As we have done a couple of pretty good exhibitions recently, namely the Internet World and Marketing Week Live,
I wanted to share a couple of learnings we gained from how to best exhit at these events.

Firstly we got these great Roller Banners that are available now, we got ours fromhttp://www.discountdisplays.co.uk/html/budget-rolla.html
and were happy with the quality and delievery.

Take lead capture forms and a stapler to staple a prospects business card to the information you have gathered from them.
Don’t use the electronic readers, they are impersonal and don’t let you freely capture what your prospects requirements are.

A little further note on “Lead capture forms” I found these are useful to be printed in A4 before you attend the exhibition and contain the following fields for capture:

Name,
Company,
Telephone,
Email,
Date you met,
Place of Meeting,
Temperature of Interest with values of  ”Sizzling”, “Hot”, “Warm”, “Cool” and “Cold”.
The agreed next steps from your side
Notes

These sheets are essential and will form a great addition to your CRM system.

Always contact “Sizzling” and “Hot” leads within 24 hours of meeting them.

Smile

Always be standing up, it really does not look good to be sat down, far less people will approach and talk to you.

You will definetly get a lot of people trying to sell to you, don’t let them waste your time when you could be speaking to prospects, get rid of them quickly and politely.

Don’t hand out flyers to everyone passing by your stand!

This is a waste of precious materials and also your time. Wait for people who are interested in what your stand has to offer to come over to you.

When someone walks by and appears interested, ask them opening questions to get your prospects talking.
You should prepare some standard questions in advance.

Simple questions like “Do you have a website Sir/Madam?”, “Are you happy with the way your site is currently managed?”.

Once you get someone talking you can then find out their problems and how you can help them.

Once you have had a good discussion with someone, always ask for their contact details to complete in your lead capture form.

Always agree the next steps with someone. For example, “I will drop you an email next week to agree a suitable day to meet in your office…”

Keep conversations short and to the point. Give the person your full attention when speaking with them, don’t be distracted.

Always follow up with hot prospects as soon as possible, the longer you wait the cooler the lead becomes.

Enjoy the show

I have been doing lots of business development work recently and thought I would share some of the learnings here.

My top learnings, almost in an order

1. Listen more than talk
2. Its all about relationships
3. Make someone else successful and you will be successful
4. Be positive everyone likes a winner
5. Be humerous everyone likes to laugh
6. Be memorable, be different, be relevant
7. Be brief and to the point
8. Always suggest next steps
9. Do as you say, follow up
10. Enjoy life and don’t be too hard on yourself

Hope you find them relevant to your life.