Creating a Sales Energized Trade Show Program (Post 1)

I had the pleasure of teaching a class at Exhibitor Live 2017 in Las Vegas this year on the topic of “Creating a Sales Energized Trade Show Program”. The class was very well received and so I’m sharing the talk via a series of blog posts with everyone who wasn’t able to attend the show.

In this series of posts I’ll do the following:

#1. I’ll provide a number of strategies and tactics to help you ensure that the sales team is deeply involved in the planning phase of your trade show program

#2 I’ll share ways to integrate sales objectives into your plan to ensure strong buy-in and just as importantly the alignment of sales and marketing objectives

#3 I’ll discuss a number of ways that you can work with the sales team to maximize your pre-show outreach. Pre-show outreach is something that is often given cursory notice, but in my experience can be the difference maker between an average show and a GREAT show

#4 I’ll share best practices on how to create a show specific training plan and training materials that work for both your marketing team and the sales team

#5 Lastly I’ll discuss the all important lead follow-up process. I’m sure we’re all guilty of having a great show, generating lots of great leads, and then getting buried afterwards to the point that those great leads either get completely dropped, or, just as bad, don’t get followed up on for 3-6 weeks.

Before I get details, I’d like to share a story with you that really turned me on to the power of a sales energized trade show program. I had landed my first VP marketing position at an up and coming software company called OnTime Software. They were the leading independent provider of group calendaring software and competing with Lotus, Microsoft and Novell for market leadership.

I was about 2 days into the job when I found out that we were exhibiting at PC Expo at the Javitz Center in a couple of weeks. I’m sure you’re all used to the understaffed marketing mad scramble mode --- so at that point all I could do was finalizing staffing, product focus, booth graphics and press outreach and pray that Murphy’s Law wouldn’t be too harsh on me.

The trade show display was the old-style custom booth that required lots of carpenters and long days to setup. So after a couple of very long days we were ready for our show.

I had some interviews to attend the morning of the show, so I got to the booth about an hour after the start, and as I got close to the location, I noticed a large crowd around one of the booths. Well,,, as you may have guessed, that booth was the OnTime software booth, and I was wondering to myself what the heck was going on!

I quickly figured out that the Sales VP (who became a good friend of mine) had worked with his sales team to very aggressively invite all of their current customers and prospects to the booth and that he considered the trade show program a key success element of his sales program. This was something that he had done for many years and had been a key reason that OnTime software was able to compete successfully against the giants in the industry!

This was so different from my experience with virtually every other hardware and software company that I’d worked for where trade shows were 80% about Marketing and PR outreach, and sales was there in a support role.  The difference was staggering and I became a convert to the concept and huge benefit of a “Sales Energized trade show program”.

Over the years I've developed a tradeshow formula which is that BRAND + LEADS = SUCCESS. And note that this success is not only the company’s success, but also the success of your career. Now there may be some instances where your show is all about branding, but I’ll bet if you ask your CEO if he or she would rather have a show with strong branding, or a show with strong branding that also generated lots of great leads and prospects, I guarantee you they’ll be much more enthusiastic about the latter. 

So what’s the missing element in the formula? It’s your Sales Team! It’s hard to have success with bad branding, but it’s also very hard to generate lots of leads without active and deep sales team involvement at all levels!

There’s a really great tornado effect created when you have great branding and an enthusiastic sales team that is perfectly aligned. Everyone can feel it and there’s a great energy that’s created that is truly a difference maker when it comes to the impression you’re making on your target audience – including existing customers, prospects, industry influencers, and the press!

Everyone wants to be part of the next big thing, and when your booth is swarming with customers and prospects you clearly position yourself as the next big thing. I’d always love the reaction from members of the press and analysts when they’d stop by one of our sales energized shows.