Any trade show booth lead gathering system is susceptible to inefficiency. Many of the leads will be of relatively low quality, since the majority of people who express a passing interest in your product will not be interested to the point where they are prepared to act. So an important aspect of any lead-gathering system involves sorting and qualifying them. You've gone to all the trouble of having a trade show exhibit design firm create a trade show booth for you, so you want to get the most value out of it.
Leads range in quality right from low quality leads who have no real interest in your services, all the way up to hot ones who are virtually eager to buy. When all is said and done the hot ones are the ones you want. You don't consider it fun to waste time and money getting in touch with people who are not really interested in your product or service.
By the same token you will probably realize that it is the luke warm to moderately hot leads that deserve the most time and energy. Hot leads are already locked into your product. Moderately hot ones need a bit of convincing and massaging. Luke warm ones need even more of your attention. The objective is to turn leads generated at your trade show exhibit display into sales, so you want to use your time in the most efficient way to accomplish this task.
What this makes clear is the importance of sorting and qualifying your leads before the show is over and well before the follow-up team gets hold of them. And the best time to do the qualifying is right at the point of initial contact at which a lead is gathered - right at the trade show.
Perhaps the most effective way to qualify leads is to ask visitors a carefully planned series of questions to find out their real level of interest in your products or services.
Surely the most common way to do this is to have booth visitors fill out a simple "Yes I am interested" form. This could be either a paper or an online form where they provide some details of why they are visiting your booth, and what they are interested in.
Just the act of having to put some information down will be a deterrent to many trade show surfers. If you are afraid of scaring off some possible leads, then do what you can to simplify the qualifying system. Don't ask them to enter unimportant information that they don't have at their finger tips - the exact address and phone numbers of their company, for instance. While this may be important information for the future, as long as you get their phone number, email address - depending on how you intend to follow up - and some idea of what they are interested in, you can fill in the missing information later.
For more trade show marketing tips, visit this helpful trade show news blog. It contains lots of information about trade show booth design alternatives, portable trade show booths, trade show booth rentals, and much more.
Filed under: General