Posts Tagged ‘qualified leads’
Written by Ken Newman on 20 May 2010
“Tired of going back to your office with only 400 leads from your last trade show? How about 4,000? How about 40,000?! That’s right, the SCAN-EM-ALL 450 is the answer to your dreams!
“Just hold it over your head, press the green button and in 30 seconds you have captured every lead on the trade show floor. It even works through bathroom doors!
The SCAN-EM-ALL 450. If it has a pulse. We’ll scan it!”
Is this where the industry is heading? By some companies’ current metrics, the Scan-Em-All 450 would guarantee you the most successful trade show ever: 45,000 attendees and 45,000 leads. Pretty great, huh? But what would you do with them all?
This hypothetical may be hyperbolical, but the issue is very real. Many exhibitors right now have two or three crowd gatherers tasked with scanning as many people as they possibly can. It’s an easy way to rack up “leads,” but what will happen when contact is made after the show? Many of these people will say “Sorry, I just stopped by to get the flying monkeys you were giving away.” What good is analyzing your cost per lead if what you’re calling a lead is just someone filling their backpack with free stuff?
What really does define a lead? Is it just anything with a pulse, or must it be something more?
Which is more successful: a trade show with 300 leads categorized as “HOT,” or 3,000 leads in a metaphorical trade show piñata, where you’ll just whack at it after the show and see what shakes out? Some will say there’s likely more buried value in those 3,000, while others would rather focus on 300 sizzling leads and avoid sifting through random thousands.
So, I’m asking you, the community: What should be the metric for a successful trade show? What technologies do you use to categorize your leads as “hot,” “warm” and “cold”? Should crowd gatherers themselves have a tiered system and be directing traffic based on perceived quality of the lead?
Unless we come together on a clear definition of a successful show, before too long, we’ll ALL be waving SCAN-EM-ALL 450s.
Have an industry-related question? Send “Newman” an e-mail and get your inquiry answered on the blog.
Tags: booth traffic, crowd gathering, qualified leads, trade show trends
Posted in Booth staff, Lead generation & follow up, Trade show news & trends | 3 Comments »
Written by Ken Newman on 23 February 2010
“Supercomm, a U.S. telecommunications trade show that has taken on different forms and names over the past several years, has been canceled for 2010 due to lack of interest … However, in recent years smaller, more focused trade shows have pulled some vendors and users away from events with a broad scope like Supercomm.”
–Stephen Lawson, IDG News Service
There’s no single “Hey Newman” question from a reader this week because they were pretty much all variations on the same theme: What does the end of Supercomm really mean?
Well, it means two things, the first of which was summed up quite nicely in the article quoted above. It means the future of the trade show industry is smaller, highly targeted shows where every attendee and every exhibitor can look around and feel confident they’re in the right place. The days of huge shows — where the newest enterprise server is one booth away from the latest massage chair — are ending.
And the reason for this is simple. Companies are looking at the cost-per-lead numbers from the largest trade shows and are starting to balk, similarly to what happened when the first handful of big players finally shouted, “The Emperor has no clothes!” and backed away from Comdex, starting off a cataclysmic chain reaction. Companies investing in trade shows need to know their money is well spent. And in an age where the technologies across multiple sectors are constantly changing and evolving, it’s essential that a trade show preserve intense focus and relevance. Enter the targeted, smaller, niche trade show, which could be held in the Marriott downtown instead of the convention center. There will be fewer attendees, but they’re all the target audience — rather than a shotgun blast mishmash of leads.
Moving forward, the most valuable shows will be the smaller ones. And it’s going to be up to the companies that exhibit to find the several smaller shows that will replace the one large trade show in which they typically participate. It’s no longer enough to just look at your competitors, figure out which trade show they’re attending and book a big booth at the same event. Companies will need to do the due diligence of researching the best fits for their products and services, and a good place to start is the comprehensive trade show listings at TSNN, for example.
Supercomm’s demise also brings up a point which cannot be overemphasized: Trade Shows are a business. And like any business, if they are not well run, they will fail. In Part Two of this post, I will talk about what I believe Exhibitors MUST do to run a successful enterprise.
Do you have an industry-related question you’d like answered on “Hey Newman”? Send him an e-mail and get your inquiry answered on the blog.
Tags: qualified leads, targeted shows, trade show trends
Posted in Trade show news & trends | 6 Comments »
Written by Ken Newman on 04 August 2009
Hey Newman, how long is too long before following up on trade show leads? Something tells me I’m not going to like the answer. -Robert in Palo Alto
Robert, three-quarters of the leads generated at trade shows are never followed up on … and when they are followed up, it tends to be way too late. So, what does that mean for you? It means don’t bother to spend the money on lead generation if you’re just trying to impress the people in the next booth with a big statistic. Those 2,000 leads you got don’t mean anything if you don’t do something with them.
It’s essential you have a mechanism in place for when you’re receiving the leads, whether that’s using barcode scanners or a little Q&A afterward to ascertain if this lead is something worth pursuing over the next week, two weeks, month or year. You need some way of categorizing your leads as “HOT,” “warm,” “cold” and “dead fish.” (Well, maybe not the last one.)
Take those leads and, for example, send each one a postcard with a funny photograph from your presentation. People aren’t very accustomed to getting real mail anymore, and sometimes that can be far more attention-grabbing than just seeing another e-mail in the inbox. But at least promptly send an e-mail with a memorable photograph in it. Thank that potential customer for coming by the booth. Tell them you really appreciate it—and have that note waiting for them Monday when they get back from the trade show.
First contact should come within days of the trade show’s end. When two or three weeks or God forbid a month goes by without contact, you just end up lumped together with all the other SPAM.
I use a postcard as an example of something that makes people stop and take notice. When I get a postcard I say, “Wow, that’s amazing. I haven’t gotten a postcard in a long time.” It will make me not want to throw it out, particularly if it’s a funny image that makes me laugh. And when it’s flipped over, there’s just a quick note:
“Thank you for stopping by the booth. We’ll get in touch within a week or so to follow up.”
It’s just a warm way to reach out to people. Warm is good. Prompt is even better.
People go to such lengths to get traffic in their booth—renting the leading scanning devices and hiring crowd gatherers … and then it either all sits untouched in a database or collects dust as a stack of business cards or filled-out lead cards. Somehow, nobody does anything with them after putting in all that initial effort. Worse, they’ll group them by territory and send the info out to their sales staff, who expect these to be qualified leads. But after a few phone calls those salespeople realize these were just a bunch of people who stopped by to get a T-shirt. They’ll quickly feel like they’re wasting their time and stop making attempts, which ultimately throws out the good with the bad.
That’s why they need to be categorized as real leads, as opposed to just inflating the body count. Sometimes you’ll know immediately when you have a hot lead. In those cases, there’s no such thing as getting hold of somebody too soon. (Well, let them de-board the plane and get home first.) But there’s nothing better than arriving and finding a note waiting for you.
Do you have an industry-related question you’d like answered on “Hey Newman”? Send him an e-mail and get your inquiry answered on the blog.
Tags: lead follow up, lead generation, qualified leads, trade show opportunities, trade shows
Posted in Booth staff, Lead generation & follow up, Trade show news & trends, Trade show presentations | 7 Comments »
Written by Ken Newman on 23 June 2009
Hey Newman, cash prizes at trade shows: A good investment or a waste of money? -Mike in Los Angeles
I recently did three days of presentations for a company that was giving away $10,000 at a trade show. The festival atmosphere this promotion conjured up was beyond incredible. I’ve seen companies give away cars and other larger-ticket items, but the buzz about this cash was unparalleled.
To win, you filled out a card with your name and contact information. To be eligible to enter the drawing, you had to watch the live presentation I gave or engage with somebody in the booth one-to-one and ask a question or listen.
All three days of the show, we never presented for less than standing room only. Ever. On the last day, the money had already been given away, yet we still packed the presentation. That final-day success had a lot to do with our crowd gatherers and how persistent we were about getting the seats full. But on those first two days, the money did a lot of the work.
I mean, it’s $10,000. That’s a lot of cash … and a substantial incentive.
Not every company is going to shell out 10 grand, but they might spend $1,000, which is still a good chunk of change. It’s enough for people to come into a booth and fill out a piece of paper just to enter the drawing. So, if a company is willing to spend $1,000 for the cash grand prize and a total of $800 more for three medium-priced electronic devices, what they’ll get back for that expense is huge. There’s a lot of buzz and booth traffic to be gained from an investment of that size.
Mike, the point of contention is whether this cash incentive will get you a bunch of greedy “dead-ends” or some actual leads on which to follow up. There’s a big argument in the trade show industry that says you’ve got to look for quality leads over quantity. I disagree. That’s because if you have 20,000 people attending a show, you must do something compelling in your booth to capture the names of a significant percentage of those people (even 10 percent over three days) and get that traffic to flow through the booth. If you don’t, there’s a good chance you’re never going to have the opportunity to identify those coveted high-quality leads. In fact, you won’t have any leads at all.
Those 25-30 key people—the dream leads—aren’t going to just magically appear in your booth. They’re likely to be swept into your booth along with the hundreds of other people who may be there to just win the $1,000.
There are only a few things that will draw people to your booth, and a lot of it has to do with what’s eye-catching. That can be movement, color, noise; those create crowds. When we did this drawing, and we have video documentation of this, there were 1,000 people standing around the booth. The fire marshals were getting people out of the aisle. It was insanity, pandemonium. People were walking by asking, “What’s going on here? … They’re giving away $10,000! Oh my, can I get in?”
Sure, that person may have no interest in the particular technology, but somebody they later talk to might … or somebody they’re standing next to might … or somebody just walking by. An adept salesperson will capitalize, and there’s a huge piece of business that’s been booked.
Trade shows are, by their nature, a little bit of “sideshow.” There’s no question that it’s all about buzz and excitement. And nothing says excitement better than an oversized check with $10,000 printed on it.
Do you have an industry-related question you’d like answered on “Hey Newman”? Send him an e-mail and get your inquiry answered on the blog.
Tags: booth buzz, Booth staff, booth traffic, qualified leads, targeted giveaways
Posted in Booth staff, Trade show giveaways, Trade show news & trends | No Comments »
Written by Ken Newman on 07 April 2009
Hey Newman, what’s your take on trade show swag? Is it worth doing anymore? – Kenneth in Los Angeles
Back in the heyday of COMDEX, an attendee could come home with literally two suitcases full of freebies—enough for the next five years of stocking stuffers. Companies would spend an extra $5,000 to $10,000 just on T-shirts, stress balls, hats with propellers on them or whatever else they could come up with.
These days, companies are spending more frugally on “swag” and trade show attendees are coming home with less of it. This change is primarily because companies are asking a very important question: “If we lure 2,000 people into the booth with free T-shirts, are these people actually qualified leads?
At Magnet Productions, we don’t think so. We think those are just people who have a rabid desire to get a new T-shirt.
When a salesperson calls those folks two months after the trade show, they’ll have no idea who the salesperson represents or what the product is. They’ll have no compelling interest; they just wanted a free tee.
Now, the T-shirt did accomplish something: It created buzz in the booth. But you can’t assume for a moment that the free T-shirt is also going to be translated into a qualified lead.
We recommend that clients use a different mechanism to attract and identify qualified leads: a two-tiered giveaway. You offer the typical swag on the front end—some sort of stress ball or trinket or USB keychain—whatever will get people into the booth. That will create the necessary commotion to get your booth noticed by passersby. It also means your trade show presenter will be delivering a talk to 50 guests instead of five.
But Phase II must be much more targeted. There are many different possible approaches, but one is to have the presenter follow up with questions and comments that identify qualified leads:
“How many people here are familiar with our technology or use our technology? Well, in addition to all that, we also provide consulting services. An hour-long Needs Evaluation is normally $500, but we’re going to give one away to a lucky person. So, for those of you who are interested, we’re doing a drawing. Just come on in the booth and talk to one of our people. We’ll stamp your card and enter you in the drawing.”
So, essentially the giveaway prequalified the people who had actual interest because the giveaway was directly related to the company’s technology. It wasn’t a DVD player. It wasn’t an iPod. It was something very specific and relevant.
If you don’t have something like that you can offer, you can still utilize a raffle. In order to be entered in a drawing for a high-ticket item, they have to come into the booth and actually watch a demo. And then you can gauge the actual interest of a person.
If you’re just trying to get numbers, you absolutely can do that with T-shirts because they have always been, and always will be, one of the greatest draws. T-shirts (and other gadgets with a “wow” factor) can succeed in getting a lot of butts in seats and a lot of eyeballs on a screen for a demo about the company. It’s just that many of them won’t necessarily be the “right” people.
Trade show swag can still be worth the expense. The key is there has to be clarity about the purpose of a giveaway in order to get the most return on your money.
Do you have an industry-related question you’d like answered on “Hey Newman”? Send him an e-mail and get your inquiry answered on the blog.
Tags: booth buzz, clarity, qualified leads, swag, targeted giveaways
Posted in Trade show giveaways | 4 Comments »
