Quick win – Making every exhibition conversation count

0:06Welcome back to the Mastering Sales and Negotiation podcast, the quick win edition. I'm Rachel Massey. This week, we're revisiting our conversation with Tracy Shah on how to get real value from exhibitions. The key idea, it's not a two day event. It's a 12 week sales campaign with two days in the middle. Too often, teams focus on volume, number of leads, level of activity, rather than what actually matters, the quality of conversations, the strength of opportunities, and the impression they leave behind. To unpack that, I'm joined by Robin Hoyle, our Head of Learning Innovation. Now, Robin works with sales teams to focus on what really drives performance, not just activity, but outcomes.

0:54We'll share a few practical tips from prioritizing quality over quantity to making sure your follow-ups feel human and not automated. Let's get into it.

1:11Robin Hoyle:I thought that conversation with Tracy Shaw was really interesting and I think it's an area which a lot of sales organisations don't necessarily have on the top of their list, but massively important. Really important. I don't think people think about it enough. No, no. I mean, you've done lots and lots of exhibitions and so what do you take from as an experienced old hand? Event organiser. Yeah. What do you take away from that? I think the interesting thing for me is to think about the future of events because the whole bounce back from COVID is really interesting, isn't it? Because you think about what's happening now as well with AI.

1:46You think, well, where do these face-to-face events fit in? And they are getting more and more popular. There's more and more of them. And the traditional trade shows, as they used to be called, are probably going to, they're really moving into a different area now. So the networking stuff that we talked about, that's got to be the piece that people focus on because we're all either at home or in the office infrequently. To be able to network with people is just critical to the future of your business. otherwise how are you going to meet those people you don't do it as much as you used to do in your

2:19Robin Hoyle:everyday working life no you're absolutely right you know the whole working from home thing and all the rest of it and how many times you know do you actually speak with customers face to face it's very infrequent I count on the fingers of one hand how many times have I actually been in the same room with some of our customers uh you spend all the time on teams or whatever and I think that that idea that a lot of our customers come to us with a lot of our uh clients either ones that were newly working with or worked with for a while come to us and they go well we we're worried about lead generation we're worried about how we get you know real leads proper qualified leads the people who've got a budget and they've got a real identifiable need how do we get to speak to them and from to my mind one of the worst things you can do is is to have experienced sales people expensive sales people people who are really at the top of their game spending their time cold calling on the phone and here's an opportunity to put those sales people and potential buyers and prospects in the same space but what makes the difference is not that they're in the same space necessarily but what you do with that time that you have together and it might be quite short yeah and so i think what tracy said there about understanding what their pain points are what their issues are what challenges they are facing at the moment how they're trying to do things differently within their organization is absolutely central to to that conversation and you know we have words for those in terms of understanding their needs and their pain points and their requirements.

3:57Robin Hoyle:But we've also got that idea of where do you leave the conversation, which is what's a quality lead in that setting? And a quality lead is one where the customer has made some sort of commitment, a reasonable commitment. We're not asking them to sign a PO. What we're saying is that they say, oh yeah, I'll have another meeting with you or I will introduce you too or I will happily come along to your webinar or speak to some of your existing customers or, you know, that idea of there is them taking action which progresses the sale is still central to what works from a defining that quality lead perspective and i think then the other thing that that tracy talks about is is i wrote down prepare prepare prepare and it and it's not as simplistic as prepare prepare prepare that's easy for you to say it's it's it's you prepare what you're going to do before who you're going to invite who you're going to contact how you get the message out that you're going to be there how you you know really make that a key focus of your sales strategy there's the preparation for the actual event itself who's going to do what when are you going to take people off the stand put people back on the stand give them a break enable them to capture that information that we've just talked about in the right way how are you going to handle it and then there's the afterwards how are we going to follow up how are we going to connect with these people what stage of the process are they what stage of their buying process are they at are they still in the i'm kind of just looking stage or are they i've got real presenting needs and i need a solution but it might take a while to get there you know what where are they at in that that buying cycle really important and that's the that's the sort of tactical lead generation stuff from an event but also you need to then get the sales and marketing team together to take a step back and look at the whole events planning and say right well these are the this is the business plan for for what we're going to do now that's the tactical stuff this is the business plan these are events we're good this is the perfect event event to launch this piece yeah this is the perfect event to really push our brand here because this is a sector we really need to work in like look at every look at the whole events piece as one thing and think what is what is the best for our business in all of in all of this exposure that i've got yeah and that idea of the sales people and the marketing people being in the same room around the same table having those conversations about why are we going what is it for how does it fit strategically with what we're trying to achieve this year next year and the year after how does that play its part because you know these things are not inexpensive either in terms of expenditure or in terms of resource and time yeah absolutely that time got to get your value proposition right both of you sales and marketing for that particular event yeah and i think the professional organization that really gets that planning right is going to be the one who gets the most benefit from being in that situation and i would echo your point around it becoming more important those opportunities that you have to connect with people to network to talk about your brand to use it almost as a way of gathering market insights as well as to propose you know make your value proposition uh common knowledge within the organization within the industry or the sector or the vertical that you're targeting that idea of of really listening to what your customers are saying can have massive value regardless almost of whether or not you get the leads but of course the ROI calculation needs to be on does this drive pipeline yeah Tracy must have said the word pipeline 10-12 times within that conversation because it's what drives pipeline you know the exhibition is not necessarily and for many many organizations who exhibit this is not where you sign the deal but it is where you move people along that pipeline from wherever they are well that's the key thing isn't it from wherever they are in that buying cycle your customers new prospects all of those people are involved yeah yeah people who've never heard of you through to people you've been having conversations with for years absolutely uh essential to get them in front of your sales people and your sales people to be on it because you might only have five ten minutes yeah yeah to have that conversation you might be lucky you might say hey come and have a coffee and we have a proper 20 30 minute conversation but the reality is most of the impact that you're going to have is within those short bites of time in in a noisy environment where there are competitors there potentially how do you cut through how do you make that necessary for them to to continue the conversation with you and you don't do it by telling them all about the features of your product that's for damn sure absolutely not isn't it interesting that in in this age you know post covid everyone's home in the not in the office infrequently we've got ai that the really events networking all of that stuff is just having a having a great conversation being able to do that having the skills to do that is still ultimately so important and a little bit of serendipity you know i wasn't expecting that to happen but i'm really pleased yeah absolutely yeah absolutely essential yeah great