? of Exhibitors do not follow up leads effectively and persistently. What does it cost them?

Your pre-Trade Show promotion campaign was a success. Your booth was attracting passers-by’s attention. Your booth staff was excited to meet with so many clients and potential buyers. A week later, you’re back in the office with a batch of leads gathered during the exhibition. Now the real work starts.

? of exhibitors do not follow up leads effectively, persistently and consistently. This is one of the biggest mistakes made by exhibiting companies. Most business gained from business-to-business exhibitions is the result of follow-up efforts. Without it, you have very little hope to convert a prospect into a client. Think of the Trade Show as the start of a conversation. You need to continue the conversation in order to develop and nurture a good client relationship. Visitors take the time to stop at your exhibit, give you their contact details and trust you to follow-up with them, so don’t disappoint them. Following up with them shows that you have listened to their needs and demonstrates your professionalism as a potential partner or vendor. Effective lead follow-up requires strategic planning, speed and consistency.

Paul J. Meyer once said “Productivity is never an accident. It is always the result of a commitment to excellence, intelligent planning and focussed effort.” A sudden increase in leads can destroy your day-to-day routine for weeks. Don’t waste your leads because of time and lack of prior organisation.

Create a strategic lead follow up plan before the exhibition so that your team’s time and efforts are focused on execution after the exhibition. Decisions to make to create an effective lead follow up plan:

• Agree on how to qualify the leads - Hot, Medium, Cold depending on the prospect’s decision phase & Budget.
• Agree on a specific process to qualify the leads - Serie of questions.
• Agree on when the leads will be distributed - before or after getting them into your database?
• Determine who will be responsible for lead follow-up - sales, marketing, outsource personnel?
• Agree on when the leads will be followed up - Same day, within a week.
• What will the leads receive - email, phone call, social media posts, newsletter?

Faster is definitely better in the follow-up game for three reasons. Since attendees visit many exhibitors on the exhibition floor, you can assume that your leads are also your competitor’s leads, and you want to put your offering forward first. You also want to beat the iron while it is still hot and be remembered in your attendees’ mind. Lastly a prompt follow-up is a positive reflection on your company.

A small percentage of the leads you capture during a Trade Show are sales ready. The plan is to convert the lead into a sale with repeated follow-up. In various CEIR (Centre for Exhibitions Industry Research) reports, it is demonstrated that it takes fewer sales calls to close a sale with a lead from an exhibition than without one. Nevertheless, it is likely to take multiple follow-up efforts. It usually takes 3.5 sales encounters (calls, meetings, emails) or less to close a sale from an exhibition lead compared to 4.5 sales calls without an exhibition lead. As an exhibitor, you have already invested time and money prior and during the event so don’t waste all these efforts by not following up on your leads. The message is very clear, engage in follow-up straight away!

As for leads whose purchase needs are longer term, persistence and consistency are the essences of the game! It is important to stay in touch with your prospects until they are sales ready. Nurture these new relations with consistent communications that describe how you can help them solve their business struggles. Become the “Go To Expert” for when they are ready to buy. Make sure that they will think of you.

So, if you are an exhibitor, are you creating a follow up plan prior the event and are you staffing your booth purposefully? Do you have a booth-staff strategic program, and does it offer training to help them successfully qualify leads on the spot and direct these leads to the right person within a specific time scale?’ Make sure you are positioning your organisation’s exhibit program for success!

After thirty years and tons of research, I believe it is so important to ensure that trade exhibitions are understood and used to leverage long terms client’s relations and ultimately business growth.

To know more about Luxury Business Connections please visit our website