The competition bowl is filled to the brim - with business cards from guests who want to win an iPad. But will they also buy your products? The business cards will not provide you with any clues concerning this.
It is a fact that many companies see a huge potential regarding the follow-up activities and the cultivation of the leads they collect through their face-to-face marketing activities. They make a great effort to create the optimal setting regarding the trade show booth and leads are collected in big quantities.
When it comes to leads 200 is often worth more than 2000 ...
Another fact is that quite a few companies manage to follow up on all the leads collected. And the reasons are many. Busyness when returning to the office after the trade fair is one reason. Another reason is that neither the responsibility nor the procedures for following up are systemized. Suddenly 2000 leads who we were excited about can become a nightmare for even the best seller! The thought of how long it will take to follow up on all of them and what it will cost, well no one dares to imagine that.
But imagine if we managed to qualify the leads that were collected! Now imagine if we could turn the 2000 business cards in the competition bowl into a card index of relevant and mature leads. And imagine if we might even be able to handle the first follow-up before the guest has left the booth!
We believe that this is the future. The energy required to follow up on leads that are not relevant is too costly.
The business cards in the competition bowl do not tell us anything about visiting guests' interest in our company or products - so save the effort!
Qualified digital leads
Use resources instead to qualify the collected leads. Ask guests some simple questions and collect data digitally, in an app, in an Excel sheet, or similar. It offers several benefits: you save a lot of time, you get lots of data for analysis and measurement, customers feel well treated, and follow-up can be done with a "click".
The qualifying questions are not difficult. It's about asking what you usually talk to your customers about. Product interest, buying intentions, role in the buying process, permission for digital follow-up, and so on. All good suggestions to qualifying questions.
Top league results
Experience shows that conversion rates in this approach to lead generation create results in a completely different league. It can often be difficult for a company to understand and accept that 200 is better than 2000. Therefore, it is relevant to convert the number of leads collected into revenue and ROI and thus make the result of the lead process visible.
And if it is also possible to illustrate how expensive it is for the company to follow up on unqualified managers, it becomes quite clear to most why 200 is better than 2000!
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