Booth Hustling: How We Get a 25x Return on Sending SDRs to Trade Shows

When I was an SDR my AE Philip Bokan and I went to a trade show for an industry that our company had its eyes on. We targeted 20 accounts and came home with 9 Sales Accepted Leads and $300,000 in pipeline which turned into $60,000 in new business. Not bad for a few days in on the road! Best part is: We kept doing this and got the same results every time.

If you are an SDR or do your own prospecting, attending events where your customers are exhibiting is an easy way to get guaranteed airtime with your most important companies. And it converts!

Here’s the game plan:

1. Find an event. Ideally one with a lot of vendors and a huge exhibitor floor. Small ones work too though, just make sure there are at least 20 companies that would be awesome to land. You are going to want to find a trade show where your target customers are exhibiting.

2. Figure out who will be there and do research. For a lot of shows you can get a map of the exhibitor floor beforehand. If not, you can get a good idea by looking at the published list of sponsors and speakers. I also look at the event's hashtag on Twitter to see which companies are promoting their booth before the show.

3. Determine your target accounts and scour each account in Sales Navigator. For every single target account, find the 2-3 people that are most likely to be there and have influence within the company. Make a note of something personal about each of these prospect to use as a conversation starter later. Good examples are something relevant that happened recently at their company, mutual connections, or something they recently shared on LinkedIn.

4. Create a four step sequence two weeks before the event to ask to meet in person. I recommend a custom email asking to meet, a call, a followup email and an InMail. If you can get a meeting beforehand, Awesome! If not, no big deal. Between the email, voicemail and InMail, you name and face will be more recognizable to them when you see them. Often they will ask you where they know you from when you meet them.

5. Go up to booths you are targeting and get the initial meeting! The best time to go is:

• Right before the trade show floor opens. Booth staff (decision makers and friends of decision makers) are standing there bored. Just walking up to them will usually prompt them to start a conversation with you and ask you what you do. At this point: Do your thing! It's a different format but the same conversation you have over and over on the phone.
• Since the floor will be open most of the time you are there, the strategy you will want to use most often is booth stalking. This is where I stand at a distance, pretend to text people on my phone and watch the target booth for a slow moment. If the company’s booth is getting no attention, the people manning the booth are bored and having no traffic at all looks bad. Striking up a conversation at this point is easy. Warning: Do not approach booths when they are busy talking to prospects or customers! This will make them mad.

6. Start the conversation! Now is your chance. All those prospects that never pick up your calls or respond to your emails are literally standing right there! You should recognize your target prospect from your LinkedIn research if they are there. There is something really magical that happens when you apply skills from your call script to a live conversation on a trade show floor.

They can’t hang up on you!

If you have a solution that will provide immense value, you will have plenty of time to help them understand why they should take a meeting with no fear of a hang up. When I find one of my target prospects at a show I almost always get an initial meeting with them unless there is a legitimate reason we don't need to meet.

If the person you want to talk to is not there, I always ask when she will be there or where I can find her. The folks at the booth will point me in the right direction surprisingly often.

7. Set meetings with targeted prospects that will take them at the event, but if not, make a note to put them in a followup sequence later.

8. Two weeks after the trade show ends and put all prospects into a trade show followup sequence. Here's what I recommend:

Here's an example of what out results look like after the Post-Show Sequence:

This is how the numbers usually shake out:

10% of our opportunities (defined by a 30 minute discovery call) come from our pre-show sequence. 

40% will agree to meet us then and there at some point during the conference.

50% will take the meeting at some point during our followup sequence.

Why does this work so well?

If a company has a booth at a large trade show there are a few things that are also probably true:

• This is a company that is investing heavily in attracting new business
• The decision makers in Sales and Marketing are either standing at the booth or not too far away.

Also, no one else is doing this

This strategy is a home run if you sell to sales or marketing, but can also work to get you referrals to other types of buyers. You will find that the salespeople have a empathy for other salespeople and will listen and point you in the right direction. If you are planning to turn a conversation with sales into a referral to other parts of the org, the followup sequence portion becomes even more important.

Who is the best candidate to go? The scrappiest rep. Executing this strategy is exhausting physically and mentally and trying to sell to sellers at booths goes against social norms which can make it awkward and uncomfortable to execute. This isn’t a good job for a finesse player.

This all sounds great but what's the catch? Don't come back empty handed! This is not yet a common SDR strategy so if you don't produce, your manager will look foolish. That's the trade off with doing new things. The safest route for a manager is to do only what's been thoroughly proven out by others. Problem is, by the time this gets popular it will undoubtedly become less effective. No risk it no biscuit.

Good news is it doesn't cost much. You don't need to spend ridiculous amounts of money on a booth, you don't even need a conference pass. You can usually get the heavily discounted expo floor pass, flight, and hotel for $1,000-$2,000 all in.

So find an event, make a list of companies and prospects that you need to get in front of and tell your SDR manager to send you over. If you work hard, plan well, and leave everything on the floor it will pay off.

Good luck! post any questions/comments in the comments. I'll do my best to reply

Sam Nelson

Bonus points:

• If the conference has an app where you can message any other attendee, use it! I have never gotten a higher response rate of C-level executives than I have with a trade show app. I've deleted all the apps, but I want to say the response was >25% (And this is just me asking to meet them in person the next day).
• Use a sequence to follow up with the speakers. Following up with speakers and referencing their talk gets >60% response rate.
• Have fun! Companies spend crazy money on trade shows. The parties, t-shirts, and swag is amazing.