Trade Shows as effective prospecting events.

Selling during a trade show can be very difficult especially if it is a heavily attended one. The plus side is that you are in a room with hundreds of potential clients that could potentially use your product. My company attends trade shows to exhibit in hopes of creating brand awareness as well as landing a potential client or two. Our company faces a slight difference to the norm. We are looking to target the exhibitors as opposed to the attendees. This means we are competing for face time of the exhibitors with the attending audience. This can be very challenging as the exhibitors are looking to promote their brand to the attending crowd, not attending sale people. Here are a couple tricks of the trade I have to found that work.

1. Pick shows with high quality prospects and a low attendence ratio. The less people attending the better as you’ll get more face time with your prospects.

2. Pre-plan your attack. Have a list of all the exhibitors and have a plan of action detailing who you want to present to.

3. Don’t interrupt the exhibitors as they talk to attendees. Try to  catch them durring slow times or when nobody is at their booth.

4. If a attendees enters the booth. Offer the come back shortly when they are less busy. The exhibitor will appreciate this in the long run.

5. Make sure you drop off some information and a card to every exhibitor you meet.

6. If possible try to get the exhibitor to give you  min of their time away from their booth. This is a good way to move the sales process forward without interruptions.

7. Take good notes of the conversations with each exhibitor so you can reference them later.

8. After the show, consider direct mail or email blasting the exhibitors as well as making follow up calls to exhibitors referring to the notes you took earlier.

These are just a couple ways to really maximize the sales cycle is trade show marketing. It may take a couple shows for you to get your groove.  Use these steps or variations of these steps until you find a style that works for you.

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