5 Networking and Trade Show Mistakes Salespeople Need to Stop Making

Networking events are bizarre things - aren't they?

You're sent off to schmooze over breakfast with a few possible new business opportunities - but when you get there (more often than not) you end up lingering round the bacon sandwich table, drinking cold coffee and chatting to a "therapist" who suggests she could put hot pebbles on your back for as little as ￡50.

Same with trade shows (the retail cousin of networking, because visitors choose to enter your thin walled box for a chat, rather than you chasing them around a room trying to gently attract their attention) - where companies spend fortunes sending sales bods half way across the world - with no real commercial metrics attached for what might or might not happen afterwards.

I love the response the fabulous keynote speaker - Geoff Burch - gave when he was asked by a CEO (who had hired Geoff to speak at their International sales conference in Las Vegas) what he believed the sales team would walk away with after the event - 'cos Geoff said;

"Most probably - a small towelling dressing gown and a couple of sachets of shampoo!" ??

So I thought I'd share five things that sales people, sales managers and their marketing teams regularly get wrong at these events - and how to make sure it doesn't happen to you.

You Don't Have a Raison d'Etre

In French, raison d'etre quite literally means "reason for being".

Ask most salespeople what their "reason for being" at a networking event or trade show, and the (heartbreakingly honest) response is usually something like:

"I'm just expected to attend these as part of my job!"

While, the marketing version of that is;

"it's not about attending the trade show - it's about making sure you're NOT PERCEIVED as the brand that didn't attend the trade show!"

On top of that, most salespeople will also tell you it's a huge, wasteful chunk of time away from their "day job" - while the junior members of the team are walking laps of the hall with the swagger of a tech millionaire because it's the first time someone has put them up in a nice hotel on expenses.

What to do instead:

Ask yourself this question:

"What would you count as success at the event - what is your best intended outcome?"

And then you have to make sure the answer to that question is both COMMERCIALLY WORTHWHILE - and - REALISTIC.

If you provide easily obtainable services or products - maybe you want to sell something while you're there. Fair enough, set yourself a target. If that's realistic.

However, if your sales cycle normally requires 3 exploratory meetings, a written proposal and a site survey - signing up a brand customer almost certainly isn't going to happen.

If that's the case, you probably want to walk away with meetings in the diary, or contact details with the promise of a follow up.

You're Talking Too Much About Yourself

OK - I need you to try to remember this simple phrase: "Telling IS NOT Selling!"

There's a quote from Seth Godin that I liked so much, I included it in my book Selling with EASE;

“If you’ve told me what I need to know to be able to easily say no, I’ll say no.

The best elevator pitch doesn’t pitch your project. It pitches the meeting about your project.

It’s not a practiced, polished turd of prose that pleases everyone on the board and your marketing team”

What to do instead:

Don't turn up unprepared - learn how to ask amazingly deep questions - and then arm yourself with 5 brilliant open questions that will get you closer to your overall objectives.

Listen, I know you know how to speak, you've been chatting away for years - you manage to hold conversation with other humans all the time without a script.

But that doesn't necessarily mean you always know precisely what to say - to achieve your personal objectives - exactly when you need to say it.

Ask yourself this:

What am I trying to achieve with the people I will meet here?

What do I need to know about them to help me achieve that?

What is the shortest question I can ask to receive that information?

Most importantly;

Be crazy level curious about why they decided to visit the event, show them how interested you are in the answers they give (getting even more curious about where that new info takes you) and THEN show them how you do what you do for your happy customers and people just like them.

You're Not Engaging Enough

A room full of painfully shy salespeople, at an event that was designed to help salespeople sell, is one of the most pointless spaces in the known universe.

While at trade shows, there are always some salespeople (who clearly think attending such an event is somehow beneath them), camp themselves at the back of the stand, buried deep into their lap top - getting on with the job they would have been doing if their boss hadn't made them rip 3 days out of their diary and attend this nonsense waste of time of a trade show.

What to do instead:

First off - keep reminding yourself why you are there.

Chant your raison d'etre to yourself like some kind of incantation.

If you have to approach them - or they approach you - start the conversation with a brilliant question - and spend your time looking for people who need your help.

Failing to Make Yourself Discoverable After the Event

You could display a QR code that links to your call calendar, you can hand out business cards (digital or old school), you can offer to fire over a LinkedIn invitation - in fact it helps if you go full Swiss army knife on your options with this one.

Which ever communication methods you decide to take on - make sure that your time at the event doesn't turn out to be completely wasted because you didn't plan ahead and ended up with no one to talk to afterwards.

I once attended a week long event where my sales team took the contact details of everyone who wanted to discuss the possibility of becoming a customer post event - back then it was paper contact forms filled out with a company branded biro.

The marketing team insisted on collecting these forms every day so that they had some metric at the end of the show to justify the cost - and so they stored all the contact forms in a large, unmarked cardboard box.

On Monday, when we all got back into head office for a debrief - the head of marketing sheepishly told us all, that the box was left behind on the final day - and when the stand was being dismantled - the box (containing hundreds of leads) had been thrown away by contractors as rubbish.

Luckily - while the prospects were filling out the marketing form - my team made sure they were also swapping and storing phone numbers - with a promise in the diary of a catch up within two weeks of the chat.

After You Left - You Completely Forgot that You'd Attended

Well that was a nice couple of days away from the family, wasn't it?

You got to chat to some brilliant new contacts, put the world to rights at the bar until late into the night and found an absolutely delightful tapas restaurant just round the corner.

Right then - let's get back home to normality and crack on with the job you were doing before this inconvenient distraction.

What to do instead:

Follow up, follow up and follow up some more!

Organise for yourself to create a five step strategy with different types of outreach (LinkedIn, Email, Phone, Letters, Video) to make sure you get the meeting in the diary and exceed your initial targets - and make it all worthwhile.

Well, there you go - I hope you find those ideas useful.

I'd love to hear what works for you at networking events and trade shows in the comments below.

To your success,

Chris

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