Seven tips to maximize the effectiveness of your booth staff and increase event ROI

Your company has invested thousands of dollars to build an amazing booth. Your marketing department has created an amazing campaign to attract clients and prospects to see what you have to offer. You put together a great team to work at your booth and spent a lot of money on travel, hotels, food and beverage, etc. just to give them the opportunity to get face to face with hundreds of prospects who need your products and services. These seven tips will help ensure your company’s investment is not wasted and that your team is set up for success.

1. Private Meetings.

   Enable the sales team to personally invite their clients and prospects to meet them at the show. Have designated times each day of the show where your team is free to schedule private meetings. When possible, rent a small conference room at the host hotel with a few round tables, light beverages and snacks, and any technology needed. Let your sales team reserve table time for meetings in this room the day before the expo and the days of the expo as needed. If no room is available, find a hotel lobby bar, restaurant or coffee shop to meet at. Just be careful that you can find a quiet corner where your meeting won’t be interrupted. Your goal is to build a stronger relationship and take your prospect to the next step in doing business with you.
   

2. Sponsor or Host an Event.

   Exhibitors who are looking to build strong relationships will often sponsor an event being planned by the trade show organizer, or they will host a private dinner or happy hour where they have the chance to wine and dine with their existing customers and VIP prospects. 
   
   

3. Branding.

   When you walk into the room… everyone should know who you are! Every team member should wear and own your brand both on and off the show floor. And don’t forget your booth! What does your booth say or do that piques their curiosity and makes your brand memorable? 
   
   

4. Boothmanship Training.

   Unfortunately, most companies do not have formal boothmanship training for their team. It is crucial that expectations are clearly outlined and every staff member is on the same page. We will cover formal boothmanship training in detail on a future blog post (the do’s and don’ts) but in a nutshell you need a plan on how to open conversations, qualify or disqualify attendees, share your value or proposition, identify their need and establish a next step all within a couple minutes, followed by a memorable exit strategy that sets you apart from your competition.
   
   

5. Lead Capture.

   This is where we see the most need for improvement. Many event organizers will offer some type of lead capture service provided by their registration company, which is great for exhibitors who only exhibit at a few events each year. But, for companies who exhibit at dozens or hundreds of events, learning and setting up a new lead capture system for every event is time consuming, costly, and handicaps their company from bridging the gap between onsite lead capture and post show follow up…giving their competitors a huge advantage. What you might not know is that these companies bring their own app to the show, built out with their team and company needs in mind. This enables their entire team to capture leads on and off the show floor using their own personal phone, without the need to rent or share equipment or learn a new system. Companies who are serious about lead capture will integrate their lead capture system with their CRM and Marketing Automation systems, ensuring proper follow up and that leads are seamlessly moved into their sales pipeline.
   
   

6. Marketing Automation.

   The hardest thing for a sales rep to do is follow up in a timely manner with hundreds of new leads, and this is where marketing automation can help. Using your lead capture app, the sales rep should be able to collect valuable data about their buying power, scoring the quality of the lead, what products or services interest them, etc. Using this data, marketing automation can send out post show emails the same day or next day that are personalized, relevant and timely. We will share some clever tips for marketing automation messaging in a future post.
   
   

7. Integration.

   One of the most time consuming tasks after an event is lead data management. Collecting, enhancing, cleansing, formatting and importing lead data can take hours or days to prepare for import. This is a huge waste of staff time and can often delay a sales team up to a week before their leads are distributed to them, which can cost companies thousands of dollars in missed revenue opportunities. Without skipping a beat, your Lead Capture app should be able to integrate with any registration company for capturing leads, as well as your CRM and Marketing Automation systems for proper follow up.
   
   

Basically, if you are going to spend thousands of dollars exhibiting at an event and want to get the maximum ROI out of the face time you gained…your booth staff needs an “easy button” for capturing leads and seamlessly moving them into your sales cycle. The follow up is crucial and it has been proven that a custom lead capture app designed for your company can raise your event ROI up 10%-30% higher than going without. When done right, your organization should be able to shorten your sales cycle and close more business faster than traditional marketing and sales methods.