Sales 2.0 Trade Shows

I recently saw a posting on the LinkedIn Business group, starting a discussion about Trade

Shows. The person who started the discussion was interested in the effectiveness of trade

shows as a marketing vehicle. In this Blog I will talk about trade shows as one element of

the Sales 2.0 process.

What is a trade show?

Trade shows are meetings held in most major cities around the world. They are usually held

in large venues like convention centers and auditoriums, where exhibitors set up displays

showing their products, demonstrating their services. Over the last 28 years I have

attended or exhibited in hundreds of shows across the world. I have been to shows that have

focused on many diverse industries and fields. Some of the shows I have attended have

focused on:

Industrial Automation
Robotics
Material Handling
Packaging
Industrial Sensors
Motors and Controls
Surgery and Orthopedics
Ergonomics
Embedded Computers
Vision and Inspection
Boston Local Businesses
Cell Phones
Computers

As you can see from the list, the shows focus on many diverse topics. How do you select a

specific show and why should your company attend one?

The Primary goal of any trade show is to meet people.

I will repeat that again. The goal of the show is to meet people. Anyone who thinks that

the goal of exhibiting at trade show is to make sales either does not know what they are

doing, or is that Sham Wow guy.

The Secondary goal is to give people your 30 second commercial.

You do have a 30 second commercial don’t you?

This is one of the secrets to trade shows.

You need to think of a trade show as a way of delivering a very small message to a targeted

population. It can either be the people that are attending the show and walking around, or

the people exhibiting the show when they take a break. An example 30 second commercial may

go like this:

Good Morning! Do you use controls?

My company, Brand U, sells Programmable Logic Controllers with an integrated color touch

screen and 32 Inputs and Outputs all for less than $1200. And we give you the programming

software for free! But wait there's more! It can even handle analog inputs and outputs and

be expanded up to 156 Inputs and Outputs.

What brand of PLC do you use now?

Notice that I start off with a friendly greeting, and then ask an open general question. I

determine if this person is a potential customer based on their response. If they are a

potential customer I continue with the 30 second commercial. If they are not a potential

customer and are just walking around the show, I wish them a nice day.

Take a look at the 30 second commercial again, and notice that I have only said the basic

minimum amount of information with the key marketing messages I want to convey. I am not

trying to teach Surgery to the person walking by, just tell them enough to get their

attention. (Yes, I have been to surgery shows. Yes, they do have teaching displays with

real body parts. Yes, it was gross.) If you try to tell someone more information than they

want to hear, they will lose interest in you and your message, and then just walk away.

Prepare your message when you are selecting the trade show at the beginning of the process,

not while you are standing on the trade show floor shaking hands.

OK, so you have said your 30 second commercial, now what?

I ended the commercial with a question. How did the person answer? Based on that answer,

you can now take the next set to follow up on your quick discussion. Ask another question:

Can I send you more information?

This is really a lead in question.

Does this person standing in front of you have a need for your product?
Is this person the decision maker who will approve the spending of money to purchase your
product? 
When do they need your product? Immediately or are they thinking of the future?
Do they seem to have a grasp of reality or are they in Dream Land?

I ask these questions as I am walking the person over to the lead collection machine.

Always rent the lead collection machine. Always get the option to download the leads as a

CSV file. Always back up the leads in multiple locations. Swipe the person’s bar code or

mag card badge, and enter the answers to the questions you just asked. Save the data.

What I have been doing very subtly is prequalifying this person as a lead into my Sales 2.0

system.

Remember back to my last Blog about Sales 2.0 where my best rep Dominic followed up on a

lead within a few minutes of the person looking at the web site?

In this Blog I am at a trade show, and talking to a new potential customer for the Rosie

Robotic Work Cell who is in Dominic’s territory. The potential customer mentions that he is

at the show to select a robotic cell to dispense sealant on a mirror that will be used in

the 2010 Cadillac CTS. He just had his budget approved for $50,000 to automate the process

and would like to have two work stations delivered within 4 weeks. Wow!

I swipe the person’s card, into the lead collection machine, and thank him for stopping at

the booth. At the first opportunity I have, I make a backup copy of the CSV data file from

the lead collection machine and import that file into my Sales Force Automation system, and

synchronize my local data with my main database. My good friend Dominic checks his system

regularly, and since he knows that I am exhibiting at a trade show, he does a search of the

“Source of Lead” field for the name of show I am attending. Up pops the prospect

information and Dominic calls him the next day to set up a face to face meeting, where he

closes the sale if the two Rosie systems.

What a great trade show!

Seth’s Trade Show Trips and Tricks

Know your target population. If you have not exhibited at a specific show, attend the show

and walk around to get a feel for that show. Then exhibit the following year or at a

different venue. Notice the people walking around. Who are they? How are they dressed?

Where are they stopping? What is attracting them to a booth?

I watch the people's eyes as they walk past my display. You only have 5 seconds to catch

someone’s attention. People are overwhelmed with information and tend to filter things in

their brain. Displays that try to put all the technical specs about their product in size 3

font do not convey any information. Only put key points that will get people's attention,

and stop them. Then the human can do the 30 second commercial.

Think again about the target population. What problem do you solve for that target

population? What is your key point?

You are not that Sham Wow guy. Don’t overwhelm people as they walk by.

The majority of people that attend trade shows that focus on industrial products are male

engineers, and they are generally introverted. They tend to focus on tech stuff or give

away items as they walk around. Pens, flashlights, or squishy balls with your company’s

logo may sound like a great way to get your brand out there, but they all cost money.

The goal of a show is to meet people.

I bring bags of high end individually wrapped chocolates to shows. Everyone that walks by

my display, I greet, I offer them a chocolate, and then I ask the leading question. I talk

to more people than the booth next to mine who is giving out flashlights and pens. I engage

in conversations with more people than my neighbors, and I finish the show with a lot more

qualified leads to send to my sales channel. (Sorry for seeming self-centered.)

Wear comfortable shoes. Your feet and back will hurt at the end of the day.

Take breaks and walk around the show.

Drink water.

Eat lunch.

Summary of Seth’s Guide to Trade Shows 2.0

1. Chocolate
2. Meet and greet everyone
3. Ask your leading question
a. If they answer yes, then 30 second commercial
b. If they answer no, thank you for stopping by enjoy the chocolate
4. Ask follow up qualifying questions
5. Capture leads
6. Backup leads
7. Send lead to the field sales team for follow up
8. CLOSE SALES
9. Have fun

Do you need help with your trade shows?


Sales Management Consulting can help you develop a 30 second strategy or manage the


complete show for you. Call us to talk about how we can help your company grow.

www.salesrepusa.net

SEO, Web site tools and Blogs, are they working to drive traffic to my site?

In this week’s article, I will review the effectiveness of the tools that I have been Blogging about for the last 4 weeks. I outlined some of steps that I am following in the prior Blog. My goal is to drive traffic to my web site, www.salesrepusa.net, connect with new prospective clients for my Outsourced Sales Management Company, and grow my company.

I used Microsoft Office Live to set up my web site last year. I selected Microsoft Live based on the low cost of entry and the easy development tools that Microsoft provided. At this time I feel that I need a more complex web site with embedded HTML codes. When I embedded Google’s tracking code into my site last week, Internet Explorer could not open the site and crashed. I am sorry to any readers that had a problem. When I tried to contact Microsoft for support, I found that the toll free phone number was no longer available. I am planning to switch to a different host next month that supports embedded HTML codes for tracking. If anyone has suggestions, please post them in the comment section.

When I set up my site, I filled in the Keyword section with every possible key word I could think of. As I started to monitor my site, I noticed that only a few of the Keyword were driving traffic to my site. Website Grader also recommended that I reduce the quantity of key words. I also set up Google Adwords with an advertisement for “Outsourced Sales Management”, as a test to look at which keywords are effective, and to drive traffic to my site. Based on a very short test I was able to review which Keywords were generating traffic for me. I then went back to my site and modified the Keywords. Following these changes I have noticed an increase in the daily web traffic.

It has been about 4 weeks since I added Google Ads to my Blog at this Blogger site. Google Ads provides me with daily information showing how many people have read my Blog. In the last 4 weeks, over 1200 people have read this Blog. I also look at the Microsoft Office Live Reports. So far in about one week, almost 200 people have read the Blog on the web site.

I mentioned last week www.websitegrader.com . It is a tool to review your web site which recommends improvements to increase your ranking. I have used this tool for a few potential clients who were unhappy with the effectiveness of their web sites. I very quickly was able to suggest modifications to the potential clients which should improve traffic to their sites.

Overall I have found that these simple SEO techniques have been very successful expanding my brand, increasing web traffic on my site, and driving client to my consulting company. I welcome any questions or comments your may have.

Thank you for reading my Blog!

Driving traffic to your web site!

I have been researching Search Engine Optimization and recently set up a way to advertise my consulting company whenever someone searches for the terms I select. This is a very powerful tool to attract new customers. The goal of this Blog entry is to share what I have learned and help you the readers set up your own web sites.

First we need to define what are keywords?

When you set up a web site, you can select specific words and groups of words which will lead potential customers to your site. For example, I have selected the term “Outsourced Sales Management” as one of my keywords. I use Microsoft’s web site development tools which are part of Office Live Small Business to host my web site. For each page you set up on your web site, there is a Properties selection. When you click it, you can then enter you keyword into a box. Microsoft refers to the keywords as Metatags, and gave this description:

Metatags are invisible bits of code that search engines often use to index Web sites. These metatags can help search engines return the most relevant results for a particular search. The two important metatags are the keyword tag and the description tag.

Meta keywords should be keywords and phrases that your customers would likely use when searching for your page. Each word or phrase, usually between 5 and 10 words, should be separated by a comma or a space.

Try to think like your target customer.

What are they looking for?

hat is the problem that they are trying to solve?

Make up a list of words that prospective customers will be looking for that. These are the keywords to enter on your site.

Spiders!

The major search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing are constantly searching the internet for new web sites, and creating indexes of the keywords. They use software robots called Spiders to search the web for these works and then update their databases with the results. When your potential customer types a term into Google’s web site, Google searches over its index database to find web sites that meet the search criteria, and then display the results.

Now the secrets!

There are ways to move your web site up to the top of the listings! If you have a new web page or only a few keywords, you may be on the 47th page of results that Google displays. Usually people only react and use the search results on the first or second page, so your website is lost without any traffic.

By placing the keywords on your site the robot spiders will find your site and move you up towards the top of the results. This technique is also called organic search results.

Next Chapter in the Blog will be about targeted advertisements called Pay per Click.

Polls for Market Studies

I sent out a poll today asking for ideas for this week’s Blog entry, and realized that polls would be a great topic.

I want to establish some definitions so we all have some common points of reference.

First the definition of Marketing. Marketing is the activities which attract potential customers to your company’s product or service. Marketing can take the form of a number of activities such as:

o Blogs and other Social Networks
o Advertisements
o Printed literature
o Trade shows
o Word of mouth
o Video postings

In each case the goal is to deliver a message to a specific target. In classic marketing terminology there was the Shotgun and the Rifle approach. The concepts are still the same; you can choose to target a wide range of potential customers with a broad general message, or a very narrow range with a specific message.

So using the examples above we can see that Blogs are a way to send a message to a broad range of potential customers or clients. I sent out about 2500 notices that I have updated this Blog, and look for a fraction of the recipients to reply back to me, looking for my consulting services to grow their business.

I have a friend who does direct mail for his clients. He uses a more targeted approach. He mails out offers from a cable company to people who have just moved into a new home. The message targets a specific potential customer at the exact time when they are deciding on their phone, internet, and cable TV needs.

Now the Second Definition: Sales. Sales are the exchange of products or services for money. Profits in a company are derived for the sales of products or services. Marketing is an expense that causes the Sales to occur. The two go hand in hand. Without actively marketing you product or services you will not get sales.


Now on to the main topic: Polls.

A Poll is a way of asking a series of questions to a potential customer or another target group. I have used polls to ask a number of interesting questions, for example:

• Looking for feedback about my company’s technical support
• Asking reps what types of products they would like to sell
• Looking for the next topic for this Blog

In all cases, I had an idea of the questions, and the potential answers I was looking for.

Polls are easily available on Linked In, Blogger which is a Google product, and Constant Contact. In each case you can very easily set up a Poll to ask one question and offer a range of potential answers to select. Try to think about the goal of the Poll and ask the questions in such a was as to gain useful information from your potential customers.

Remember in every case your goal is to gain information about you potential customer, and move them to the point of closing the sale. Why did Ronald McDonald always ask “You want fries with that? “ It was an easy way to Poll his customer at the exact time of the decision, and move the decision process in favor of closing a sale.

Remember in the last Blog we profiled Bob. You can use the Poll to ask Bob questions and then expand your profile of him. The more you know about Bob, the easier it is to influence his decision, to purchase your product or service.

Here are some specific guides to setting up Polls:

On Blogger.com, select Dashboard, then Layout, then Add a Gadget. Polls are in the Gadget section. I have selected to add the Poll Gadget to the right side so that the Poll would not be lost at the bottom of the Blog page.

On Lined In, select Applications, and the Polls follow the installation instructions to get the Poll set up. Once the Poll app is set into your Linked In you can select it and then the Create a Poll tab at the top of the main section.

On Constant Contact, select Surveys and then create a Poll or a Survey. The Survey in Constant Contact is a Poll with more then one question. The poll is sent out the same way as a newsletter to your target population. Constant Contact has a great feature that lets you track who took the survey, and look at the responses. The Survey was so easy to use, even Ed could fill in all the answers.


Next Step: Create you own Poll!

To grow you sales in the United States contact Seth!

Strategies for Sales Channel Development: How to find new customers or clients.

Thank you to all the people who sent me emails with questions and comments to the last Blog. I really appreciate your feedback.

This is a continuation to my prior Blog entry where I was talking about the 60 mile comfort zone. In the last Blog, I asked some questions for you to think about. In this Blog I want to ask some additional questions:

How does this potential customer (as outlined in the prior Blog) purchase products?
What is the key factor to that customers purchase decision?

In the last Blog I listed some statements of the target market of companies. For example:

“I am looking for the manufactures that use precision machined parts made out of Titanium any where in the US”. This is the target customer of the Titanium R US Company.

Let’s think of the person that makes the decision to purchase Titanium parts from the Titanium R US Company for a moment. What drives their decision?

In this scenario, Bob Robert’s is the VP of Engineering at BobCo, who is making the decision which vendor to select for his company’s Titanium parts.

Let’s try for a moment to profile Bob:

What is Bob’s background?
What is the capacity of Bob’s company?
Are they looking at Make it vs. Buy it?
Are they checking out other vendors?
What is Bob’s biggest Fear?
What makes Bob Happy?
What are his personal interests?

Once we have profiled Bob as a typical customer of our company, we can then determine how our company can best meet Bob’s needs. At this point we can now look at Sales Channel Development. The needs of the target customer should determine the sales channels needed to expand your company outside of your 60 mile comfort zone!

In the Industrial Sector companies have used sales agents, and distributors to meet the needs of their customers. In the Retail Sector, companies have sold product through stores to consumers. Keep in mind that you can develop more then one channel to meet the needs of Bob, and the other potential customers profiled in the prior Blog. For one client I identified 6 different target populations, and then set up unique distributors across the United States that targeted each of these markets sectors. In every case I also had only one distributor in any given geography for each of the 6 targeted markets to avoid channel conflicts.

Let’s go back to Bob Roberts again and fill in some of his information as an example of how to develop a channel. This example information is based on my experience in the industrial sector.

What is Bob’s background? Bob is an engineer who likes to work with other engineers. He feel that they “Speak his language”, and he respects another engineers opinion.

What is the capacity of Bob’s company? Bob’s company has internal manufacturing capability but they do not have the expertise or machinery needed to work with Titanium.

Are they looking at “Make it vs. Buy it”? Bob’s company does not want to make the investment needed to bring Titanium manufacturing in house.

Are they checking out other vendors? Yes they always check out multiple vendors.

What is Bob’s biggest Fear? That the project will be behind the schedule and his company will need to delay the shipment of a critical component to their customer.

What makes Bob happy? Not having to worry about meeting his goal. Being able to leave work at a reasonable time, since his vendor is supplying him quality component on time.

What are his personal interests? Going for long fast bike rides.

Wow! By talking to Bob and asking him a few questions, we are able to understand his needs and develop a plan to win him as a customer. Using this plan we can then expand our sales team to meet the needs of people like Bob across the country. Let’s look at Bob’s answers and generate a Sales Channel Outline to meet his needs:

Our Sales Person needs to be an Engineer who can establish credibility in his relationship with Bob. Bob want to know that his components are being built in a timely manor so he does not worry. The Sales Person needs to communicate with Bob the status of his parts on a regular basis.

Based on these goal we can set up either a team of independent sales representatives, or direct employees, who are degreed engineers to address Bob’s needs. Independent reps offer an advantage of having long term established relationships with target companies like BobCo and providing Bob Roberts with a range of solutions to his problems beyond his need for Titanium machined parts. With either option, the sales person must keep in touch with to make him feel comfortable and happy.