Creating a Sales Energized Trade Show Program (Post 2 – Key Focus Areas)
3 min read

OK. So hopefully everyone is on board now with the importance of a “Sales Energized Trade Show Program”. Now you’re probably thinking thru your own unique situation and how you might bring your sales team into your trade show program. And you’re probably thinking about all the reasons this might be hard to do.
Well – nothing good is ever easy – but with the right plan, steps, and tools in place, I’m confident that you can pull it off if you want to.
1. The single most important area – and the one that will setup your entire program for success is working closely with sales management to set your show objectives. While it’s tempting to base your show objectives solely on your annual marketing plan, it’s really important to reach out to sales at this earliest stage and get their buy-in right then at the start. By actively including them in your objective setting you set the proper tone for your entire tradeshow program and make it clear from the start that you consider sales and their success a critical component of your trade show program.
By including sales in the objective setting you also go a long way towards obtaining buy-in. I’ll also spend some more time later talking about other methods to obtain sales buy-in.
2. Pre-show outreach is one of the areas that can most benefit from sales involvement. While marketing can do a great job of outreach to the appropriate target markets on a broad basis, sales will have in their database or CRM, very specific target prospects that you absolutely want to invite to your booth and any parties you may be planning
3. Show staffing and support is the one area that most of you are probably already actively involving your sales teams. By staffing the booth with field sales staff you’re best matching up your in-house selling talent with the need at the show to portray your products and services in their best possible light.
4. Post show follow-up is generally left to the Marcom staff, but if you’re truly running a sales energized trade show program you definitely need to, not only include your sales staff in the follow-up program, but ideally ensure that someone in sales management actually takes ownership for both lead follow-up and reporting. You need to have metrics in place and also have the systems and processes in place to measure results