Five Steps to Close a Sale After a Trade Show
Trade shows offer plenty of fun to be had, but at the end of the day, it’s still all business. The primary goal of attending a trade show is to network with potential clients and partners, after all, even if having a great time is a driving motivator to attend.
Clinching important business arrangements involves plenty of work before, during and after the trade show. The key is laying prep work to make your life easier and then applying diligent follow-through that is persistent but never annoying. Your strategy should also be reflected in your trade show booth design and construction, including space for one-on-one discussions and prominent cubbies displaying take-home literature.
To help you prepare for your next big industry event, consider the following step-by-step trade show closing tips.
Step 1: Know Who’s In Attendance and Study Up
Your first step is to research everyone who has announced that they are attending or exhibiting the trade show and pick out a few priority contacts. Look into what makes these companies tick, including the people you are likely to interact with. Know in advance what their driving mission is, the types of deals they specialize in and any leverage points you can use to grab their interest. You can even go the extra mile with flashcards on companies or their key representatives, but keep multiple pitch approaches in mind for each to avoid sounding over-rehearsed.
As a side benefit, preparation keeps you focused. Even if you have a serendipitous meeting with someone you had not anticipated becoming a good lead, you are loaded with talking points to carry on a productive conversation.
Step 2: Make Your Trade Show Booth Design and Construction a Focalizing Point
Your trade show booth design should reflect the goals of your conference attendance and it should also make forming relationships easier. For instance, you can have helpful infographics or displays at hand, enabling you to simply point to something rather than having to fumble through pages of literature. You should also have areas with comfy cafe or lounge-style seating for productive conversations.
Also, ensure your literature and any greeters can be front-and-center no matter the angle from which an attendee approaches your booth.
Step 3: Be Prepared to Answer Any Questions
The last thing you want to happen during a conference is for someone to ask you about your solution or industry and for you to stammer “hang on… just a sec…” while you scramble to look up the answer. Yet, according to Inc. magazine, 58% percent of all customers report that they aren’t able to get satisfactory answers from sales reps.
To avoid this embarrassment, prepare a document before the trade show of all your chief talking points, branding principles, and product USPs. Try to condense the information to be as concise as possible while still being clear, compelling and unique.
After that, brainstorm questions your reps may get and drill on coming up with quick, clear answers. Look to people outside the company, like employee family members, to think outside-the-box on questions you may get.
Step 4: Capture As Much Information As Possible
Business cards, vague introductions and contact info scribbled on the backs of fliers are physical mainstays of trade show interactions. These casual contact points facilitate the laid-back nature of trade show booth conversations, but they should always be followed by a more permanent and detailed data capture method.
Develop an organized process for inputting each lead into your CRM system. Even if it initially involves snapping a photo of each card or contact point you get, try to complete each entry with as much detail as possible after the conference so that you can approach each lead with useful information in hand.
Referring to Inc. once again, companies that use their CRM system consistently retain 27% more customers and achieve 560% ROI for every dollar invested in the system.
Step 5: Create a Schedule for Follow-Ups
Once you have someone’s information in your system, you can begin to develop a strategy for periodically restarting the conversation you began at the trade show. Use a combination of email and phone calls to keep your approach from becoming stale.
To ensure leads do not go cold, follow up every 14 to 20 days after a non-response with an email containing helpful content you have found that is relevant to the lead’s industry. Remember that the majority of sales happen after at least five contacts, but almost half of sales reps fail to follow up after the first meeting. With a focused approach on making a solid first impression and a documented strategy for following up with leads, you make trade show attendances some of the most productive times of the year.
Also, if you need any assistance with trade show logistics or want to design a custom trade show booth that makes selling easier, you can get in touch with us, the trade show exhibiting experts, when you contact us today.
