Exhibit Quiz

In their landmark study The Power of Exhibitions 11 the CEIR reported on how companies allocated their marketing dollars. See how close you are to their overall results. (The answers appear later in this newsletter.)

Direct sales %

Exhibitions %

Advertising %

Direct mail %

Public Relations %

Telemarketing %

Making Trade Shows Work -US

After 15 successful years in Canada our acclaimed workshop - Making Trade Shows Work - will be offered in the United States. The first event is on February 5th in Chicago. In the spring we will roll it out to nine other American cities. For more information check our website www.siskindtraining.com click on open seminars/ MTSW-US

Feature Article

In our last newsletter I told you how to obtain support from your staff. In this article I tackle the challenge of obtaining senior management support.

Getting senior management's support.

By Barry Siskind

A real obstacle many managers face is running a trade show program without the full support your organization. Through lack of understanding or apathy, members of your company look at trade shows as a necessary evil and not worthy of much more attention. But with management support the world of possibilities opens; staff are better motivated; cross-promotion opportunities are doable; integration with the overall marketing objectives is assured; senior executives can get into the trenches and participate in the marketing process; you get the picture.

So what can you do to attain greater commitment from your entire organization?

Start at the top with your senior management. If you can show them the rationale of the show plan, how this show fits into the overall goals and objectives of the corporation and how the show will provide a positive return on investment, a commitment should follow.

Trade shows are a marketing exercise. The decision to participate therefore needs to complement the corporate marketing objectives. Having a clear handle on these objectives is the first step. Doing a show because you always have or because everyone else is there is not real justification. However, understanding that exhibits are an opportunity to meet lots prospects face to face in a short period of time gives you a new broader prospective. Think of a marketing objective that can be accomplished at a show. It could be gathering qualified leads, creating a company image, sampling, recruiting, reinforcing relationships, introducing new products and so on. In fact there are over one hundred realistic and measurable objectives achievable at trade shows.

Now that you have found a justification for the investment your next job is to develop a rational show plan. Look at the plan from your manager's point of view. Be prepared to tackle some of the following questions.

• What message is my company conveying and how does the trade show involvement help?

• Is there a positive return on my show investment?

• Do I have the resources (human and other) to achieve my trade show goals?

• Who are the attendees I will have a chance to meet at the show?

• How will senior management commitment enhance my plan?

• Add other questions you feel are relevant to your own situation.

Your next job is to find reasonable answers to all these questions and communicate them to the people who need to hear them. If you are just doing the show because someone dumped the file on your desk and you were reluctant to say “No,” then you can't expect to find much value in the experience for either your company or yourself. However, if you see organizing a show as a tremendous opportunity for personal growth and satisfaction and crave to make a real difference in your organization your chances of success are greatly enhanced. The key to achieving this goal is senior management.

Taking on the responsibility of running a show is like running a business for a finite period of time. Like any business there are costs and there are rewards. First convince yourself that this business makes sense and then convince senior management.

Guest Article

You gotta track & measure!

By Darren Rabie President, Focus America and Co-leader of Making Trade Shows Work – US

Many years ago, when I just started out in this business, I remember sitting down with my clients or prospective clients to discuss the performance of their marketing investments at trade shows. I was amazed by what I heard across the board such as…”we got a lot of leads”; “we gave away lots of literature”; “I think I saw some leads come through the fax the other day” & “it sure seemed busy in our booth”.

Does this sound familiar? If it does, trust me, you are not alone. You have got to track and measure your leads & opportunities and understand what is really in your pipeline. Here are a few reasons why:

Make better decisions:

Each year, companies decide what lead generation activities to invest in to help drive sales. Without an understanding of the number of leads generated per lead source, how many moved to a project, a quote and even a sale , good decisions are almost impossible. In fact, you often land up re-investing in activities simply because “your competitors do” or because “you always have” and not because it added an ounce of value to your bottom line.

By being able to evaluate what has happened with each of your leads through the various phases of your sales cycle you will easily be able to re-invest in certain activities and divest from others.

Knowing what's “in your pipeline”:

Many companies have excruciatingly long sales cycles - sometimes months and even years. Yet, when I ask my clients to describe “what's in the pipeline” all they can tell me is how many quotes they have written. However quotes are often the last or second last activity before business is either won or lost. There are many stages before a quote yet few people monitor the progress of customers in those earlier stages.

If you were to measure the number of leads, opportunities, projects and quotes along the way, you would have realized at least 6 to 12 months earlier that you did not have enough momentum to achieve your sales objective and would have had plenty of time to start looking for solutions.

It's your money – don't you want to know?

It's amazing to see so many organizations scrutinize their administration bill, think twice before giving raises, and put endless amounts of pressure on everyone to do more with less and still meet the revenue and profit numbers, yet spend $250,000 - $500,000 on trade shows, magazine advertisements, website, direct mail, etc…without holding anyone accountable to evaluate and quantify the ROI. Remember its important to apply the same rigor when evaluating these expenditures as we do with so many others.

How Should I do this?

There are several ingredients required to successfully manage, measure and track your sales pipeline. Here are two of them:

1 : Have a clearly-defined Sales Process/Methodology:

Using the same logic we apply to tracking our production line or our trail of accounts receivable, break down the sales cycle into it's components i.e. suspect, prospect, project, quote, close. Then determine the “work-flow” from the minute a lead is generate through these stages until a sale is either won or lost.

2: Drive your Sales Process using sales software:

In today's technological world, every company, no matter how big or small should be taking advantage of the multitude of software available – known as Customer Relationship Management (CRM) or Sales Force Automation (SFA).

If you are investing time and money into generating leads and trying to drive sales, you owe it to yourself to actually understand if it's working and how to make it better.

Darren Rabie, President of Focus America.

drabie@focus-america.com.

Working The Show from Both Sides of the Aisle

On November 25th we offered this brand new open workshop in Toronto. Eighty two participants from across Canada participated. Some of their comments were...

This workshop was well research and presented professionally,.

Provided key tools to improve results, Would definitely recommend this workshop to my colleagues.

In the first half of 2004 this program will be offered in Edmonton, Moncton, Vancouver, Winnipeg and Mississauga. To learn more about the workshop check our website www.siskindtraining.com click open seminars.

Trade Show Audits

Recently the Trade Show Exhibitor's Association declared their support for the independent auditing of trade shows. The audit debate has been gaining momentum for over a decade and with the support of the TSEA and exhibitors the audit practice can be as common as the independent audits done for print, television and radio. For more information check www.tsea.org  and look in their advocacy section.

Answers to Quiz

How do you compare?

Direct sales 47.0%

Exhibitions 14.0%

Advertising 11.5%

Direst mail 9.0%

Public Relations 6.5%

Telemarketing 5.0%

Other 7.0%

Tell a friend

Do you have colleagues who want to get the most from their exhibit investment. Let us know and we will add their names to our newsletter distribution list.