Take a look at your trade show budget.  Is it focused on developing sales or just on generating leads?  Of all of the important line items in your budget, how many focus on converting the leads into sales?  Chances are that if you’re taking a traditional approach to allocating your trade show budget, your marketing efforts may fall short of producing the number of sales and revenues that they should.

Here’s why.  Industry statistics show that a staggering 80% of trade show leads are not followed up on.  If your follow up plan does not extend much beyond handing the leads over to the sales team, then you’re the rule rather than the exception.  Developing trade show leads into sales opportunities requires a more strategic approach.  By helping your sales team at this crucial stage you can significantly impact their effectiveness and production.

It’s critical that your trade show marketing plan does not stop at the show floor.  There are several important steps necessary to develop the leads into sales opportunities.  Leads must be called, decision-makers must be reached, and opportunities must be qualified to leverage the time of your sales team. 

Allocating a portion of your budget for marketing to qualify the leads before the sales team takes over will impact the success of your show tremendously.  Whether you invest in your marketing team, an inside sales team, or a lead qualification company, the key is having the expertise that you need to execute the following techniques:

• Call every lead immediately after the show.  This allows you to reach the prospects when their interest level from the show is at its highest.  It also allows you to get ahead of slow-moving competitors and make sure that no leads fall through the cracks.  While calling six weeks or six months later is better than not calling at all, it’s critical to call every lead immediately after the show.  You invested a lot of money on the show in order to initiate a personal relationship.  Mailing catalogs or a power point presentation and hoping the prospect will call is not enough to maintain it.    
• Call several times until you reach the decision-maker.  It takes several calls to reach the decision-maker.  The higher their level of authority, the more calls are necessary.  To make things more challenging, often the right company stops by your booth but not the right decision-maker.  This is where the breakdown occurs.  It’s very difficult for sales reps to make enough calls to reach the decision-maker.  They either run out of time or become frustrated and do not make the calls.  Many sales are lost because it is difficult to maintain the follow-up needed to penetrate deeper into the company to find the opportunity.  While some sales will require extra resources to develop them, the investment will pay off in the long run.  
• Quality grade and prioritize the opportunities for the sales team to leverage their time.  The sales rep’s time is valuable, and is best spent only with leads that have a qualified opportunity.  However, even among these ideal prospects, they need to know exactly who to focus their time with.  The first priority is the prospects that have a need and want to meet right now.  The second is the prospects that have a need and want a follow-up within a specific time frame.  This way they will never waste time with non-qualified prospects.

Put your trade show budget where your sale is.  There is an old sports saying that holds that every baseball team will win one third of its games and lose one-third of its games.  What separates the winners from the losers is what they do with the remaining third.  It is the same with companies exhibiting at a trade show.  There will be obvious leads that will be cherry picked and quickly result in sales.  There will also be leads that will never turn into sales opportunities.  But how you budget and execute the qualification process with the remaining leads will really determine how successful your trade show will be. 

About the author
Mike Drohan is the president of Lead Generation Solutions, a Wayne, Pennsylvania company that specializes in lead qualification services to help companies leverage the efficiency of their field sales team and increase the ROI on their trade show and event marketing efforts.  For additional information visit www.leadgenerationsolutions.com or mdrohan@LeadGenerationSolutions.com