5 Easy Steps To Win At Tradeshows

Unfortunately, I see this type of post on LinkedIn all the time:

"Hey, everyone, we're going to be at so and so trade show. If anybody is interested in whatever we do, tag me or raise your hand. We'd love to talk!"

This is not a trade show strategy.

This show is costing you thousands of dollars.

Two weeks before the show is not the correct time to throw out a half-hearted attempt at getting people's attention.

Luckily, there is a plan that we can follow and a couple of very easy steps that will make any and every trade show that we go to successful for us.

Step number one is to write down one sentence of your desired outcome for the show.

Think about the end results and say: the desired outcome of this show is to add leads to our pipeline. The desired outcome of this show is to increase the number of subscribers to our newsletter.

Whatever you want this show to actually accomplish for you, state that clearly.

Step number two is, take your desired outcome and translate it into KPI's.

If we're trying to generate leads, then the KPI might be: Each team member who goes to the show is responsible for talking to this list of 20 leads. Each person at the show is responsible for dropping off a business card at this list of vendor booths.

We want to be as clear as we can, using all the data at our disposal to make a really clear action plan of who's doing what, when.

Step number three is, couple of weeks before the show, we meet all together as a team.

We clearly assign each person's roles and KPI's, and we make sure that everybody knows what they're supposed to be doing at the show.

Now that we've got this plan in place, every minute that we're on the trade show floor should be spent hitting those KPI's.

We didn't pay to come all this way to not do this work, to not drive this desired outcome. So each person has to have really clear KPI's that they're going to be held accountable for, and they need to have a really clear action plan of how they're going to meet those KPI's.

It's not acceptable to go to a very expensive trade show with anything less.

Step number four, once we're at the show, if we've done the pre-work and everybody has their action plan, the show takes care of itself and we can actually have fun because we know what we're supposed to be doing.

We know where we're supposed to be at every given moment.

And once we hit our KPIs, we can relax and go have a drink at the bar.

Step number five, after the show, this is where the real work kicks in.

This is why professional salespeople make so much money, because anybody can go to a trade show, but the follow-up and the long tail of that trade show is where we get our revenue.

So after the show, we have to build into every single weekly sales meeting reviewing the KPI's that we set for that show.

I don't care if it was one week ago, three weeks ago, or three months ago, we're still looking at how this show is performing.

We can't let any of the leads that we gathered go to waste.

We can't leave them on the table.

It's commonly known that any given lead is going to require between eight and 15 touches in order to convert.

So if we have a sales plan that only provides for one or two touches a couple of weeks after the show, and then we wipe our hands of them and say, I've got better things to do, we are leaving all of this year's revenue on the table.

So we need a good follow-up plan, and we need to make sure that we're diligently staying on top of that week after week.

This is the job of the sales manager to make sure that the leads we paid for are getting worked.

And never forget rule number one of every single trade show:

Have fun!

For a more in-depth walk through of how to Plan, Execute, and Follow Up at trade shows, click here.