How to attend a trade show or convention…and get the MOST out of it..
Most of us attend conventions and conferences to look at new hardware or look to see what new goodies or tools are out that can help our businesses. Most of us DON’T go however looking for LEADS… I guess I’m a bit quirky in that respect because I always go looking for a lead of one sort or another. That’s probably why I admire what this team of coworkers did when they went off to this convention of theirs..
These guys take attending a convention to a whole new level…they went there PROSPECTING for new clients. And boy did they do their homework.
“Conferences are like bad stand-up comedy acts. You are all excited when they announce the show and you go there with high expectations. In the end, you leave wondering if those two jokes that worked for you were worth the bomb you spent to go there.
Crossing 1500 miles to attend a conference is an even bigger risk. The RoI expectations are even higher. That’s why we always hesitate to go to conferences.
But, here’s the wisdom from our experience – Conferences work if you go after enterprises. You get to meet decision makers who are otherwise hard to catch hold of.”
Here’s how they did it…
- They did recon… they found out ahead of time who was going to be there and dug up as much about those “prospects” as they could on the Internet.
- Took time to write customized “pitches” for each of these prospects (who, let’s face it…weren’t there to be pitched to, they’re going to SELL to YOU).
- Made Customized “Greeting Cards” for each target…
You can expect a high level of awkwardness to follow after the prospects realized the people coming up to their booth were there to proposition THEM, not to be sold TO… Much more at the link below to see how they handled it…and what transpired. (I’m sure by the title of this article you can guess they had some success.)
“Every stopover at a booth or a handshake along the hallway in a conference is, let’s admit it, very awkward. When our prospects ask “So, are you an e-commerce company?” (hoping to sell to us) we had to do say “No! In fact, we are here to sell to you”. Awkwardness escalated to a whole new level.”
For the rest of the story, visit: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6282999110001836032
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