BtoB Magazine recently published the following statistics about trade show leads, sourced from their own survey, “Future of Events.”
The big eye-opener for many readers will be the fact that only 5% of respondents have a formal process for follow up of trade show leads. Frankly, that doesn’t come as a complete surprise to me. What I do find surprising is how many exhibitors are still relying on business cards and the electronic reader solutions provided by show management. The reality is that in both cases, you’re most likely walking away from the show with contact data and not much else. Small wonder that trade show leads have a bad reputation in the sales department.
The good news is that there are a few simple steps an event manager can take to help improve the situation. Here are three to get you started:
1. Agree on the definition of a lead. Get together with the sales department. Ask what criteria they use to evaluate the viability of a lead. Frequently, it comes down to need, decision-making authority, time frame and budget – but your sales organization may have other important criteria. Find out what matters to them and start collecting data to determine which leads fit the profile.
2. Provide fewer but more qualified leads. It doesn’t do much good to flood the pipeline with contacts if they’re so low-level that the sales group is ignoring them. Use the lead criteria you’ve established with sales to separate qualified leads from the marketing leads. Pass along only the sales leads to the sales department.
3. Nurture long-term leads. That’s one of the responsibilities of marketing. Leads that aren’t ready for the sales team today may grow into qualified opportunities tomorrow. Establish a multi-touch process to move long-term leads through the pipeline until they’re ready for adoption by the sales force.