trade show lead capture
Samuel J. Smith
September 14, 2018
Trade show lead capture starts with your booth staffers gathering info with paper, an app, or even an interactive trade show game. And chances are very high that your booth staffers will be all or mostly your sales reps.
So, to help you improve your trade show lead capture results, here are 5 tips on how to get the most from your sales reps staffing your booth.
It’s only natural that some sales people love staffing trade show booths, while others dread it. The single best way to improve your trade show lead capture is to avoid staffing your booth with sales people who look at trade shows as an unwelcome chore. They feel that working the booth prevents them from closing deals. Instead, staff your booth with willing reps who see trade shows as an opportunity to talk face-to-face to many more prospects in a few days then they ever could while sitting in their office.
When you exhibit at a major USA trade show, it’s a given that attendees will be given badges, and that you as an exhibitor can rent a badge scanner to scan those attendees. A badge scanner saves exhibitors time during in-booth interactions, allowing them to quickly gather attendees’ contact info, and at some shows, a few qualifying data points, too.
But what’s an exhibitor to do when the show doesn’t offer a badge scanner because the show:
You still want to gather lead info, and gather it quickly, even if there is no badge scanner.
Exhibiting at trade shows – how hard can it be? You just show up and talk to people, right?
Actually, exhibiting is surprisingly harder than it looks. That said, trade shows still remain very popular (and even keep growing) because they can produce great results when done right.
If you’re exhibiting for the first time, we want to help shorten your learning curve with these 8 tips you need to succeed:
Everything you do at trade shows should support your main sales and marketing goal. So if you don’t know why you’re exhibiting, there’s no way to succeed. Discover or decide if your trade show goals are (most likely) to boost brand awareness, generate sales leads, or strengthen key relationships, or something else. (This advice is good, even if you are not first time trade show exhibitors.)
It’s unfortunately far too easy to make mistakes with trade show lead retrieval.
That’s because trade show lead retrieval systems and booth staffers are often different from show to show, and because it’s not something you manage every day.
But because trade shows leads are some of the most valuable sales and marketing investments your company makes, it’s so worth your time to prevent making these mistakes.
Here are 8 preventable trade show lead retrieval mistakes we’ve seen our trade show game clients make. We’ve even made some of these mistakes ourselves (fortunately not anymore)!
More and more exhibitors are ditching paper and instead of using a trade show app to capture lead data from their in-booth conversations.
Many shows provide a lead retrieval app that allows exhibitors to scan a badge and capture data digitally. Some exhibitors are going a step further and are purchasing lead capture software that they can use across many shows.
There are advantages to using a trade show app to save time entering and exporting data. However, too many exhibitors fail to go one more crucial step and include valuable qualifying questions in their digital lead capture.
Research suggests that only 18% of trade show leads are followed up after a show. Further, hot leads and warm leads turn cold the longer you take to follow up with those leads.
If you are B2B exhibitor – then you are probably doing the following:
Time is money, my friend. Speed is the name of the game. If you don’t follow up on your trade show leads fast, your chances of winning the sale plummet drastically. According to InsideSales.com, 35–50% of sales go to the vendor that responds to leads first!
Let me tell you a story about how our Digital Fishbowl saved us from losing potentially lost trade show leads during the busiest times in our own trade show booth. And why you should, therefore, consider adding one or more Digital Fishbowls to your own booths at your busiest shows, too.
Within less than an hour of the start of the EXHIBITORLIVE 2018 show, we had 13 visitors at the same time in our 10 x 20 booth! Hooray! Just one problem — we only had 4 staffers to talk to them all!
It was awesome to have so many interested visitors, but agonizing to see interested prospects ready to walk away. Especially when you know (thanks to Exhibit Surveys) that the average cost per trade show lead is $283 each!
When you manage a large trade show program with 20, 50, 70, even over 100 shows, your regional trade shows pose several unique and significant problems – problems our Digital Fishbowl game solves:
Let’s dive deeper into each of these regional trade show problems that the SocialPoint Digital Fishbowl game solves.
When you “volunteer” your remote field sales reps to staff your booth at regional shows, they reluctantly participate. Hey, it’s not really their job, but for most companies, their sales reps are their best choice for engaging with local attendees. It’s just that those salespeople will often not have your sense of urgency to get any leads they take back to you.
Just as there are 60 minutes to an hour and 4 seasons to a year, there are 5 steps to the trade show lead cycle:
Every step of the cycle is key to generating leads that turn into sales and profits. That’s why we’ve designed our interactive trade show booth games to help facilitate each step:
Attracting trade show leads is certainly the best-appreciated reason for using our trade show booth games. Attendees walk into your booth for the fun, the excitement, the cool-looking branded visuals, the chance to win prizes, and to compete for bragging rights. Our games will help you attract more attendees out of the aisle and into your booth.