selling at trade shows

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The power of a well-aligned trade show strategy plan

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In our recent post, we talked about the importance of goal setting and testing when preparing a trade show strategy plan for U.S. expansion. In essence, carefully crafted buyer personas based on frequently tested hypotheses allow you to build vital knowledge about how to scale your company. But how do you bring this knowledge to life in all aspects of your trade show strategy plan? The answer: alignment. Aligning your communications and marketing materials—essentially anything that is prospect facing—to your buyer persona, will ensure your trade consultation strategy is not only effective but highly responsive to new information. In our experience, companies that have difficulty identifying their buyer personas have an even more difficult time verifying that their marketing materials, booth training protocols, and verbal communications strategy are effectively targeting the right customers.  Furthermore, they don’t know how to adapt when new information about their customers becomes available. 4 steps to aligning your trade show strategy plan Once you have your buyer persona: Identify local events and associations that appeal to your target persona and become an active participant.  You’ll find within almost every industry and discipline a wide array of trade associations and organizations facilitating monthly meetings for you to attend at very little cost. Ensure that all your marketing materials (your offer, call to action, and value proposition) speak directly to the urgent needs of your target buyer persona. (Check out our post: Your Trade Show Business Strategy Starts with a Need for more on this) Develop lead nurturing resources that are of unique interest to them. Things like webinars, assessments or white papers that you can promote through a well-crafted, succinct offer will draw your buyer persona from heightened awareness, to trust, to conversion. Devote resources to a robust follow-up plan. A well-aligned offer will help to moderate the flow of qualified prospects and ensure that a well-resourced follow-up strategy is cost-effective. The importance of a localized communication strategy The U.S. market is large and diverse. In this context, it is not enough for your communications and marketing materials to be buyer persona focused at a national level. A U.S. trade show consultation strategy must take into account local, regional, and industry-specific differences and reflect this awareness through written, verbal and non-verbal (how one presents) communications. For those operating from abroad, this may require staffing events with a U.S.-based team or those highly familiar with U.S. customs and regional accents/language differences. A well-aligned trade show strategy plan has the ability to drill down to this level. Companies that are able to clearly identify their ideal customers and how to reach them are well above the fray. Translating this knowledge into an actionable trade show strategy plan is what truly distinguishes them from the rest. Alignment is the critical first step. 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.

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Goal Setting Your U.S. Trade Show Strategy Plan

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When we think of a trade show strategy plan, the words of Zig Ziglar often come to mind: “a goal properly set is halfway reached.” At MEET, we believe that setting clear goals around how to identify and reach target customers is half the battle to successfully growing your company. For companies looking to expand to the U.S. market, trade shows represent a vital opportunity to get face-to-face with target customers, test value propositions and offers. A good U.S. trade show consultation strategy can help to set market entry goals, minimize risk and maximize the opportunity and potential for reward. Goal Setting Step 1: Know Your Target Every trade show strategy plan should be focused on a target customer, or what we refer to at MEET as a buyer persona. Buyer personas are fictional representations of your ideal customers—their wants, needs, and profile. You may identify two or three buyer personas by product or service, and that’s fine. Buyer personas are developed based on your existing knowledge, research, and conversations with customers, partners, and mentors. They represent a hypothesis based on the market you’re in for the purposes of entering a new market and therefore need to be tested. The first goal to set within your trade show strategy plan is to identify the two to three buyer personas that you are aiming to meet. Prior to exhibiting in any particular marketplace, it’s important to prioritize these buyer personas based on who is most likely to attend a given event. Goal Setting Step 2: Bet Small and Frequently At MEET, we’ve noticed a tendency for companies looking to expand to the U.S. market to place all their chips on one big event. While there’s certainly a place for big events in a trade show consultation strategy, we don’t recommend them as a starting place. Here’s why. In the first 6-12 months of a market expansion, your goal should to maximize exposure (i.e. take advantage of as many opportunities as possible to meet customers and partners) and test your hypotheses, all while minimizing your costs. Identifying small, frequent event opportunities within a 100-mile (160 km) radius of your new hub are ideal, and you’ll find within almost every industry and discipline a wide array of trade associations and organizations facilitating a monthly meeting for you to attend at very little cost. Focusing your goals around building strong intimacy with key groups in your new geographic area will rapidly increase your knowledge and your network while decreasing your risk of investing in events that do not deliver quality prospects. Small events allow you to iterate and evolve quickly, setting you up for success at national and global events in year two. Setting the goal in your trade show strategy plan to attend one to three event each month delivers results without breaking the bank. (Check out our webinar: SCALE NOW: Entering the U.S. Market through Trade Shows and In-Person Events for more high leverage strategies for success.) The value of a good trade show strategy plan for any company cannot be oversold.  Setting clear goals and investing resources in preparation minimizes both risk and waste, which in a new market is at least half the battle. 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.

Exhibitor Tips, Uncategorized

6 Common Challenges to Developing a U.S. Trade Show Strategy Plan

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Developing a trade show strategy plan for any company is complicated. For those looking to enter the U.S. market, it’s even more complicated. Through developing a tailored trade show consultation strategy for each client, MEET supports companies looking to expand to the U.S. every step of the way. Here are six common challenges we’ve identified in the process. While some are transcendent to any new market or in-person event, others are unique to the dynamics of the U.S. given its regional diversity and capacity to signify large-scale growth. Challenge #1: Cannot identify an ideal customer. Similar to a business plan, every trade show strategy plan starts with a need experienced by an ideal customer. Absent the ability to identify a precise target prior to each event, it is extremely difficult to attract truly viable prospects. (Here’s how we define viable.) Challenge #2: Place too much focus on one large event Perhaps it’s the relative scale of the U.S. market, perhaps it’s the media, but companies looking to expand to the U.S. have a tendency to focus their trade show strategy plan too heavily on one massive event. Events of this scale are not only expensive, but they are also high risk. Challenge #3: Poor alignment Harking back to Challenge #1, absent the ability to identify an ideal customer, it is difficult to ensure that one’s offer, call to action, and value proposition are aligned with the target buyer persona. Knowing which events to select in the first place is similarly difficult without a well-aligned strategy. Challenge #4: Communication isn’t localized The U.S. market is large and diverse. A trade show strategy plan must be empathic towards local, regional, and industry-specific differences and reflect this awareness through written, verbal and non-verbal (how one presents) communications. Challenge #5: Having salespeople in the booth Staffing is a common challenge for trade show exhibitors—specifically the practice of putting salespeople in the booth to engage with prospects. Salespeople are not those best suited to work in the booth, at least not as their primary function during the event. Alternatively, we recommend transaction professionals. (Check out our post on how to devise an efficient and effective staffing strategy here) Challenge #6: Ineffective follow-up Trade show follow-up should not feel as insecure as dating. In other words, don’t sit around and wait for the phone to ring. Employing the right staffing strategy along with a well aligned, lead-nurturing offer will help to moderate the flow of prospects. With 900 species of freshwater fish in North America alone, a good fisherman must decide first which species and sub-species of fish he wants to catch, choose the specific body of water where the target species is plentiful, and chose the unique bait which is most likely to attract the target species in that body of water. With this information, he may choose to test several fishing holes and baits to determine which produces the best results. Taking a tip from a good fisherman, testing different geographic areas of the U.S. market before establishing a U.S. presence may be the most cost-effective first step. Narrowing your scope to five potential geographies and testing them for the best response will provide a lot of useful information. A carefully crafted trade show consultation strategy for U.S. expansion should begin with clearly identified target customers for each trade show opportunity. Selecting the right event, the right offer, and securing appropriate staff comes next. We can help get you started. 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

Exhibitor Tips, Uncategorized

The Risks and Rewards of USA Exhibition Planning

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For many foreign B2B growth companies, USA exhibition planning is a daunting task. Much like that first jump into a swimming pool, the risks are real but so are the rewards. You know the water’s cold, and that you’ll have to work to get to the other side. You’re also aware of how refreshing the water will feel once you’re in. You do your calculation and take the plunge.  Now it’s time to swim. In our webinar: Scale Now, Entering the U.S. Market for Trade Shows and In-Person Events, we explore the dynamics of entering into the U.S. market and how effective USA exhibition planning must take into account the common pitfalls and leverage points of face-to-face marketing. Unique to foreign companies, however, are the unknowns of the U.S. market. Imagine you’re used to swimming in hot tubs and are now faced with an Olympic-sized pool filled with other swimmers. How do you navigate these unknown waters? 3 Risks of USA Exhibition Planning The risks of planning an expansion into the U.S. market are real. Here are three risks we see as the most common: Diluted management focus—The amount of time and attention it takes to carefully plan for U.S. market expansion means that your management team may have less time and attention for existing operations. Diverted resources—Any spare resources that you have available from successful markets will be diverted to this new, promising market, putting the stability of these successful markets at risk. Reputational risks—Expansion efforts that do not succeed can potentially put at risk market, investor, partner, and even team relationships. Many Potential Rewards The most obvious rewards of successfully expanding your company into the U.S. are the revenue and profit opportunities that come with entering a market of massive scale.  Others include enhanced credibility and the required systems that serve as a proving ground and can be used to launch expansions into other foreign markets. Time is a unique factor that inherently impacts both the risks and rewards associated with U.S. expansion. There is limited sand in the hourglass, particularly for your investors if you are venture capital backed, and certainly for your staff, who may have limited bandwidth for the additional workload. How much time you have available to gain traction may depend on the amount of time your staff and investors are willing to devote and stay committed. There’s a need to succeed, but there’s also a need to succeed relatively quickly to keep your resources intact. Why Start with Trade Shows? In light of the inherent risks and rewards that come with expanding into the U.S. market, exhibiting through trade shows is the most productive place to start for B2B companies. That’s because most B2B marketing dollars are spent with the hope of someday getting face-to-face with a target prospect. Trade shows deliver the most efficient way to this objective. Despite their inherent challenges, such as prospects not being labeled and their need to self-identify, the opportunity to interact directly with prospects cannot be matched by other marketing tactics. The U.S. is a huge market with complex dynamics. The upside is that there are an abundance of trade shows and events to choose from. USA exhibition planning must be considered carefully, based on risk/reward calculations. Fortunately poolside help is out there. 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.

Exhibitor Tips, Uncategorized

Using A/B Testing to Inform Your Trade Show Strategy Plan

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Most web-based marketing strategies these days rely on some degree of A/B testing. A trade show strategy plan should be no different. As your best opportunity to get in front of high volumes of quality prospects, trade shows are a perfect opportunity to use A/B testing to inform which of your booth offers are most effective. Here’s how. What is A/B Testing? Also known as split-run testing, A/B testing is a simple way to test a hypothesis. In marketing and sales, this translates to testing the performance of a particular strategy. Whether you’re aiming to test the visual impact of a campaign or determine the most effective communications strategy, this form of rapid testing through small adjustments is used to answer simple questions like: “What makes people click?” How to Determine Which Offers to Test Assume you approach every show targeting two specific buyer personas. (See our post: Personalizing Your Trade Show Business Strategy for how to assemble a buyer persona.) The next step is determining an offer that will speak directly to your personas’ greatest, most pressing challenge. The type of challenge that, when confronted with your solution, causes them to immediately stop in their tracks. Rather than a chance to win an iPad, (one of the most common and harmful mistakes a trade show strategy plan can make) try what we refer to as next level lead nurturing assets. Whether it’s marketing newsletters, webinars or white papers, client assessments, informational videos, or facilitated discussion groups, these are your best marketing assets that you can promote in the form of an offer. (See our post: Your Trade Show Business Strategy Starts with a Need for more on developing the right offer.) How to Use A/B Testing to Test Your Hypothesis Now that you have determined your offers, it’s time to test whether your hypothesis was correct. In other words, will these offers cause your ideal customers to self-identify as prospects and self-enroll in your sales process. Before you even begin testing, increase your likelihood of getting good data. In our recent post on 5 Steps to Achieving Your Best Trade Show Selection Process, we talked about the value of local and regional events, particularly for early-stage companies. Local and regional events typically occur more often and are more intimate than national or global events that take place annually. This provides an excellent opportunity for testing of different targets, value propositions, and offer hypotheses at every interaction. A/B testing allows you to test your hypotheses by rotating between offers throughout an event to help you determine which is more effective. Try testing one offer in the morning aimed at one buyer persona, and another in the afternoon aimed at a different buyer persona. Or you can test the attractiveness of different offers for the same target. Just as fishermen try out different lures depending on where they are fishing, there’s much to be learned about trade show waters by engaging in simple A/B testing with your prospects. How to Inform Your Trade Show Strategy Plan Congratulations! You’ve determined which offers are most effective for attracting your ideal customers. What about the rest of your trade show strategy plan? Use these findings to inform your entire marketing and communications strategy, including how you present your offer and your value proposition.  The most important thing is that you remain buyer persona-centered. Like an effective billboard, keep your communications bold, simple, and provocative. And keep them data-tested and validated. 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.

Return on Investment

Your Trade Show Business Strategy Starts with a Need

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How is your trade show business strategy different from your company’s overall business strategy? The answer is, it’s not. As we mentioned in our most recent post, Trade Show Success Strategies that Deliver ROI, the purpose of a trade show is to make the best use of available resources to achieve more transactions. As a result, how you approach each and every trade show, from planning to follow-up, must be guided by the explicit needs of your target customers. Similarly, every business model begins with a strong value proposition aimed at a clearly defined market. Trade show business strategies are no different. Who Should be the Focus of Your Trade Show Business Strategy? Prior to participating in any trade show, we recommend that you clearly identify the most high value prospects for your service or product. From there, you’ll want to develop two or three unique buyer personas for these individuals. (Here’s how we recommend you do that.) Your trade show selection process should be a direct reflection of this buyer persona research. You’ll want to choose shows based on their likelihood of attracting high concentrations of your ideal customers. What Keeps Your Ideal Customers Up at Night? Identifying the number one problem that keeps your ideal customers up at night is critical to developing the right offer. In the B2B world, this will be the aspect of their business they feel most challenged by. If this challenge relates to your product or service, you have a unique opportunity to develop an offer that speaks directly to their needs, triggering them to self-identify as a prospect on the trade show floor. If you discover that what keeps them up at night is not related to your product or service, then they’re probably not a prospect because they won’t realize a need that relates or is urgent for your solution. Whatever the challenge, if your product or service has to power to solve someone’s #1 problem, you want to make that clear. Offers Come in Many Forms. You know what keeps your ideal customer up at night and how your product or service helps to address this challenge. Now what? At MEET, we recommend employing next level lead nurturing assets. Whether it’s marketing newsletters, webinars or white papers, client assessments, informational videos, or facilitated discussion groups, these are your best marketing assets that you can promote in the form of an offer. To transform these assets into an offer you will want to repackage them for promotion with provocative titles. Recall the Got Milk? advertising campaign. Those two simple words got people nationwide to stop and think: do I have milk? If not, I should probably get some. You want an offer that really stands out. With so many communications bombarding trade show attendees as they walk down the floor, it’s difficult to stay focused. On top of that, 50% of attendees identify as introverts, meaning it’s extra challenging for them to walk up to a booth and start a conversation. Building a trade show business strategy around the needs of you ideal customers means developing offers that are easy to spot, compelling and overwhelmingly attractive. Sound like your larger business strategy? That’s a good thing. 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.

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Trade Show Success Strategies that Deliver ROI

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At MEET, our focus is helping B2B growth companies develop and execute the most effective trade show success strategies to amplify their ROI. Perhaps the most fundamental of these trade show success strategies is crafting the right offer for attracting quality prospects. In our webinar, Booth Bait: Are you Attracting Flies or Prospects, we uncover that 90-95% of exhibitors catch flies with their booth offers, meaning they tend to fail in this area. Sadly, this is their best leverage point. The purpose of a trade show or general marketing activity is to make the best use of available resources to achieve one very specific goal—transactions. The purpose of the booth is simply to identify the prospects in the room by distinguishing them from the rest of the trade show attendees. To define a prospect is simple: they must have an expressed need, the resources to fulfill that need, and a strong degree of urgency. Or as we like to say: NEED, MONEY, NOW. Similar to fishing, attracting true prospects takes strategy, preparation, and excellent execution. Fortunately, once you’ve mastered it, your results change dramatically. Anyone can collect business cards, increased productivity comes from connecting to volumes of likely buyers. Top 6 Challenges to Trade Show Success Strategies Challenge #1: Prospects are not labeled—they all look the same on the trade show floor. Exhibitors need a way to easily separate them from the crowd. Challenge #2: 50% of attendees are introverts—many do not interact or engage easily. Exhibitors need a way to get their attention in a non-coercive manner. The idea is to get them to opt-in, like a fish swims to bait. Challenge #3: Exhibitors use the wrong bait—unless you are selling iPads, you have no reason to give one away. iPads or other generally attractive offers do not attract quality prospects that are aligned with your product or service. Challenge #4: Booth clutter—exhibitors tend to load their booth with too much information and too many giveaways, making it difficult for salespeople determine who should stop. Challenge #5: Salespeople operate the booth—placing sales people rather than transaction professionals in the booth may cost you valuable time that could be used more effectively elsewhere. (See our post on this topic: Looking to Maximize your Trade Show ROI: Start by Doing the Math.) Challenge #6: The team is not well trained—it is critical that those who are staffing your booth and working the trade show are well-trained and focused on your objective. Developing the right offer will ultimately solve each of these challenges by focusing your team, your booth and the trade show floor on what it is you came to achieve. Why is this the case? Prospects Opt-In Similar to inbound marketing, the process through which online companies draw in customers by offering content in exchange for contact information, quality prospects should immediately opt-into a well-crafted offer. That’s because they recognize the connection between your offer and their urgent need and are willing to do what is necessary for that asset or resource. The key distinction is that prospects opt-in as opposed to being coerced to engage with your booth. At MEET, we can’t help but rely on a good fishing analogy when talking about trade show success strategies. This one is the lobster trap. Lobsters are drawn into traps using a small piece of bait. Once they have entered the trap, they are drawn in further with more bait until they are caught. While no one is looking to trap their prospects, the analogy works in that you want prospects to see the bait, withdraw themselves from the sea of trade show attendees, and engage with your team for more information, i.e. more bait. Every B2B company may describe their trade show success strategies somewhat differently. What unites them is a well-crafted offer that is designed to catch the right fish in each audience. 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.

Return on Investment, Uncategorized

Be Your Own Trade Show Consultant

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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

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5 Steps to Achieving Your Best Trade Show Selection Process

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At MEET, we’ve identified five simple steps to help organizations achieve their best trade show selection process. You might ask, “How do you define best?” Our answer is it’s personal. Just as any good workout instructor will tell you, optimizing your results from an exercise routine requires a deep understanding of where your body is at and what you hope to accomplish. Achieving your best trade show selection process similarly requires that you consider the unique position of your organization.  At MEET, we start by looking at maturity. For companies that are ready for the national market, we embark on a series of steps to explore national and global events. For earlier stage companies, we recommend a strategy that is more focused on local or regional opportunities. The Value of Local and Regional Events for Early-stage Companies One of the main reasons we recommend local or regional events for early-stage companies has to do frequency. Local and regional events typically occur more often and are more intimate than national or global events that take place annually. Whether these events are weekly, monthly or quarterly, their frequency offers three advantages for young companies or those entering new markets. Allow for testing of different targets, value propositions, and offer hypotheses at every interaction. Offer training opportunities in how to represent and sell a product in these settings. Foster a community of advocates that can be leveraged in the future at larger, more resource-intensive events. Either way, local and regional events are a great opportunity to roll up your sleeves, get feedback and build relationships. 5 Steps to Achieving Your Best Trade Show Selection Process Here are the steps we recommend to determining your (personal) best trade show selection process. Step 1: Focus Utilize your buyer persona(s) to determine precisely whom you are aiming to target at these events. (Check out our webinar Everyone is Not a Prospect: How to Focus and Win at Trade Shows for more on how to do this.) Step 2: Search Research, using Google or your preferred search engine, which events will connect you with these buyer personas. Additionally, tap into your networks—those targeting the same buyers, as well as competitors and partners, to find out which events they plan on attending. Step 3: Score Develop a scoring matrix to help you assess the value of each event opportunity. Sample data points may include the quality of the audience based on the density of prospects per attendee. You’ll want to evaluate the importance of each criteria based on where your company is at, i.e. your personal growth goals. At MEET, we’ve developed an intricate scoring tool for our clients to determine their best trade show opportunities. Contact us for a sample or more information. Step 4: Decide Overlay your findings from the scoring matrix with assumptions and the experience of your team members to see which events rise to the surface. Develop an initial plan of action. Step 5: Refresh Review your plan quarterly and refresh it with market data and event results. Tweak for optimization. Your plan should be dynamic and evolve continuously as you hone your message and collect more valuable data. The best trade show selection process is one that reflects your personal goals—where you are today and where you are aiming to be tomorrow. The results will look different for everyone; these steps will get you there. 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.

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Nail the Follow-up: Close More Sales, Part 2 of our Conversation with Scott MacGregor

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We’re thrilled to share Part 2 of our discussion with Scott Macgregor, founder and CEO of SomethingNew. Our conversation with Scott was live-streamed on September 19th as part of a new series we’re offering at MEET: Coffee and Conversation. Join us periodically as we chat live with experts and veterans in trade shows, events, and complementary industries to hear their wisdom on common challenges and simple solutions for success. You can check out Part 1 of our recap here, or feel free to catch the full interview with a fresh cup of coffee here. We chose Scott for the topic of trade show follow-up because of SomethingNew’s uniquely effective approach. Here are some of the questions we asked him. What does effective post-event follow-up look like? Effective follow up is about making sure that you’ve collected all the information you need so that you can activate immediately following the event. One strategy Scott uses for collecting data on the floor is shorthand. “People are really focused on collecting lots of business cards at events, they’re meeting all these people and they think they’re going to remember these conversations afterward. However, when the event is over they really don’t know who anybody is and they don’t know what to do. Using shorthand, whether it’s “H” “W” “C” for hot, warm, cold, or “I” for influencer, something to clue you into who this person is and where you need to go with them—what’s the logical next step in your follow-up process. That’s really important.” The next step Scott recommends is getting this information into your CRM or contact management software quickly. People walk away with fistfuls of business cards and say, “I’ll do that data entry tonight, or I’ll do it over the weekend,” and it never gets done. Having someone dedicated to entering data into Salesforce, etc. can be very helpful. Speed is a critical element to follow-up. When do you schedule your follow-up meeting? If possible, set up your follow-up meetings while you’re still at the event. In a world where everyone has their calendars on their phones, it’s possible to set that date for coffee on the spot. This is also a great way to tell if someone is truly interested, like a “trial close.” “Setting things up immediately is a game changer,” according to Scott. Over time, even those you had incredible conversations with can go cold if not followed up with immediately. What are the rules of effective follow-up? Always have a clear next step. 

Scott is Sandler trained, which for him means that he never leaves an engagement without a clear next step. This includes letting prospects know that “No” is ok. “Especially if you have built rapport with someone, don’t get strung along,” he recommends. Either move someone into your sales pipeline or mutually agree that there is no future. Either way, your next step should be clear. Time kills all deals. 

People often give prospects a few days thinking they need time to get settled after a show. If you really believe in your product or service, don’t be the 10th person to contact your prospect—be the first. That may mean following up sooner than you think is appropriate, but you have to move quickly. We recommend you check out the full interview for more of Scott’s thoughts on the importance of immediate follow-up, why phone calls are better than email, and how to scale your follow-up strategy using an employee playbook. And don’t forget to tune in for our next live-stream interview on October 23rd when the topic will be: Walking the Trade Show Floor: How to Get Value When You Can’t Exhibit. 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.

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