Creating a Sales Energized Trade Show Program (Post 3 – Sales Buy In & Planning)

So I’m sure you’re thinking “all of this sounds great, but our sales group is really hard to deal with (or maybe overworked already, or won’t return my calls, or at war with marketing, or ---- lots of other reasons).  So if you and your marketing department have a great relationship with sales then consider yourself blessed, and if not, then you’ve got some extra work to do, and it may take you a bit longer to pull this off - - but be patient and be happy for small successes --- which once they get noticed will lead to a snowball effect with future tradeshows. 

1. Ideally --- you want your Marketing VP to get agreement with the Sales VP to assign a management level sales staff member to take sales ownership for trade shows and to work closely with you on a matrixed basis. While this might seem a bit threatening at first, it’s really by far the best way to ensure deep level sales involvement in your tradeshow program.  You will definitely serve in the lead “committee chair” role, but the sales staffer will be your right hand person throughout your planning and execution efforts.
2. One great way to obtain sales buy-in is to make the Return on investment very clear to sales management.  A great time to do this is during the annual planning process when budgets and targets are being developed.   Your corporate tradeshow program should have defined objectives for leads which should feed directly into the sales plan and forecast.  By tying the two together at an annual plan level you all but ensure sales support for your program.
3. When you’re developing your trade show program goals (on both a global level and on a show-specific level), you should solicit sales management for their goals and work with them to try to integrate their goals into yours. By demonstrating your support for the Sales organizations goals you’re cementing your relationship as a valuable partner who’s committed to their success.
4. Creating clear responsibilities and time commitments is always important, but in this case it’s even more important since your organization structure is likely such that you don’t have any direct control over the sales resources that you’re hoping to leverage in your programs.
5. Lastly, you should work to get specific members of the sales leadership team assigned to work with you. And if you’re in a larger company you may have multiple sales team leaders assigned to you – especially in the case of a large show as opposed to a smaller regional show

When it comes to planning, the items I’ve outlined here will look familiar to you, with the possible exception of the first item which is to clearly identify sales goals and then, to the extent possible, align them with your trade show marketing program.  I’ll spend some time on the next couple of slides going thru the all important step of identifying sales goals and aligning them with marketing goals.

Of course it’s also critically important to clearly identify tasks and ownership for those tasks.

Out of this will fall clear responsibilities and time commitments.  This last step is one of the most important steps in pulling off a successful trade show.

The alignment of marketing and sales goals is always important and well run companies do a better job of ensuring this alignment.  However, as the person responsible for the trade show program you’re the place where the “rubber hits the road” so to speak.  In other words if there isn’t good alignment it will become obvious when you’re trying to set your mutual trade show objectives.  The key will be to find the areas of mutual alignment.

For some of you in more dysfunctional organizations this may seem a bit overwhelming, but if you focus on specifics the job gets a whole lot easier.  You should look for alignment in the following key areas:

• Market and geography focus (which will also drive your show selections)
• Product or service focus (which may vary on a show to show basis depending on the breadth of your product offering and company size)
• Key influencer focus (generally more of a marketing objective, but good to solicit feedback from sales management as you may learn something you didn’t know!)
• Customer job title focus.