Return on Investment

There are many reasons for hiring a trade show consultant, from help with goal setting to powering your execution. The process of developing a marketing and sales event strategy may be daunting and a trade show consultant can offer valuable resources to get you started. In our recent post, 5 Steps to Achieving Your Best Trade Show Selection Process, we uncovered five strategies for determining the best trade shows for your organization, including developing a scoring matrix to help you assess the value of each event opportunity. In this post, we’d like to share how to use your scoring matrix as a basis for measuring results and making decisions that will impact your annual strategy—in essence, acting as your own trade show consultant. What to Measure Using a Scoring Matrix Optimizing your scoring matrix to measure results from each trade show event will uncover an array of valuable data points, such as: Opt-ins The number of people who stop by the booth and give their contact details in exchange for your offer 1st Meetings The number of first meetings that occur as a result of these opt-ins Proposals The number of proposals that happen as a result of these first meetings Sales and/or Revenue The number of sales / total revenue that results from these proposals. From this data, you will be able to generate information such as revenue per lead, leads per show, and revenue per show. And by going through the process of understanding your buyer persona and developing an offer that corresponds to that persona, you can be confident that your opt-ins will become progressively more qualified prospects. In other words, good preparation = good data = strong results. You may choose to measure additional data points depending on the particular event you are evaluating, but overall as you begin to map these results across events, you will uncover the relative value of each opportunity. Just like a good trade show consultant, you will produce data to help make informed decisions. How to Use Your Trade Show Data Strategically Fully understanding the costs (both time and money) of an event and comparing these costs to your results will directly inform your event selection strategy. Additionally, you will be well positioned to negotiate with event organizers whose events deliver subpar results. For example, for those who employ a quarterly trade show strategy review, it may be the case that two events per year deliver exceptional performance results, while two deliver results that are subpar. Assuming you want to return to these subpar events in the future, it’s possible to use results data to negotiate reduced costs or increased exposure with the event organizers. Ultimately any adjustment that will increase the value of the event is a win—not just for you, but for the event organizer as well. Most trade show hosts want you to succeed and when presented with data that reflects how their event compares with others, it is in their interest to improve these results. Reliable data has that power. Course Correct Quarterly Finally, just as a trade show consultant might support you through a full cycle to ensure their plan’s sustainability, make sure to review your data on a regular basis, refresh it with new inputs, and adjust as needed. Plan for at least 12 months ahead, but course correct quarterly as you incorporate new knowledge. With some industries, we recommend planning as much as 24 months ahead, particularly for speaking opportunities. Plenty of support is out there if you need it, but at the end of the day, there are times when being your own trade show consultant is just as effective. About MEET (meetroi.com) helps B2B growth companies and pavilion hosts effectively leverage at 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 at MEET today for a free trade show participation assessment bill@meetroi.com or +1 (860) 573-4821

MEET ROI provides brief details about the event planing to make your event effective. Hire us as the best trade show consultant to generate high returns. Selling at trade shows is an opportunity that cannot be compared to any other type of marketing. While most marketing dollars are spent with the hope of someday getting face-to-face with your target prospect, trade shows deliver the most efficient way to this objective. Unfortunately, most salespeople would not agree. At MEET, we hear from sales teams all the time about their anguish when it comes to selling at trade shows. Why? Because after committing time and resources to attend an event, they simply feel it does not deliver quality prospects. In others words, selling at trade shows feels like a big waste of time. Forty years of event experience has taught us that there are many reasons why salespeople feel disenfranchised after trade shows. (Check out our recent webinar EVERYONE is NOT a PROSPECT: How to Focus and Win at Trade Shows for these lessons learned). Among the chief reasons is that organizations or companies fail to take the necessary steps to identify their ideal customer. An ideal customer is a buyer that you want to replicate over and over and over again. “Ideal” is not a qualifier that can be superimposed; it is not who you aspire to be your best customers. It is quantifiably defined as those who have the most NEED, the most RESOURCES, and the most URGENCY for your product or service. We say, to be a prospect someone must NEED, MONEY, and NOW. Here are three steps to discovering your ideal customer: Step 1: Identify your best selling product or service If you have multiple products or services, select one based on the best selling, the largest, or the one you want to grow the most. Step 2: Use historical data analysis and institutional knowledge Use the information that is available to you to uncover trends. Are there groups of customer types that rise to the top? Are there individuals within those groups you consistently sell to? Step 3: Characterize your ideal customer Uncover an archetype of your ideal customer. Who is performing best for you based on your organizational goals—growth, profit margin, etc.? Selling at trade shows as a B2B versus B2C company will determine whether you are seeking to identify a specific individual or groups of individuals through this process. It will also determine the variety of attributes you will use to develop your buyer personas. Attributes you might use as a B2B company include: • Industry • Market segment • Size • Revenue • Profitability • Location • Mode • Unique dynamic What industry is your ideal customer in? What market segment are they coming from and how big are they? What’s their annual revenue? Profitability? Are they geographically centered somewhere or are they distributed? Mode refers to their stability as a company. Are they in tough spot, are they growing, are they laissez-faire or even keel, or are they over-confident? Finally, unique dynamics that help to define a company are situations that make them in need of your solution, for example a new regulatory challenge or recent IPO. B2C will look at a different set of attributes, though some are overlapping. B2C • Age • Gender • Ethnicity • Income • Net worth • Location • Mode • Unique dynamic Discovering your ideal customer requires that you work to define these individuals or organizations as tightly as possible. In doing this work, you may find that one or two or three of these attributes are most telling. Moving through these simple steps will get you there. Selling at trade shows is an opportunity to get face-to-face with your ideal customer. Design your booth to speak directly to these individuals and watch as your sales team changes their tune. About MEET (meetroi.com) helps B2B growth companies and pavilion hosts effectively leverage at 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 at MEET today for a free trade show participation assessment bill@meetroi.com or +1 (860) 573-4821.

Your event should always leave an impact to the audience. MEET ROI are one of the experienced trade show planned to help you with all your needs We were recently inspired by an article released by Octopus Ventures (a London-based VC firm) highlighting the most common challenges faced by European CEOs while expanding to the U.S. market.  Through interviews with 50+ VC-backed CEOs, they uncovered a number of challenges shared by many of our clients. At MEET, our aim is to improve trade show and event participation ROI while establishing a methodology for benchmarking and continuous improvement. In other words, we aim to address the most pressing challenges of today while minimizing the risk of future challenges tomorrow. Here’s a great example of how MEET’s services address several of the challenges highlighted in this article. According to research from Octopus Ventures, three major challenges (among many) identified by European CEOs who recently expanded to the U.S. market are: High set-up costs Timing of market entry, and maintaining stability at home during the expansion. Selecting local talent capable of keeping pace with growth goals. As the article rightly suggests, the cost of U.S. market entry is often underestimated. In addition to obvious startup expenses, there are the costs associated with senior management’s need to juggle responsibilities and the time it takes to perfect one’s strategic plan. Support for CEOs leading an international expansion is not readily available, and effective penetration into the U.S. market relies upon a certain set of skills that can effectively sustain growth at home and abroad. Finally, making the right decisions in a foreign office, such as hiring new talent, can be a challenge due to intense competition from American companies: “The job market is very liquid, driving up prices and lowering retention. Meanwhile, customers expect a local presence and local services. Strong local partners — experts, service providers, strategic partners — are impactful for success.” We couldn’t agree more. At MEET, our solution to addressing all three of these major challenges is through key, on-the-ground strategic partnerships. These relationships, with channel partners, referral sources, and other companies and individuals that have some type of cooperative alignment, allow the core team to stay focused on the primary deliverables, better control costs, speed learning, and reduce risks associated with expanding to foreign markets. The power of strategic partnerships is perhaps best illustrated by example. Back in June, MEET staff participated in the 2018 SelectUSA Investment Summit, an event hosted by the U.S. Department of Commerce to attract and facilitate foreign direct investment (FDI) into the United States. There we met a Polish company looking to find a manufacturing partner in Florida. As a means of facilitating this process, controlling costs and reducing risks associated with expansion into the U.S. market, MEET partnered with this company to offer several services. These include attending several manufacturing industry events in Florida on their behalf, and use of MEET’s vast network to build a list of the top-flight finalists from which they can select a local manufacturing partner. In doing so, MEET will also build a manufacturing partner identification and selection process to improve and streamline the selection of additional manufacturing partners as the company expands further throughout the U.S. over the coming years. By having a local manufacturing partner, our client will be able to leverage their years of market experience and sales network to create some initial success all the while not over-committing their own resources, i.e. people, time, and money. MEET will also be performing a variety of pre-market-entry tests at trade shows and events for the Polish company. These tests will validate the best early buyer personas, value propositions, and offers. The goal will be to ensure early traction and sustained growth. We have found that early traction is a critical element not only to the venture’s success but also to retaining key team members and investor support. Three common challenges faced by CEOs seeking success in the U.S. market; one solution that gets the job done. Expanding your business into a foreign market is never an easy task. Finding strategic partners ensures you won’t have to do it alone. About MEET (meetroi.com) helps B2B growth companies and pavilion hosts effectively leverage at 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 at MEET today for a free trade show participation assessment bill@meetroi.com or +1 (860) 573-4821.

We offer due diligence services that empower CEOs to make their best decisions, which make them easier to expand into the U.S. market CEOs looking to expand into the U.S. market have layer upon layer of critical questions to ask themselves before pulling the trigger. On top of logistics—regulatory compliance, shipping and translation costs to name a few, there’s identifying suppliers and vendors, staffing and leadership capacity. And on top of all that, there are the unique dynamics of the U.S. market—regional demographic, economic and consumer-related factors that impact growth strategy both in terms of scale and sequence. We recently came across some insightful takeaways concerning these challenges in a post: Irrational “inevitability” & other confessions of venture backed European CEOs who launched in the US, by London-based VC Octopus Ventures. In interviews with over 50 VC-backed European CEOs, they found that among the most common challenges for those who took the plunge into the U.S. market was that, despite its massive scale, CEOs underestimated (or were unaware of) their fellow foreign or U.S.-based competitors. As the article explains, companies find it challenging to adequately comprehend the breadth and depth of the U.S. market, its regional differences and the full competitive landscape. The ability to successfully expand into the U.S. market relies on one’s capacity to a) understand the unique dynamics of the market and b) execute on this knowledge. At MEET, we spend a lot of time talking about the importance of buyer personas when crafting and executing growth strategy, including international expansion to the U.S. Too often we watch CEOs apply an overly broad definition of their target market for fear of missing out on potential future prospects. Without the ability to demonstrate a bona fide, self-realized need; the resources to satisfy that need; and a sense of urgency in the market (how we define a current prospect – NEED, MONEY, NOW), CEOs are really just casting nets and crossing fingers. And in unknown waters, that’s extremely risky. When seeking to understand the dynamics of a target market and develop a well-informed growth and marketing strategy, we recommend two things: pre-market research and pre-market sales. Pre-market entry competitor, partner, and channel research, potential partner screening, and connection, allows CEOs to map out the landscape while building key strategic relationships and respected influencers before market entry, and use this data to build knowledge and ensure future sales efficiency. Engaging in pre-market entry sales tests give CEOs critical data that supports location selection, competitive landscape knowledge, the best initial target buyer persona, value proposition and offer, staffing and training needs, not to mention the ultimate decision of whether to enter the market—or not. The revenues from these sales will not only fuel the business and maintain investment, but customer-acquisition success retains and attracts the best team members and partners. Companies looking to expand into the U.S. market or any new market for that matter, often make decisions based on emotion or on the statistics supplied by economic development officers, which may or may not apply to their specific situation. At MEET, we offer due diligence services that empower CEOs to make their best decisions, including pre-market research. We call this “winning the race before it begins,” or getting to know your target prospect before laying the groundwork for expansion. When companies have narrowed their list down to a few finalist cities, MEET will develop and execute a variety of lead-generation tests with the goal of separating fact from fiction and to determine which market will actually provide the best beachhead for market entry. This is also a good way to test the introductions and support that each economic development officer makes when they are trying to convince a company to invest in their city. Pre-market entry sales are one key element of de-risking market entry decisions. Many companies don’t get more than one chance at the U.S. market. Take the steps that count by making early investments that better inform decision making. About MEET (meetroi.com) helps B2B growth companies and pavilion hosts effectively leverage at 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 at MEET today for a free trade show participation assessment bill@meetroi.com or +1 (860) 573-4821.