trade show strategy plan

Exhibitor Tips, Workshops and Webinars

Nail the Follow-up: Close More Sales, A Conversation with Scott MacGregor – Part 1

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In late July, our team at MEET launched an exciting new series: Coffee and Conversation, periodic live-stream interviews with experts and veterans in the trade show, event, and marketing industries.  Our goal with these conversations is to share the wisdom that comes from work on the ground and to identify common challenges and simple solutions. On September 19th we connected with Scott MacGregor, Founder and CEO of SomethingNew. After 17 years as a marketing and sales professional, Scott felt frustrated both by the overall quality of candidates he received from recruiting agencies, and the dearth of knowledge around how talent acquisition, arguably the most critical factor to a company’s success, could be done better. Scott started SomethingNew in an effort to transform the talent acquisition experience for large and growing companies. Using unique, proven strategies, SomethingNew helps companies identify, select and onboard marketing and sales professionals, and change the way they approach talent acquisition in the future. We chose Scott for the topic of trade show follow-up because of SomethingNew’s uniquely effective approach. For Scott, effective follow-up begins before the event ever takes place—a practice that sounded very familiar to us. (Check out our post Winning the Race Before it Begins to learn more about MEET’s approach to event preparation.) The role of preparation in a follow-up strategy Laying the groundwork for our conversation, we began by asking Scott to describe what type of events SomethingNew typically attends and how he approaches these opportunities. Scott described a diverse range of large and small events where marketing and sales professionals convene like Dreamforce or Hypergrowth put on by Drift.  In approaching these opportunities, he works to ensure they are maximizing ROI through preparation. He shared, “a lot of companies wing it and that’s dangerous. You’ve got to have a plan, you’ve got to have goals, you’ve got to know what your follow-up is going to look like before the event even happens.” How you execute on that plan becomes the next most important step. What can we gain from really good follow-up? Every action we take in business has a purpose. Imagining that we’ve self-actualized our follow-up precisely as planned, we asked Scott what is the best reaction or ultimate outcome we might see. In essence, what can really good follow-up earn us? “Sales is a process,” Scott replied. Really good follow-up gets you to the next step in your sales process. It is typically not the case that you meet someone and sign a contract on the spot. “There is discovery and a lot of listening that you need to do. It is critical that you understand and follow through with the entire sales process.” The role of trust Trust plays a large role in moving prospects from initial engagement through the sales pipeline. We asked Scott about how he builds trust at events and beyond. “We have a philosophy of not being desperate for business. Like a dog smells fear, prospects smell when you’re desperate for business.” Understanding sales as a process helps to eliminate the desperation trap as it helps to ensure a robust pipeline. “When you stop selling and start listening, you gain trust because people aren’t used to that. They’re used to getting hit in the face with a sales pitch constantly and when that doesn’t happen, they’re intrigued.” The key, Scott states, is to be a resource to your prospects. “When you’re not trying to ram something down someone’s throat you become a trusted advisor very quickly.” Effective follow-up requires planning, it requires trust building, and overall, it requires a long-term view of the sales process. Stay tuned for Part 2 of our interview with Scott MacGregor from SomethingNew to learn more about his unique strategies for closing sales through follow-up. 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

5 Common Challenges to Identifying Your Best Trade Show Selection Process

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Determining the best trade show selection process for your B2B company takes time and resources. At MEET, we often witness companies making a good effort to survey the market of available shows, however, when it comes time to make a selection, they fail to identify a process that is reliable, repeatable, and has future value in guiding their ongoing event selection decisions. The best trade show selection process is one that maximizes ROI. To use our favorite fishing analogy, it places you in the right body of water, at the right depth, with the precisely the right bait to catch the exact fish you set out to catch. And because you have employed a strategy, you’ll catch more than one today and several more the next time you go out fishing. At MEET, our goal is to help companies eliminate the guesswork in achieving their best trade show selection process. We help growth companies and pavilion hosts effectively exhibit at trade shows, a process which starts with determining which shows will deliver the best ROI. Why exhibit at trade shows? Companies that exhibit at trade shows typically do so for the following four reasons: Identify new prospects Engage with existing prospects Market knowledge and competitive intelligence Hypothesis testing First and foremost, companies attend trade shows to identify new prospects—ideal customers who match their buyer persona. (Check out these posts for more on defining a prospect and buyer personas.) Trade shows are also excellent opportunities to efficiently connect with and nurture relationships with those already in your sales funnel, moving them closer toward closing a deal or elimination. Trade shows also put you in an ideal space to assess the market, evaluate your competitive advantage, and test your value proposition with potential customers. Particularly for early-stage companies, the ability to engage in rapid-fire testing of different offers will deliver valuable insight into the needs and desires of your target market. In fact, doing this right will evolve your customer communication and engagement that would not otherwise be possible. 5 Common Challenges Even for companies with a strong commitment to exhibiting at trade shows, determining the best trade show selection process may be challenging. Here are the five challenges we see most often. FOMO Companies tend to stick to the shows they have done in the past for fear of missing out (FOMO). We notice many companies getting stuck in a pattern with particular shows even though they may not deliver the best ROI. Avoiding the herd mentality is not easy. 2. Failure to Update Many companies fail to refresh their view of available events in the marketplace. Events may not necessarily be repeated each cycle; likewise new events enter the market all the time. It is important to know which events are emerging as some may offer special features to attract your ideal prospect. A full review and good evaluation metric is key. 3. Lack of Focus Whether it’s due to a fear of missing out or poorly defined buyer personas, some companies tend to apply an overly broad focus to their event selection process, which in turn delivers mixed results and wasted resources. 4. Persona Creep Companies work hard to map their buyer personas (semi-fictional representations of their ideal customers). However, despite their best intentions, when it comes time to apply these personas to particular events, we notice that the persona tends to broaden. We call this persona creep. It takes discipline to honor those personas even if it means fewer prospects. 5. Go Big vs. Specific Many companies fall prey to a misguided attraction to large events where they will meet high volumes of potential prospects. The challenge is that many large events tend to be more general. That means a lower ratio of prospects to attendees when compared to specific, smaller events that attract higher numbers of ideal prospects. It’s important to analyze the ratio # of prospects/$ spent, plus take into account the dilution factor—your prospect may never even find your well-curated offer on a very crowded floor. Big is not always bad, but you have to assess this ratio when making an evaluation of the opportunity. Identifying your best trade show selection process requires time and resources. Choosing events that truly deliver ROI make it worth every penny. 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, Pavilions, Return on Investment, Uncategorized

Selling at Trade Shows as Part of a Larger Plan

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When done well, selling at trade show can easily be your best opportunity to get face to face with your ideal and potential customers. Selling at Trade a Show is not an activity to take lightly. It is a marketing and sales opportunity that requires extensive planning and preparation. When done well, selling at trade shows can easily be your best opportunity to get face to face with your ideal customers. Maybe hundreds of them. In our recent post: Personalizing Your Trade Show Business Strategy, we talked about buyer personas and how to assemble them using customer interviews. The purpose of developing a buyer persona, or semi-fictional representation of your ideal customer, is to drill down on the precise goals and challenges of the individuals in your target market. While target customers will inevitably shift over time as both your company matures and the market changes, maintaining a well-informed trade show business strategy requires that you hone in on precisely who it is that you are aiming to meet prior to each and every event you participate in. In this post, we’d like to focus on how to apply your hard work in developing buyer personas to annual and individual event plans. Using Buyer Personas to Guide Your Annual Trade Show and Event Plan Rather than employing a “Lazy Susan” approach to selling at trade show, i.e. taking advantage of whichever opportunity is offered in front of you, we recommend devising a data-driven annual plan. Referencing your buyer personas should inform you of which type of events your prospects are most likely to attend, and whether they are focused locally, regionally, nationally or internationally. Data from your buyer persona should also inform your participation strategy based on how your ideal customer typically engages with fellow participants. Do they generally spend time listening to speakers and opinion leaders or do they spend most of their time on the floor with exhibitors and sponsors? Finally, buyer persona data may inform your decision of whether to join industry groups or associations. Particularly for young companies in growth mode, participation in local or regional associations can help to develop strong customer density within a region, industry, or customer type that will help your company grow faster and more efficiently. Using Buyer Personas to Guide Your Individual Trade Show Plan Selling at trade shows that you’ve hand selected based on buyer persona data offers an array of opportunities for customization. You may use buyer personas to determine how you will participate in the event—as a speaker, exhibitor, or sponsor, as well as where is the optimal place for your booth on the show floor. Buyer personas are also critical to informing your offer strategy. Your booth offer must speak directly to the prospects you are aiming to attract. For example, at an event of 10,000 people, your buyer persona data may project that 200 prospects will be in attendance. Your goal in designing your offer should be for 9,800 people to walk by without stopping. Only your prospects should be attracted with the right offer. Design your offer to speak directly to your ideal customers and only your ideal customers. The more shiny objects, be they candy, pens or iPad offers, that you have in your booth that attracts the general attendee, the less of your prospects will see you. The 200 that stop to engage with your team—they are high-quality prospects. Selling at trade shows requires exhibitors to make a number of decisions prior to hitting the floor. Using buyer personas to develop annual and individual event plans are an excellent way to ensure that each of these decisions will get you one step closer to your ideal customer. 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.

Uncategorized

Personalizing Your Trade Show Business Strategy

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You can depend on us as your best trade show management brand . We believes that strong relationships play a vital role in growth of your company. Personalizing your trade show business strategy means designing and producing an offer that meets the unique, individual requirements of your target buyer persona.Basically, it is a trade show management for which, you must know who your ideal customer is, what keeps them up at night, and what it is they desperately need a solution for. In our recent post: Selling at Trade Shows: How to Discover your Ideal Customer, we talked about the steps that both B2B and B2C companies take to uncover the variety of attributes that make up their target market. The next step is determining how to use these attributes to develop buyer personas. What is a buyer persona? A buyer persona is a semi-fictional representation of your ideal customer. In essence, it is a personality that you can use to evolve your trade show business strategy, communications and marketing around so that when you are in front of the right audience, they are immediately drawn to your offer. Assembling a Buyer Persona Once you have identified your ideal customers (again, check out our most recent post on how to go about this), it’s time to assemble your buyer persona. By “assemble” we mean catalogue and create the archetype that will inform your trade show business strategy. To ensure accuracy, while retaining your ideal customer, we recommend setting up brief interviews. Whether it’s via Skype, phone or in-person meeting, ask your ideal customer a variety of questions such as: • Why do you buy this product/service? • Why do you buy it from us? • What was your world like before you bought this product from us? • What challenges does our product or service alleviated for you? • And what changed since you bought our product? • How could product better serve you? • Are there additional opportunities to improve? • What other challenges do you face in this area? Next, you want to use this interview data to drill down on the demographics, goals, preferences, interests of your ideal buyer, and inefficiencies that challenge them. In the B2B world, personal information may include compensation, and past work history. The role they play within the company both in terms of responsibilities and reporting structure will improve your ability to craft an offer that will appeal to them and speak directly to their unique needs. In the B2C world, your buyer persona will focus more on the customer’s frustrations and motivations, honing in on how she defines convenience and ease. The more knowledge acquired, i.e. the tighter your buyer persona, the more effective your trade show business strategy will be. Whether your ideal customers are young working mothers with children or small and mid-market manufacturing companies that have recently gone through a product recall, engaging in the process of personalizing your trade show business strategy requires a concerted effort to drill down on the personal goals and challenges faced by individuals in your target market who have critical need and make buying decisions. These target customers will inevitably shift over time as both your company matures and the market changes. Keeping a pulse on your ideal customers and using this data to constantly refresh your trade show business strategy with new buyer personas will ensure that each event you invest in will be time and money well spent. 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

Selling at Trade Shows and How to Discover Your Ideal Customer

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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.

Exhibitor Tips, Return on Investment, Uncategorized

The Role of Metrics in an Exhibition Success Strategy

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Maximize your trade show ROI metrics by evaluating some of the important metrics that will help you to set and track goals.</> Trade show events require a significant commitment of time and resources. Measuring and analyzing data after you’ve completed an event is therefore critical from both a ROI and knowledge building perspective. Using metrics will help you evolve your exhibition success strategy, create team accountability, optimize event selection and execution, and ensure that you continue to get more and more out of trade shows and events over time. What do event metrics look like? First, event metrics should be aligned with your growth goals. Additionally, if you are reporting to someone else, as may be the case between exhibitors and pavilion hosts, these metrics should be aligned with their goals as well. (See our recent post: Trade Show Strategy ROI for the Greater Good for more on the function of post-event reporting.) Sample metrics may include: Number of leads (the number of customers, partners, channels or distributors) Cost per lead Appointments generated per lead Proposals generated per lead Revenue generated per lead Sales cycles may be long. While twelve to eighteen months wouldn’t be unusual for a B2B sale, it could possibly take two to three years to recruit companies to your region. As a result, it may be difficult to employ revenue per lead for decision-making in the immediate aftermath of the event. Your exhibition success strategy should recognize that while earlier decisions, those you make immediately following the event, will be based on the number of leads, appointments, and proposals generated, over time as you start to build sales and conversion history, additional metrics will serve to better inform your decisions. The best way to collect event metrics is to engage your stakeholders—the various participants in the booth and pavilion—in a post-event survey. Question topics may include: Quality of contacts Booth traffic Set-up Location within the trade show or pavilion Your goal is to get a 360° view of the exhibitors and pavilion performance. Using Metrics to Build Knowledge From a knowledge building perspective, metrics are particularly useful for comparing production capacity across various events. As you begin to plan which events to participate in, you may use this data to approach event organizers, specifically those whose events you would like to attend but demonstrate below average results in your matrix. The beauty of a data-driven approach is that you can relay this information matter-of-factly. From there, you can engage organizers as partners to explore what can be done collectively to improve your metrics. Whether it’s moving your location or lowering the cost of entry, there are a number of ways that organizers can help to improve your results. And again, all of this is measurable. Using Metrics to Build Partnerships In the B2B world, we invest in many types of marketing to get in front of a target customer. The cool thing about trade shows and events is that they do just that—put you right in front of customers. The challenge however, is that your target customers are mixed amongst a sea of other customers that all look the same as they walk by. The right offer will lead them to jump out and identify themselves. Bringing in event hosts as partners will help to ensure that nothing stands between your offer and your target customers. If event hosts are not willing to jump on board with your exhibition success strategy, that should tell you something. In our experience, if you approach event organizers with good information, i.e. clear metrics that they can respond to, it is likely that they will work with you to help achieve your goals.  Event hosts have a great deal of flexibility as far as how they can enhance the experience of each exhibitor and pavilion host. The key is to leverage that. Seeking continuous improvement, negotiating concessions, adjusting strategy and being flexible as you go, these are the fundamental components of an exhibition success strategy. Measuring your results makes them possible. 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, Return on Investment, Uncategorized

Create Trade Show Strategy ROI for the Greater Good

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To know about how to plan a trade show, you should check once MEET ROI.</> It is the event planning company which helps you in generating best returns. As a pavilion host, your exhibitors are a reflection of you. The better they perform, the better your pavilion will perform overall. Not only because exhibitors are generating sales, but because their positive performance reflects well on your region, making it more attractive to businesses that are looking to open new offices, find new suppliers, or build new manufacturing facilities. In our webinar on Pavilion Pitfalls, we talk about trade show strategy ROI and how to ensure that client companies or exhibitors are both high performing and highly invested in the pavilion. At MEET, we recommend a co-investment and training strategy that not only raises the bar for exhibitor performance but offers capacity building resources that raise the tide for all boats. A common complaint we hear from pavilion hosts is that it’s hard to find enough enthusiastic exhibitors to fill all the booths. As the event approaches, hosts find they need to cut prices in order to fill slots or even give booths away for free just to fill them. One way to ensure that exhibitors are invested in the pavilion is to promote it as a cooperative marketing opportunity. Not only is the cost to participate in a pavilion booth significantly less than exhibitors would have to pay for an independent booth, the leverage and promotion capabilities represent unrivaled added value. Similar to the envelope you receive in the mail containing many different store coupons, cooperative marketing offers a less expensive, less risky trade show strategy ROI. Beyond how you promote the booth to exhibitors, pavilion hosts can use a number of co-investment strategies to help guarantee high performance. Here are three co-investment techniques to consider: Direct cash investment The more (and we want to emphasize that more is better) that exhibitors are willing to pay for a booth, the more value they are likely to derive from it. Assigning a high price to join the pavilion sends a message about the value of the event. Setting a low price has a similarly negative effect. 2. Minimum standards Setting a minimum standard for participation in the booth sends an important message about expectations and sets a performance threshold that exhibitors can use for goal setting. By joining a pavilion, exhibitors are representing themselves as well as the region or industry. As such, they need to perform at a much higher level. Their ability to meet some of these minimum standards in advance can help to enable their acceptance as a pavilion exhibitor. Meeting all minimum standards be used to determine future participation. 3. Post-event reporting Creating accountability through post-event reporting is fundamental to trade show strategy ROI. Ways to incentivize this may be through a money-back scheme whereby exhibitors who complete all required training, meet minimum standards and submit post-event reporting receive a rebate on their investment. There’s no one size fits all; figuring out what works best for your participants is key.  The MEET team spends a lot of time strategizing with its clients to customize the pavilion exhibitor system, optimizing the approach for specific audiences and goals. Finally, there’s capacity building through training.  Offering a comprehensive training that sets expectations for exhibiting teams will boost performance on an individual booth level and for your region as the pavilion puts out a more energized and synchronized vibe. Sample topics include pre-setting appointments, the role of the sales and booth teams, networking, and how to support peer exhibitors, in addition to basic ground rules such as dress codes and cell phone use. When pavilion hosts employ trade show strategy ROI that is focused on investing in and building the capacity of exhibitors, everyone wins.  That is a greater good. 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

Three Challenges, One Solution: Strategic Partnerships

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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.

Return on Investment, Uncategorized

Looking to Expand into the U.S. Market? Invest Early

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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.

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Looking for a Trade Show Staffing Strategy? Try Divide and Conquer

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Booth staff are always critical to any trade show. Reach to us if you need professional trade show staffing strategy for all your pre event activities. Peter Drucker, known as the father of modern management theory, once said: “Efficiency is doing the thing right. Effectiveness is doing the right thing.” At MEET, we talk a lot about solutions to the common challenges faced by trade show exhibitors and pavilion hosts. Our goal is to help company executives and economic development professionals skillfully utilize trade show exhibiting opportunities to find high-quality prospects, then lead, nurture and convert them into their sales pipeline. After 40 years, we’ve seen a lot of inefficiencies on the trade show floor, and a lot of ineffective staffing strategy. By helping our clients do the right things, the right way, we all come away winners. Up at the top of our list of inefficient and ineffective practices is the tendency of many exhibitors and pavilion hosts to put their salespeople in the booth to engage with prospects. After all, who better to sell your product, service, or region to potential customers than professional sales people, right? Wrong. At MEET, we argue that sales people and business development professionals are not those best suited to work in the booth, at least not as their primary function during the trade show event. When determining a staffing strategy, we recommend the divide and conquer approach. Maximize your efficiency and your effectiveness by making sure that everyone is using their skills and resources in a way that is best suited to achieve your goal. Recall in our discussion on how to determine the right offer to identify target prospects among the hundreds and sometimes thousands or tens of thousands of event attendees, that the key advantage to having the right offer is that salespeople do not have to be the ones to deliver it. Ideally, your offer is so well crafted that only qualified prospects are approaching your booth to opt-in. At that point, the engagement can be left up to transaction professionals—those whose sole job it is to deliver the well-crafted offer and retrieve the prospects’ contact information for future follow-up—an interaction that should take no more than two minutes to complete. What then do the sales and business development people do while your transaction professionals are engaged in these 2-minute conversations? You want them out of the booth, engaged in one-on-one meetings with trade show attendees who are deeper in the sales funnel like current prospects, current customer, partners and potential partners, and other strategic contacts. Allow your sales people the time and space to engage in richer, more substantive conversations than what takes place in the booth. These conversations may take place in a coffee shop or even a rented room. The sales team’s goal is to actually close business, sign contracts, penetrate existing accounts further, and develop new sales channels and referral sources. The beauty of the divide and conquer approach is that when each member of your team has their own mission, your overall results improve significantly. Bogging down your sales people with booth transactions is as harmful as bogging down the booth with these longer, more substantive conversations. Every long conversation that takes place in the booth equals 50, 100 or even 1,000 potential prospects that could not be engaged because there was no one to talk to. The goal of those working in the booth is to separate prospects from general attendees, in a matter of minutes. Helping your team deliver results while giving your audience exactly what they want requires a divide and conquer approach. Done right, it is also the most efficient and effective way to fill your pipeline with new prospects. 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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