Event Technologies

Do your sales and marketing teams have the same impression of the leads generated by your company's marketing efforts?  Are you sure?  I have been calling the 2 different departments within the same organizations for a few months and have found that they rarely have the same perception of sales leads.  I work specifically with companies to implement a trade show lead management solution, so I will speak to that issue. 

When I talk to marketing contacts, they usually think their trade show lead management program is great.  I normally hear that they use a exhibitor lead retrieval system, maybe qualify the leads with a paper lead form and then send all of the leads out to the sales people after the show. 

The sales contacts I speak with have a completely different outlook on trade show lead generation.  The sales people generally see the leads as a waste of time.  Most of the "leads" are not actively shopping for their products and they rarely find a good prospect out of the list of names they receive from any given show. 

The disconnect is really nothing more than a communication breakdown.  The marketing department thinks their trade show lead management solution is perfect, so they don't see the need for improvement.  The sales department labels the trade show leads as weak, and stops calling them.  My recommendation is to have a meeting with high level sales and marketing people to open up a discussion about the quality of leads coming in (from all sources, not just trade shows). 

There are many ways to improve a company's trade show lead generation process.  However, the only way to improve the process is to first diagnose the problems.