After the Expo; Follow-Up, How and Why? | Exhibitor training 30 of 36

Here's an almost unbelievable statistic: Companies attend expos to win new business. So how could that figure possibly be so high? Well, people who fail to follow-up mainly do it because they lack something - either: • The time to do it, or • The knowledge of how to do it.

'According to industry figures, 75% of people never follow-up on the leads they receive at exhibitions.'

Making Time

So much time, money and resources go into planning for an expo, but people too often forget to plan for the follow-up. They don't intentionally choose not to follow-up, but without a plan and time in their diaries, they struggle to find the opportunities to do it. We all have busy lives and it's easy to feel that there's always something more pressing to do. But constant delays can mean that vital follow-ups never happen.

Knowledge

Another reason people fail to follow-up is because they don’t know how. After the expo, exhibitors will return to a busy work environment with lots of business cards, which they will need to trawl through. That might be daunting but what's more, the data they have still needs to be separated into hot, interested and general leads. The thought of going through them and having to recall each discussion can be enough to put people off - and as a result, great follow-up opportunities can be missed. So how do you motivate yourself to follow-up? And what do you need to know to do it effectively? The answer is partly about planning. Agree a process with the team for what happens on the day. Know exactly how every lead will be captured and recorded and design the follow-up process ready for execution immediately after the event. We covered Planning your ROI in an earlier tutorial. Start with the end in mind and plan your work accordingly. Whether your target is to generate ten warm leads or a hundred interested ones, every exhibitor should have a target set and, at regular intervals, review where they are up to on the day of the event. By being focused and committed to generating quality leads, you will naturally want to follow up. Structuring and prioritising your follow-up data is also important. Consider each lead - their level of interest and their potential value. The next two tutorials will look at how you follow up on your best prospects, and how best to approach everyone else.

Summary

With such a high percentage of people not following-up, it’s worrying to see organisations spending a lot of money and time at expos and then failing to generate their ROI by neglecting to follow up on leads. Let’s make sure we always follow-up and don't become part of that 75% statistic.

Next: Follow-Up

Follow Us...

In our next tutorial, we will keep the focus on Follow-up, looking at how we follow-up on warm prospects.

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