How to properly organize the work process, distribute roles and establish contact. In this article we will talk about a process that begins before the exhibition and ends several months after it: building a sales system.

In the article you will see tips from experience, checklists and contact processing schemes in infographics. This will help you achieve results. We recommend reading this material and the rest of the series:

1. Exhibition selection.
2. Technical preparation of the stand.
3. Processing contacts, summing up the results of the exhibition.

Exhibitions as a way to get clients in the past? Definitely not for manufacturers of goods and sellers of complex services. The audience for specialized industry events for these types of businesses is the main one, if not the only one. You can often see young start-up suppliers at exhibitions: because personal contacts in a professional atmosphere are better than bombardment with letters and calls from buyers. There are segments where competition is insanely high. For example, in grocery retail, your offer may not even be opened until they see you several times at trade shows, touch the product, and see whose hand you shake. To maximize the potential of an event, it is necessary to provide clear instructions and KPIs to employees.

Assign KPIs to everyone working at the exhibition. Otherwise, you will see employees eating free samples at stands, running to cafes and communicating with each other instead of working with customers.

You also need to prepare the ground for sales by marketing your services and products on target audience.

Types of sales at the exhibition

In events with an audience of both buyers and end consumers, sales are clearly divided into 2 parts: sales from the display of specific products and conclusion of agreements with partners (at least exchange of contacts and initial agreements).

This will greatly simplify the next 2-3 days of work after the exhibition.

Ideally, at the end of each working day, one of the employees will be tasked with sending photographed business cards for recognition and entry into CRM.

Contact processing and sales

In the B2B industry, the sales cycle is long, requiring extensive preparation and often multiple interactions. I bring to your attention an unusual sales funnel from the exhibition:

General explanations for the diagram

The expansion and contraction of the funnel is somewhat similar to the principle used in the currently fashionable design thinking. There are large rectangles (expansion of the funnel) and small ones (narrowing of the funnel). They alternate: first we cover as much as possible, then we weed out the less promising and concentrate on what is most likely to bring sales.

But if we only did expansion and contraction, then there might not be any sales at the output. After all, we are dealing with a long and complex sales cycle, where there are few contracts, but they are for a significant amount.

That's why we need periodic expansion of the funnel, i.e. repeated contacts with leads.

It is also important that endlessly expanding the scope of the funnel and constantly scattering attention is also wrong. Therefore, as you can see in the figure: all the large and all the small rectangles are gradually narrowing, leaving behind “waste material” and space in our schedule for new sales chains.

5 stages of exhibition sales

Stage 1. Before and at the exhibition

We collect as many contacts as possible. To do this, the work of the “barkers” must be well established and the “magnets” must be ready (from previous articles in the series). It’s also good to get your hands on already segmented business cards (see the rubricator above), and even with comments on them.

Whatever CRM you use: it’s more convenient to maintain a database in Excel. Tabs = exhibitions or tabs = warmth of contact, which system do you prefer.

Stage 2. At the exhibition and in the 1st week after it

You need to sort through all the accumulated contacts, highlighting the main ones. And act iteratively.

Turn on the “traffic light” of leads: work on potentially interesting ones with individual approach, spend time on preliminary information collection and analysis. Send the rest a standard letter in the next step. The great rule of time management comes to the rescue: big goal break down into small tasks and solve them in order of priority.

“Steaks” in this metaphor: exactly those subtasks, solving which it is easier to move towards a common big goal.

Don’t overload the letter, be consistent, break the goal into steps.

The age of information overload and standard communications dictate brevity as a necessity to be heard. Imagine that your letter is being read diagonally for a few seconds and cross out everything unnecessary, leave what is interesting not to you, but to the addressee.

Stage 3. 1-2 weeks after the exhibition

Here we are expanding our coverage again: sending a standard letter to all contacts. But also in standard letters You can add the “cherry on the cake”: at the very beginning, add what you agreed on or what was especially interesting to your contact. And of course, change the name in the greeting :)

The diagram below will tell you about the manager’s typical reactions to the answers that will come after the 1st and 2nd stages.

“Traffic light” of lead generation from the first contact after the exhibition to the next step

Often the seller understands the lack of response as a failure.

It is important to find out specific reasons, fill in the gaps, and not jump to conclusions. The phrase “I want, but not now” can be interpreted in different ways. Why is the client not ready to make a deal now?

• no money
• does not believe in the profitability of the offer
• I didn't fully understand the proposal
• doesn't want to communicate with you
• he doesn't make the decision

You need to act depending on the true position of your interlocutor, and not on your own conjectures and fears. Apply Vladimir Tarasov’s “getting close to the deer” technique.

Stage 4. 2-4th week after the exhibition

For everyone who responded, you can already work out the price list in detail, discuss the conditions, and spend more time on the presale. IN at this stage we “narrow” again, concentrating our efforts.

Stage 5. 4-6th week after the exhibition

Another stage of expansion. Here it is important to understand why “the sleigh doesn’t move.” Sometimes processes slow down because it is unclear whose move it is.

There are several possible reasons for low conversion of leads into sales:

you are not communicating with the decision maker,

you offer not what the buyer “hurts”, but what you need to sell,

your proposal should be reconsidered, for example, prices are not competitive,

you don't clearly communicate your benefits,

they starve you out, trying to get better conditions,

They don’t plan to come to an agreement with you at all.

Perhaps you are not trying to benefit the client, you do not hear him or look like a pushover. Use Jim Kemp's Rule: Learn to Say No. Be prepared to hear a refusal, don't need it. As soon as you negotiate unnecessarily, all conversations will immediately become to the point and you will feel respect from your interlocutor.

After all, you don’t need one-time deals, but regular customers, is not it?

Or perhaps you are putting too much pressure on the client, literally pushing your offer into him.

In the book “The Kremlin School of Negotiations,” Igor Ryzov teaches: you need to give a person the right to choose and the right to refuse. It is best to think through the CP options in advance, for example there will be 3 of them:

first average, normal,

the second is ideal, mutually beneficial,

We ourselves dismiss the third as inconvenient and unprofitable in negotiations, emphasizing our concern for the client’s benefit.

This article did not include material on how best to prepare for an event at the Network Procurement Center, nor many specialized details. Perhaps this is a reason to write the next series!.

We hope that the foundations for lead generation at the exhibition have been laid, good luck with your sales and have a productive time at PRODEXPO 2018!

Inna Armstrong talks about the BeSmart methodology, which will help you get the maximum benefit from participating in any exhibition, and shares a plan for preparing for the event.

Participation in the exhibition is one of the strategies for developing sales both in the domestic market and in the international arena. A signed contract to start cooperation with a partner or sell to end B2B/B2C consumers is a desired result for every company that takes part in the exhibition. However, for many, reality is far from plans, and in the end, the exhibition may not even recoup the funds invested in it. There are several reasons for this:

• The company does not have clear goals and objectives; it participates only for the sake of participation.
• Preliminary market monitoring (if the company takes part in an exhibition abroad) has not been carried out to determine the availability of supply and demand for their product/service;
• A targeted search and selection of the main potential partners/clients was not made in advance in order to establish initial contact, receive feedback on the possibility of cooperation and arrange a meeting at the exhibition;
• The staff is not prepared to work at the stand and does not know how to process collected contacts after the exhibition;
• Marketing materials are poorly prepared and so on.

All of the above points are critical for participation in international exhibitions.

4 stages of preparation for the exhibition

To get the most out of the exhibition, companies must plan their time wisely. Preparation for the exhibition can be divided into 4 main stages:

1. Collection and analysis of information for choosing a market and exhibition.
2. Preparation for the exhibition.
3. Work at the exhibition.
4. Post-exhibition work.

Correctly structured work at each of these stages is the key to success. But the pre-exhibition stage can bear fruit (i.e. sales) even before participation. At this stage, your goal is to launch remote sales ( full cycle sales) or schedule meetings at the exhibition with companies interested in purchasing/cooperating (partial sales cycle).

Cases

Last month we worked with an Irish microbrewery that was planning to enter the German market through partnerships with distributors. In August, they planned to attend one of the major beer festivals to present beers and meet potential partners.

Before the trip, the company made a targeted selection of potential partners and held initial negotiations with them. Starting with seven distributors interested in reviewing marketing materials, the company signed a contract with a German partner within a month, and negotiations are ongoing with two more. It turns out that the purpose of participation in the exhibition has also changed for the company: sales have already been made (and they limited opportunities production), which means you can relax and have a good time!

Another example that demonstrates the importance of preparation, also from 2017, is the case of a German company that was traveling to the Securika exhibition in Moscow. This is their fifth exhibition in the last seven years. The company wanted to expand partner channels, although there was already a distributor in the market. The goal for the exhibition is at least eight meetings with potential partners. As a result, after four weeks of intensive work, 18 targeted meetings were scheduled, and preliminary agreements were signed at the exhibition to start cooperation with three companies. Great return on investment on participation!

These cases demonstrate that it is possible to achieve the set KPIs if you properly approach the organization of time before the exhibition.

What exactly to do before the exhibition

Here are a few useful tips to prepare for the exhibition. According to this scheme, we work with foreign trade projects:

• Set clear goals and objectives and what is expected - measurable and real- the result of participation in the exhibition. You can set goals using the SMART method.
• Identify your target partner or client profile to help you determine your prospecting strategies and prepare your marketing materials.
• Give due attention to your product/service. A good product- this is a significant part of a successful sale.
• View the lists of exhibition participants: your potential partners and clients may be among them. The necessary contacts can be found in business directories (Switchboard Yellow Pages, Europages), trader databases (ThomasNet, Makers Row, MFG, Kompass, Alibaba, AliExpress, IndiaMart), online catalogs of suppliers, providers, speakers of exhibitions, forums, conferences. Do not ignore articles in foreign publications.
• Do not send cold letters with an offer to “buy” your product/service: front-line sales do not work; you need to establish contact with potential partners or clients step by step. Find out first whether you are talking to the decision maker and whether they are interested in what you want to offer, and only then send detailed information.
• Translate your website into at least English and prepare a high-quality company sales presentation with a maximum of 15 slides. The presentation should focus on the benefits for the client or partner. Don’t forget also that a presentation for potential partners (the benefits of working with you) is different from a presentation for B2B/B2C clients (the benefits of a purchase) - these target audiences have different needs. Customers care about the quality of the product/service, guarantees and after-sales service. For partners, it’s a little different - an attractive affiliate program (no matter how trivial it may be - how much they will earn by collaborating with you).
• Make as many appointments as possible at the trade show. This way your potential partners or clients will be able to see your product live and evaluate the quality. It will be possible to discuss the prospects for cooperation in person.
• Don’t forget about preparing your staff for the exhibition: the outcome will depend on the competencies and professionalism of your employees. Plus, your employees are the face of your brand.
• Separately, you need to think through a scheme for how you will process visitor contacts. Surely you are familiar with the situation when there is a flow of visitors, but you do not have time to make notes with whom and what you talked about. Business Cards add up to a common “sweat”, and after the exhibition it is difficult to remember who owns the card, what the conversation was about and what to do next. Sound familiar?

BeSmart Method

We at NeuVenture Global have developed BeSmart technique, which has been polished over several years and has been tested in action by many of our clients and partners. She has assisted in more than 15 countries around the world and at conferences ranging from regional local exhibitions to major international events such as the Canton and Hanover Fairs.

Main secret BeSmart methods- pre-prescribed coding of possible communication scenarios with potential partners or clients, as well as planned further steps. You can use this code at trade shows to reduce the time experts spend commenting on each visitor. An example of such encoding, which will be written on the business card of one of the visitors (instead of long comments about your conversation): “ K8 – 26.6PPL - 1.7V.”

Now, in order. Here are the encoding parameters, what and how to encrypt:

1. Criterion for assessing visitor status

• "TO"- client
• "P"- partner
• "AND"- investor

2. Interest assessment criterion

On a scale from 1 to 10, where 1 is low interest, 10 is high interest/potential for cooperation. This will give you the opportunity after the exhibition to devote Special attention to the highest priority contacts that will bring profit in the shortest possible time.

3. Date of next contact

During the conversation, you will likely discuss the next step and time frame. For example, agree to contact after June 26 (a couple of weeks after the exhibition) to discuss contract details.

4. What's the next step?

• "P"- to send a letter. "PP"- with a company presentation; « PKP"- With commercial offer; "PPL"- with price list.
• "Z"- call your business partner on the specified day.
• "IN"- agreement to meet on a specified date.

As a result, your specialist at the exhibition, instead of filling out a questionnaire, puts the encoding on the business card - “ K8 – 26.6PPL - 1.6V”, which means: “a potential client with a high interest in cooperation, who needs to send an email with a price list on June 26, and then arrange a meeting on July 1.”

Your company can encode other parameters to make the work of specialists at the stand easier.

Good luck to you in your international exhibition and fair activities!

I will say right away that it is impossible to track all events in them, and perhaps it is not necessary. Facebook helped a lot. Whenever we noted that we wanted to attend a particular event in the FB group, he would show us similar options.

Event table

We tabulated all the options, resulting in 10-20 events per month. All that remains is to select priority activities. To do this, we compared all events according to three criteria: the presence of potential clients and partners among visitors (we looked for them in the lists of speakers, visitors and sponsors), price and participation formats.

How to become an exhibitor?

We have already presented our project in Russia several times. In March 2018, we attended an exhibition in Europe for the first time - together with The Untitled Foundation we participated in the Ticino Fashion Tech Valley exhibition in Lugano, Switzerland. Exhibiting abroad is a completely different story. There are two main differences: there is much more choice abroad, but participation is much more expensive. We made several requests for participation and received the following prices: on average, an exhibition space in the startup zone costs about 2-3 thousand euros.

For example, a stand for one day at the Web Summit in Lisbon costs 1,490 euros with a discount, a stand at the London BVE Forum costs 1,995 pounds sterling, the price of renting an individual stand starts from 500 euros per square meter. So, at the same BVE, 1m2 of exhibition space costs £514, and this is so far the most low price of all the options we considered.

In February, we, as Skolkovo residents, were offered to participate in two technical events:

Viva Technology in Paris

TechXLR8 in London

We applied for both events, and already at the end of March we found out that we were selected.

Application

Preparations have begun.

How to prepare?

The main task before the exhibition is to prepare the project for presentation.

We prepared for the trip:

company brochure on English language;

presentation of the project in English for demonstration on plasma;

pitch presentation;

elevator speech

Booklet

How it happened: Viva Technology Inc

VivaTech – pilot project President Emmanuel Macron, a major event in his program to promote innovation in France. Co-organizers: Les Échos, Orange, BNP Paribas, LVMH, Google. This year VivaTech was visited by 100 thousand people. The forum was attended by 9 thousand startups and technology companies, 1,900 investors and journalists from all over the world.

In 2018, the exhibition took place from May 24 to 26. We must pay tribute to our organizers - the Skolkovo and REC stand was prepared with a bang. White cabinets, plasma, meeting room with flowers and coffee. All we had to do was pick up our badges and get started.

Photo of the stand

At the exhibition, large corporations such as LMVH, Air France, Media lab TFI and the Mulier family presented technical startups from their accelerators. Speakers included Mark Zuckerberg, Slack founder Stuart Butterfield and IBM President Ginni Rometty. Not surprisingly, there were many visitors. To somehow help them get their bearings, the organizers of VivaTech organized special excursions; the Skolkovo stand, unfortunately, was not included in the itinerary.

By the end of the day, the visitors completely resembled particles from a picture of Brownian motion, wandered chaotically around the site and clearly no longer saw anything. Despite this, there were always people at our stand, people came in groups and individually.

Project presentation

As a result, we presented the project an average of 80 times per day and by the end we were completely hoarse. But the result was impressive - more than 40 leads - representatives of media, e-commerce and government organizations.

How it was: TechXLR8 as part of London Tech Week

London Tech Week is the largest international festival high technology. On average, every year the festival is attended by 55 thousand participants from 157 countries. This year, 8 conferences were held as part of the week; more than 8 thousand companies presented their projects at exhibitions and performances. Speakers included Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wells and Lastminute.com co-founder Martha Lane Fox.

We participated in the TechLR8 exhibition. The event was smaller in scale than Viva Technology in Paris. Most of the visitors came on the opening day; by the third day the crowd had decreased significantly. We presented our project under the banner of MADE IN RUSSIA. Needless to say, our stand attracted a lot of attention. During the three days of the exhibition, we introduced more than a hundred visitors to the project, gave an interview to a British journalist and collected 48 contacts.

Photo of the stand

In general, as with everything, there were pros and cons. In any case, the experience was valuable. We share with you.

Minuses

Thousands of visitors are not the key to the success of an exhibition

Each event tries to boast a large attendance and number of participants. In our experience, this is far from a guarantee of success. When there are a lot of people and stands, the probability of finding the right person is reduced to almost zero, but the number of random visitors, on the contrary, grows exponentially.

Appointment apps don't work

Every major event creates its own networking app. All participants are required to register. In the application, as a rule, you can find the desired contact and make an appointment. In both Paris and London we have found about 20 representatives of our potential clients and partners. Appointments were made, each invitation was accompanied brief explanation. And, alas, we waited in vain at the appointed hour; not a single one of our messages was even read.

Make contact with the right person very hard

As a rule, people who do not make any decisions in the company are sent to such events. They treat the exhibition as entertainment; they approach the stands to take booklets and take photographs for the report. Top management acts as speakers; it is impossible to get through to them after the speech.

pros

Met our competitors

Any exhibition, no matter what it is, is a great way to show yourself and look at others. When a thousand projects are presented on one site, it is impossible not to get to know your competitors better and learn about new technologies. The overall picture emerges quite quickly.

We checked how understandable our product is to the average person

Each listener, no matter who he is, gives his own assessment of the project. Questions are the most valuable; they make it clear what needs to be explained in the future in articles about the project, presentations, booklets and on the website.

Gained experience in presenting a project to different audiences

The exhibition is not a pitch competition. No one is cutting you off in time; there is no strict structure of the story either. By the tenth or fifteenth listener at the stand, they will have their own story and their own presentation of the project. We started with a general presentation for 2-3 minutes. By the end of the first day, separate speeches for different categories of listeners had formed on their own.

Attend internal events

Within major exhibitions There are always master classes, conferences and seminars. Most often they are free, and anyone can participate in them. This does not mean at all that the city’s crazy people will gather at the event; on the contrary, the most interested specialists will come. At London Tech Week, we quite by chance stumbled upon a small event for retail from the London Bar Association. We didn’t expect anything special, but we went anyway, and ended up at a business party where only the contacts we needed gathered.

Be able to cut off unnecessary things

As we said above, both times we went with the Skolkovo stand under the Made in Russia banner. The loud name attracted more than one curious person; all of them could be divided into three categories: 1) immigrants who are nostalgic for their homeland - not dangerous, but they take a lot of time, because they like to talk; 2) immigrants who hate their homeland are dangerous, their bile pretty much spoils the mood and makes you want to run away from the exhibition; 3) Europeans, raised on stereotypes about the USSR, are not dangerous; as a rule, they ask whether we took a gun with us, whether we are being tortured in the KGB dungeons, and how the bears are doing.

Pin the necessary contacts immediately

As they say, strike while the iron is hot. Same with contacts. They need to be fixed immediately, ideally - day after day, in any case no later than a week. The best option– send a request to be added as a friend on LinkedIn, a presentation of the project – by email after the exhibition.

Prepare a bright video presentation and hone your speech

At general stands, the only thing that can stand out is a competent video presentation, which is broadcast on plasma. We put together videos and PowerPoint slides, selected a bright design for the logo, icons, minimal text, and, voila, every fifth person praised our presentation and said that it was what attracted him to it.

Always remember that the main thing in the presentation of any project is yourself

At the stand, keep your back straight and smile, put your phone aside. Should be on the stand perfect order– only promotional materials, no cups of coffee or apple cores. Of course, this advice may seem banal, but we have seen more than once how a cabinet turned into a landfill, and a project representative into an intricate hook stuck in a phone. A character who shows with all his appearance: “I have no time for you, don’t come.”

results

Based on the results of two exhibitions, we collected more than 80 leads, most of them are already in work.

The project was presented to both private companies and government organizations. Representatives of the British and French Chambers of Commerce visited the stand in London and Paris.

Finding your audience is not easy. But it is quite possible that your client is looking for you, and you are looking for him. And one of these sites fateful meetings is a specialized exhibition. Participation in exhibitions is very effective tool, if you avoid mistakes and do not miss details. This is always a challenge and we will be glad if our experience is useful to you.

Exhibition selection

First of all, you need to determine the profile of the exhibition: what is exhibited there, who comes there, what the history and reputation of the exhibition is.

1. Industry
   Ask yourself: who buys my product, who needs it, and how it can help the buyer. Sometimes the answer is obvious, and to exhibit a highly specialized device for producing a plastic packaging component, you need to go to industry shows. Sometimes a product may have unobvious application functions or secondary audiences that will also be interested in your product. Explore your options – your map of target exhibitions may expand.
2. Scale and prestige
   From photos and videos it’s easy to understand the level of the exhibition and whether it’s worth going to. If you see half-empty squares and few bored people, then it's not worth it. Find out if there were any media publications about the exhibition: announcements, reports. How long it lasts – the longer, the more prestigious.
3. Reviews
   Do you remember any of your industry colleagues mentioning this exhibition? If the exhibition is known in narrow professional circles, that’s good.

Target

Participation in the exhibition can be useful in three ways:

• Company promotion
• Sales
• Partners

Stand: position and construction

A big stand is not always good. You should choose a place based on traffic. The most popular places are at the beginning of the exhibition hall, at the entrance, in the center of the hall.

It is important to take into account three key points when developing:

• place for product display
• place for concluding contracts
• space for convenient movement around the stand

Small stand– from 6 to 12 sq.m. – will allow you to place the minimum required: posters, information desk, chair.

Middle stand– from 12 to 18 sq.m. – will already allow you to place display cases with product samples and some furniture: tables and chairs.

Large exhibition stand– from 20 sq.m. and more - a large exhibition area will be useful for the work of a group of managers; the area will allow for the installation of areas for negotiations and display cases.

Your stand is the face of the company. He will tell visitors about the company’s position in the market, potential, ambitions, and opportunities. Building a spectacular, bright stand is not difficult now, but attracting attention and surprising is not easy.

If you manage to create an atmosphere, you will not only attract visitors, but also retain them. Lighting will help with this: bright lighting will allow you to familiarize yourself with the products in detail, dim lighting will create intimacy. Pay attention to the quality of materials used in the design. Take it to the stand unusual furniture. Add interactive elements.

To attract attention

The more creative you choose your tools, the greater the effect you will get.

You should no longer use:

• Female models at the stand: weed out most of the audience
• Animators in full-length suits: except when your target audience is children
• Music and other sound tricks: there is always a lot of sound at exhibitions, your sound will get lost and cause irritation

Try:

• Spreadingbranded treats : visitors will eagerly take them, especially those who have already spent a lot of time at the exhibition.
  The cost of tea and glasses is low, and just imagine how many people will be tempted by free tea and visit your stand, even if they don’t stay, many will see glasses with your logo.
• Bright details that the eye will focus on - the so-calledi-stoppers(eye-stopper). These could be stand design elements or unusual objects - anything that doesn’t go unnoticed and makes you stop looking plays into the hands of you and your stand.
• Interactive elements – everything that you can touch, smell, leaf through, or play with, attracts attention and is remembered.

By the way, the Promobot robot is both an eye-stopper and an interactive element with which visitors talk, take pictures, play, and dance.

Working with stand visitors

You are greeted by your clothes and escorted by your mind. So, at the exhibition, your company will be greeted by its stand, and judged by the quality of the work of your employees.

They must make a favorable impression: be neat, sociable, and well informed about the company’s activities, its products and services.

Before the exhibition, conduct training for employees - you should explain to them the purpose of participation in the exhibition, the functions of each. Tell them who your target audience is, etc. Coordination of employee actions will make participation in the exhibition effective.

People who work at the stand must be sociable. It would be great if they were experienced sales people. Your stand will be visited by the most different people, and if your employees manage to understand the type of client and find an approach to him, this is success.

Even if a visitor passes by your stand, it is important for him to feel that you are interested in him. Then he will be interested in you. While waiting for visitors, do not get carried away with gadgets and reading - this way you may not notice the visitor, and he will not want to bother you. And he will pass by, to another stand, where he will be noticed.

Enter personal responsibility. If everyone is responsible for achieving a task, then this means that no one is responsible for it; distribute tasks and designate areas of responsibility + enter reporting forms.

During communication, show your interest, conduct an active dialogue, invite the visitor to send materials via e-mail– you receive his contact information in advance and even save on printing, which they often refuse to take due to its impressive weight.

If you promise to contact your interlocutor after the event, be sure to do so. If you want the name of your company to remain in a person’s memory, the letter must reach him within 48 hours. During the exhibition, contacts should be systematized in order to remember their owners and not miss anything important.

Efficiency mark

Classic criteria are ROI (return on investment) - an indicator of return on investment in participation in an exhibition, to calculate material returns, and ROO (return on objective) - an indicator of achieving the objectives of participation in an exhibition, which will show the intangible return of participation.

• How to calculate ROI?
  It is necessary to subtract the cost of sales and participation costs, then the received net profit divided by participation costs and multiplied by 100%. For example:
  • Total sales volume at the end of the exhibition = 5 USD
  • Cost of sales = 2 USD
  • Expenses for the exhibition = 1 USD

From the total sales volume we subtract the cost of sales and expenses for the exhibition = 5 – 2 – 1 = 2 cu, so the net profit is 2 cu.

Now the net profit (2 cu.) needs to be divided by the amount of expenses (1 cu.) for the exhibition and multiplied by 100% = 2/1*100% = 200%

For the most adequate assessment, the results should be summed up no earlier than three months after the end of the exhibition (some companies sum up the results six months or even a year after the exhibition, depending on the sales cycle).

According to surveys, from 60 to 80% of visitors to b2b exhibitions make purchases within three to six months after the exhibition, while from 20 to 40% of visitors can make purchases in the longer term (pent-up demand).

• How to evaluate ROO?

Depending on the assigned tasks, evaluation criteria may include:
– plan fact– it is enough to compare the planned results with the actual ones;
– quality of contacts according to the following parameters: degree of importance / value / interest of clients;
– percentage of attracted visitors – calculated through the ratio of the number of contacts with target visitors to the total number of exhibition visitors included in the target audience;
– percentage of contacts resulting in a sale – the number of sales divided by the total number of contacts made at the exhibition.

Thus:

• Successful participation in an exhibition begins with the choice of this very exhibition - choose an industry. Moreover, this can be not only the direct field of activity of the company, but also related industries and even the most unexpected ones. If you have something to offer even to the most diverse audiences, then offer it.
• Evaluate the scale and prestige of the exhibition: ask your friends and colleagues, look at photos and videos from the exhibition, and materials not only from the official website, but also from social networks exhibition visitors – they can be found using hashtags and geotags. Study what the media wrote about the exhibition.
• Determine the purpose of participation and focus on it. Don’t scatter yourself on everything at once: choose either customers, or partners, or the media. Or divide these audiences between different employees.
• We put our participation into action - we choose a place and area, we build up a stand. You need to take into account that you need to demonstrate the product, negotiate and space so that those who are looking at the product do not interfere with those who are already negotiating the purchase. And vice versa.
• Create an atmosphere at your stand so that you not only want to come to you, but also stay.
• To attract visitors to your stand, use unusual techniques - unusual objects that you want to look at or touch, branded treats, in general, everything that your imagination tells you.
  The main thing is not to recruit a staff of models or life-size dolls - they will surprise few people and not many will approach them.
• Instruct the booth staff: why the company is participating, what to say, how to say it and what to do. Divide responsibility: designate the areas of responsibility of each employee at the stand and their KPIs.
• Don't be distracted by gadgets while working at your stand and show interest in visitors. Communicate and contact your interlocutor after the exhibition no later than 48 hours.
• Evaluate the effectiveness of participation - the ROI and ROO coefficients are suitable.

We wish you good luck in your endeavors and may your ROI and ROO exceed all expectations!

27.02.2018

Exhibitions, seminars, conferences and fairs are great places in order to find new clients and partners. After all, these events are very rarely attended by random people. Basically, the circle of people invited to official events includes potential business partners.

How can you take advantage of the opportunities that arise?

To begin with, you should understand that your largest customers and clients will come to you based on recommendations. Neither advertising, nor newsletters, nor your website. And recommendations.

Knowing this, you will act carefully and decisively. After all, people who know you can give you recommendations. Those who have a good impression of you.

Communication

Therefore, at any event you need to communicate. It is not necessary to immediately move on to a topic that interests you or offer cooperation. Communicate in the language of the interlocutor. Let him speak.

The ability to listen is one of the most important qualities of a friend. But you just need to make friends with your future partners. You should not keep your interlocutor busy for a long time. Move on. Make connections with others after you have interacted with one person or group of people.

Official events are attractive because people come here to create business acquaintances. And many will not mind knowing who you are. After all, they are also looking for clients.

So don't forget to give away...

Business cards

They can be presented immediately upon meeting, and before you are about to leave. Business cards must be with you always and everywhere. After all, you are the head of a company.

- This the best remedy an unobtrusive reminder of yourself. It will always be at hand and your future client or partner will remember you when he needs you.

But even if he doesn’t need you, he will remember you to recommend you to his friend. This is how word of mouth works. And the largest contracts are concluded through friends. To find clients, you need to know how to use business cards.

Remind yourself

When official event completed, and your new acquaintances have gone home, they will soon forget about you. Therefore, do not forget about them. Who is interested in cooperation? Call and invite your future client to a restaurant or other informal event.

This way you can get to know each other better if you intend to be friends. And if your interests coincide, then invite him directly to the office for a business conversation.

But in any case, after a while you need to remind yourself and your company.

Formal events will be a real sales outlet for your company if you can establish business contacts. Therefore, you should not neglect them and consider them too boring and an insignificant event.

Finding a client at a professional exhibition that matches your company profile or fair is quite simple. You just need to communicate and don’t forget to take business cards with you.