Lead Rating

I talk to a lot of marketing people that are trying to figure out how much money their tradeshows are actually bringing in. A trade show manager that I spoke with the other day, was tasked with figuring out her companies trade shows’ Return on Investment (ROI). If she sent us the leads from her show, could we give her a number? She wanted a “Yes or No” answer. Unfortunately, it is not that simple. It is a tough number to calculate when you’re talking about trade shows, especially if you have a long sales cycle.
 

The obvious idea is to set up a lead management program that will reference the accounting database and match that against the leads that were collected at the trade shows. Before you run off to your accounting department, let’s think about how effective this reporting will be. What if your sales cycle is 6 months to 2 years, which is often the case. Analysis of the trade show leads may not be complete until 2 years after the event. Along the way, you will be generating a running tally that makes your show lead management look ineffective. And when you finally collect all the trade show sales data, 2 years later, is this information useful?
 

A different, more immediate, way of reporting on your shows is available if you are accurately qualifying your leads, and generating a lead rating for each lead. Immediately after the show, you should know the quality, or lead rating of each lead collected. Based on this lead scoring, you will know which leads should turn into trade show sales, that is, if the sales reps do their job with the trade show follow up. 
 

The next step after the trade show lead capture and lead rating, is to assign a percentage to each group of leads based on the chance a deal will close. This number doesn’t have to be perfect, just an educated guess (you can fine tune this as you go). If you know a deal will close, assign it 100%, hot leads may be 75%, warm leads 30%, and cold 0%. Then you take the average size of a deal for your company (in dollars), and multiply it with these percentages and the number of leads for each rating group. This will allow you to generate an estimated dollar figure that will tell you how effective your trade show sales effort was.  
 

This will take some effort, but it will be worth it the next time you have a meeting to talk about budget. Not to mention that you will have the info needed to focus the attention back onto sales if management is asking what happened with the tradeshow leads, because at the very least, you will have a list of tradeshow leads that should have turned into sales.

“So how many leads did we get?” This is normally the first question everyone asks when gauging the success of a trade show. Unfortunately, if you are looking to increase trade show sales this is the wrong question. The question should be, “how many good leads did we get?”  

If you are giving away a trip to Hawaii, you will collect a ton of trade show leads. But how many of your 1,000 leads are interested in your company vs. interested in going to Hawaii? Unless you have a good trade show lead qualification process, you may never know.  

Regardless of your promotion (or lack thereof), it is imperative to qualify the leads onsite. There are a few different ways to accomplish this. One way is using the show provided exhibitor lead retrieval system. Most of the systems out there offer 20 custom qualifiers. For some companies, this is more than enough to determine which leads are good and which are looking for a freebie. If your needs are more robust, you can use third party trade show lead retrieval software. There are a few third party companies out there.  Most of them are very reliable and offer just about everything you could want to qualify leads. 

Once you qualify the leads you can implement a lead scoring system for lead rating and implement a good trade show lead management program. Then you can answer the more important question of how many good leads you collected at the show.  For more advice on how to better manage trade show leads, take a look at this article HERE.

We get a lot of calls from people asking if we have a replacement for the lead retrieval scanner they rent at the shows.  Usually the goal is to reduce the cost of this rental at every show.  I definitely understand this because $350 is a hefty charge for 3 to 5 day rental of a simple electronic device.  Unfortunately, there is no direct replacement for the lead retrieval box that will work at every show.  
Obviously you can find software products that can read all the trade show badges, but that is going to be a little more expensive than $350 per trade show.   More like $1000 per show to rent a lead retrieval software system that is customized and managed by a company like ours, or between $2500 and $8500 to buy one and manage it yourself. 
So what can you do if you want to get better leads for your sales people and don't want to spend thousands improving the system.  There is no easy answer to this question.  Without an internal or external person to drive the trade show lead capture and follow-up process, you are not going to get the results that you want.  
However, one idea is to use the show's rental lead collection box and program it with a BANT lead form.  BANT stands for Budget, Authority, Need, and Timeline.  With the right knowledge (which can be found on this blog), you can parse this answers into a lead form on the back end.  For example, if you qualified a prospect with "Has Budget", "Decision Maker", "Have a sales rep call", and "1 Month", you can fill in the questions. 
Now that you have the questions and answers, you can assign a lead rating system (info can also be found in this blog), and then deliver only the "sales ready" leads to your sales people.  And if you are thinking, "it doesn't matter because sales doesn't follow-up anyways" then you need to get them involved.  Ask them what they want, and deliver it to them. 
That said, in my opinion, there is not enough importance put on the lead collection/qualification and processing of the leads after the trade show.  At a trade show where a company might spend 20K or more with the goal of collecting some sales ready leads, why is $350 too much when it is the only direct expenditure associated with the show that is helping to collect and qualify the trade show leads.

Last week, we exhibited at a show, and were faced with the task of qualifying and following up on the tradeshow leads.  We should be really good at this considering that we facilitate this process for many other companies.  Like many of our customers, we were busy before the show, and didn't spend a ton of time planning for how we would deal with the leads at this show.  However, this didn't stop us from collecting well qualified leads, and following up with a "thank you" email, and a phone call within 4 days of the show.

At this particular show, the leads were on a magstripe badge, and we decided to use a handheld scanner instead of a laptop due to space considerations.  I was there, so I know that we qualified everyone we talked to.  We asked them the usual questions and we used this info to rate the leads.  Even with only 68 leads, our sales people had to take a week out of their already busy schedule to follow-up on these leads. 

Exhibiting at this show reminded me that it is not a simple task to turn trade show leads into sales.  It takes a little planning, and someone that wants to make it happen.  I wanted to write a blog that talked about how even with all our experience, we did something wrong, but it was a small show with 68 leads, and we already made 2 sales.   

 

Post Show

After the show there are a number of different trade show lead management responsibilities. Here are some facets of a good lead management program and who takes care of each task.
 

Lead Cleanup – Depending on the trade show lead retrieval system used, there may be duplicates, bad swipes and just bad information in your lead file. Traditionally, the marketing department takes care of cleaning up the lead file before sending it off to sales

Lead Rating - Some companies implement a lead scoring system for proper lead rating. In this scenario, the sales department has to acutely define the different levels of rating and make sure they are in line with what is collected onsite. This technical process is usually outsourced to lead management solution experts, but can be taken care of internally by either the sales or marketing department. 

Sales Lead Distribution – Delivering the leads to the appropriate sales rep in a timely manner is vital to any lead management system. The sales lead distribution process really depends on internal systems in place and corporate structure. However, the sales lead distribution process is normally taken care of by either the sales or IT department.
 

All in all, the trade show lead generation and management process is not as simple as it seems. However, with thorough planning and preparation, you can implement a good lead management solution. If you don’t know quite where to start, we would be happy to give you a free consultation of your current process to give you some pointers.  For more information, please click HERE.

“How do I get my sales people to follow up on the trade show leads?” When I was at Exhibitor 2009 last spring, I heard this question repeatedly. I spoke with frustrated managers who put their heart and soul into trade show lead generation only to have the reps never follow up on the trade show leads. I suggested sitting down with the sales manager and getting down to the root of the problem. 

Usually, the reps will say that the trade show leads are no good. For the most part they are right; industry studies show that only 10-20% of trade show leads are actually ready for a sales call. So if you send out a list of 1,000 names you scanned at the show to the sales force, they will probably make a few calls and write the leads off as garbage. 

To combat this, ask the sales manager exactly what the sales department wants. If they need qualification information, make them define it precisely. If they only want the “hot” leads, ask them to categorize what a hot lead is. You can implement a lead management system that will ensure proper trade show lead qualification, lead rating, and sales lead distribution so the reps only receive the hot leads. This will give the sales reps no excuse for inadequate trade show lead follow up. Additionally, it will ultimately increase your trade show sales as well as your trade show ROI. If you would like to read a more in depth article on how to generate sales ready leads at trade shows, click HERE.

Trade show lead generation is the reason most exhibitors go to their shows. Many companies struggle with adequate trade show lead qualification. Some ask too many questions, some too few and some just ask the wrong questions altogether. Proper lead qualification is a very important step in any lead management system. 

Most exhibitor lead retrieval systems offer standard lead qualifiers. These vary from show to show and system to system. The good news is most trade show scanners also offer custom qualifiers. They will give you 10 to 20 customized responses for each lead you collect. It is imperative for marketing and sales to work together on determining the qualifiers. Remember, these are sales leads so obtaining marketing driven responses is not the best trade show strategy here. Unfortunately, the sales department doesn’t always know what they want.

Think of the 10 to 20 custom qualifiers as responses to questions like: What is your timeframe to purchase? How much budget do you have for this project? I recommend starting with a set of BANT “questions” – Budget, Authority, Need and Timeframe. This will give you a good place to begin the conversation and you can brainstorm with sales from there.  If you can implement a good trade show lead qualification process, you will be able to apply lead scoring, lead rating, improve sales lead distribution and ultimately increase trade show sales. For additional trade show advice, click HERE.

The cheapest and easiest trade show lead follow up method is sending a post show email. After successful trade show lead qualification with your preferred lead retrieval system it is fairly simple to put together a customized email for your trade show leads. The easiest way to do this is by using the mail merge feature available in Microsoft Word, a basic email program, or a web service. This will enable you to send a personalized message to each attendee. The message can be a simple thank you with a link to your website and corporate contact information. 

There are a number of more advanced trade show strategies that can help the sales process. If you use a trade show scanner with custom qualifiers or trade show lead retrieval software, you can implement a lead rating program. This will enable you to send a different email message to the A, B, and C leads. You can also send links to specific brochures requested onsite if you record that information during onsite trade show lead qualification.

There are email services out there that can track who opens the email, who clicks on which link, who wants to be removed from your list, and much more. When implemented across a few shows, using an email service can be a powerful lead management solution (notifying a sales rep that a prospect has opened your email 5 times is VERY helpful information). While the marketing department is a great resource to put together the correct email message, if you are short staffed you may want to hire an outside firm to write the email message for you. To implement some of the more advanced trade show lead follow up techniques, you may also want to talk to lead management consultants about a customized lead management program.  For additional trade show advice, click HERE.

 

In today’s economic climate, increasing trade show sales is as important as ever. While we can get very in depth on how to do this, I’d like to throw out a few quick trade show strategies that can help you close more deals from your trade show leads.

Trade Show Lead Qualification – Being face to face with prospects is the main benefit of exhibiting at a trade show. The conversations that take place on the show floor weed out the good leads from the bad. The challenge is recording that conversation. Just scanning their badge with an exhibitor lead retrieval system doesn’t cut it. You need to either have a paper lead form, use a trade show scanner with custom qualifiers, or use lead retrieval software.

Lead Rating – Once you have the trade show leads qualified you can use a lead scoring system to rate the leads (hot, warm or cold – A, B, or C, etc.). There is no need to waste the sales reps’ time with the cold leads, so only send out the good leads. This will keep the reps engaged in your program, save them time, allow them to put more energy into the quality leads and increase trade show ROI.

Sales Lead Distribution – With each day that passes, the trade show leads get colder and colder. You ideally want to get the leads to the reps within 2 or 3 days after the show. This gives the reps a week or so to contact all of their leads before they turn cold. Rapid sales lead distribution will increase your sales reps’ success rates.

Trade Show Lead Follow Up – As I just mentioned, the leads get cold quickly after a show. Trade show lead follow up needs to happen while the show (your company) is fresh in the prospect’s mind. Industry studies show that the leads are cold about 2 weeks after the show ends. A good idea is to send out an email immediately after the show to every lead saying “thank you.” This will keep your message fresh in their mind while you go through your lead rating and distribution processes.
 

I hope this trade show advice will help you rethink your trade show strategy. While these trade show tips will take a little of your time to implement, they will reap rewards in the form of trade show ROI. For additional useful trade show tips, click HERE. 

 
Lead rating is a key component to trade show lead management.   We’ve found that when companies just scan leads and send them out, the sales department loses faith in the leads and they stop following up on them. One way to combat this is lead rating. Rating the leads effectively separates the good leads from the bad. When done properly, rating leads can increase the efficiency of your post show sales efforts by 70%. 

In order to implement a successful lead rating program, you first need a good trade show lead qualification process.  A good place to start with trade show lead qualification is using BANT criteria (Budget, Authority, Need and Timeframe). When writing your qualifiers, it is important to involve both sales and marketing. Getting a clear definition of a hot vs. cold lead from sales is ultimately how you will rate the leads. 

Once you have the qualifiers set, you can use a trade show strategy called lead scoring. Lead scoring involves assigning a numerical value to each qualification response.   For example a “Contact Immediately” response might be worth 100 points while a “Contact in 6 Months” response could be worth 25 points. Once you have assigned a value to every response, it is time to create some mock leads to see if your lead rating system generates an accurate lead rating. To do this, you add up the total numerical value of all responses for each lead. Wherever the point total falls within a certain predefined range will determine the rating of the lead (for example Cold < 149 points, Warm 150-299 points, and Sales Ready > 300 points).

This can be a confusing process, but there is help out there. You can use lead scoring software, a home grown lead management process or a full service lead management solution. Lead management system companies can help you implement anything from a simple lead management solution to the most complex trade show lead generation and management system. The good news is that whatever steps you take to improve your trade show lead management program will help increase your trade show ROI. For additional useful trade show tips, click HERE.

Using the show provided exhibitor lead retrieval system can make it challenging to collect qualified trade show leads. However, with a little bit of planning, you can make this system work for you, almost as well as the expensive lead retrieval software systems. The key to improving the exhibitor lead retrieval system is to use the custom qualifiers. In theory, this is as easy as filling out the form provided by the trade show lead retrieval company. However, figuring out what to put on the custom qualifiers sheet isn’t that easy.
 

You could start with a list your products, but if you only have one sales force, this info really doesn’t help your reps. Your sales people would be much happier if you figured out which attendees have a need for your products, and when they are going to make a buying decision. With that in mind, you want to create custom qualifiers that allow you to determine if an attendee is ready to buy. 

Most exhibitor lead retrieval systems allow 20 custom qualifiers, and it is usually inexpensive to add them to your lead retrieval system order. At your next show, use the custom qualifiers. For the sales rep that does the trade show follow up, it will make a world of difference. Once you have this part down, the next step is creating a lead rating system.