To check out all of MEET’s webinar content on how to successfully scale your company in the U.S. market, subscribe to our YouTube Channel. About MEET (meetroi.com) helps international B2B growth companies soft-land and scale in the U.S. through trade shows and in-person events. MEET’s processes help its clients ramp-up sales quickly and maintain a steady stream of high-quality prospects going forward.  Contact Bill Kenney for a no obligation conversation: bill@meetroi.com or +1 (860) 573-4821.

The famous hockey player Wayne Gretzky was once asked by a reporter: “What makes you better than other players on the ice?” “Other hockey players go where the puck is,” he answered. “I go where the puck is going.” Every CEO is trying to stay ahead of the game, to anticipate market trends and pivot points, and remain nimble enough to respond rather than chase the competition. How can firms endeavoring market entry think (and perform) like hockey players? Better yet, one of the greatest hockey players of all time? For advice on this topic, we spoke with Michael Vigeant, CEO of Greatblue Research. We interviewed Michael in a webinar on June 25th, 2019 titled: What You Don’t Know Can Kill Your Business: Nailing Market Research for U.S. Market Entry. What is the first market entry task for a scaling firm? All scaling firms, whether they are startups or well-established global companies, need to start by understanding the audience they will be servicing in the new market. As a market researcher, Michael’s first step is to understand from his client’s perspective who the firm will be servicing and what is their strategy for reaching them. “What types of channels do they use in their existing market, how do they advertise and communicate their brand, and does it resonate with that audience.” For startups, where an audience needs to be identified from scratch, Michael assists in this process by using a number of market research methodologies such as phone and digital to identify the personas they are targeting. For an explanation of the full range of data collection methodologies that Michael uses and why check out this post.  The importance of testing We all operate on a set of assumptions based on our own personal knowledge of the world. What made hockey players like Gretzky so great isn’t that he operated on fewer assumptions or that he was naturally more intuitive. Rather, he built a strategy during each game based on knowledge gained from testing those assumptions. At MEET, we believe strongly in maximizing every opportunity for our clients to test their assumptions. We then work with them to collect and use that data to constantly refine and inform their strategy for reaching their target market. At Greatblue Research, Michael employs a similar approach. Once he understands who his clients believe they are targeting in the new market, Michael develops a testing strategy that will validate (or invalidate) these assumptions. From a market research perspective, the key lies in how one frames the question. “If you ask the right questions in the right way and you build them in an independent, objective fashion, they’re not going to lead you to the answer that you hope for. They’re going to lead you to the answer that is accurate.” Staying ahead of the puck Great CEOs have vision—but strong vision can be a double-edged sword. For some CEOs, those same qualities that keep them firmly committed to surmounting the persistent challenges to market entry can blind them from recognizes shifting trends that require a change in strategy. Willingness to test one’s assumptions is often not enough. CEOs must have the foresight and the courage to remain nimble in the face of new knowledge about the market—even when it feels like a shift away from a previously desired endpoint. From Michael’s perspective, true leaders are looking at information, being humbled by it, and saying “the data is telling me it’s time to move.” A well-designed market research strategy will indicate which direction to head next. Maintaining your balance Striking the right balance between attained knowledge and new data is fundamental to the art of remaining nimble. In Michael’s experience, there’s a happy balance between getting too excited by new data and potentially making a wrong move, and keeping patient while not missing the boat completely. Maintaining your vision while remaining open to change is not easy. Everyone, even Gretzky, has to work at it. Fortunately, there are great coaches out there to help. Interested in learning how MEET can help you devise a validated market entry strategy? Contact us today. For more insights from Michael Vigeant, CEO of Greatblue Research, check out our entire interview here. To check out all of MEET’s webinar content on how to successfully scale your company in the U.S. market, subscribe to our YouTube Channel. About MEET (meetroi.com) helps international B2B growth companies soft land and scale in the U.S. through trade shows and in-person events. MEET’s processes help its clients ramp-up sales quickly and maintain a steady stream of high-quality prospects going forward.  Contact Bill Kenney for a no obligation conversation: bill@meetroi.com or +1 (860) 573-4821.