A tradeshow is an excellent opportunity to meet with current and prospective customers. However, nearly 80 percent of tradeshow leads are not followed up with. Follow these four simple steps to improve your follow-up and stop letting potential sales fall through the cracks!
1. Plan ahead
What information do you need and how will you get it? Collaborate with your sales and marketing teams before each tradeshow to decide how everyone is going to collect lead information, as well as what information you need to collect. It’s imperative that everyone follows a consistent method. SAGE ShowLink, the lead retrieval app for iOS and Android devices, helps with your follow-up by providing a simple platform that everyone can use. All you need to do is scan the barcode on a lead’s badge using your device’s camera and all of their information is automatically recorded. This way, you don’t need to worry about incorrectly typing someone’s email address and other information. Your entire team’s leads are then compiled into a single lead database, which makes for an easy follow-up process.
Who is responsible for following up and when? Establish whether everyone is responsible for following up with their own leads or designate someone to follow up with all leads. You also need to decide when to follow up with leads. A general rule of thumb is to follow up within three days – before the lead forgets about you! ShowLink allows you to set a reminder to follow up with each lead so you won’t forget.
How will you follow up? Decide whether you’ll follow up with leads by phone, mail, email, or all three. Know what deliverables you’re going to send to leads. It could be the same package for all, or tailored to each specific lead. ShowLink makes this easy by allowing you to select which deliverable to send to each client as you record their information. It can automatically email them the information right on the spot.
2. Rate your leads
The most obvious objective at a tradeshow is acquiring qualified leads that can be converted to sales. Don’t waste time and resources by following up with people who aren’t interested in doing business with you. Decide ahead of time what qualifies a lead for immediate follow-up, what kind of leads you should follow up with eventually, and what leads aren’t worth following up with at all. SAGE ShowLink allows you to rate each lead on a scale of one to five. When a lead receives a five, your home office is automatically alerted to follow up with that lead immediately.
3. Take notes
It’s nearly impossible to remember all of the people you meet at tradeshows. That’s why it’s important to take notes as you meet with leads. This way, you’ll remember what to follow up with them about. It also saves you the humiliation of receiving a phone call from a lead and having to ask them to remind you who they are.
4. Follow up!
Of course the most important part of tradeshow follow-up is actually following up. To simplify the process, consider trying SAGE ShowLink at your next show! Plus, purchasing a subscription is considerably less than renting lead retrieval at each show. Click here for more information on SAGE ShowLink or contact your account executive at 800.925.7243.
