Turning exhibitions into sales opportunities

0:07Welcome back to the Mastering Sales and Negotiation podcast. I'm your host, Rachel Massey. This week, we're diving into exhibitions and why, despite the rise of digital and AI, face-to-face still plays such a powerful role in the sales process. Because done well, exhibitions aren't just events. They're a 12-week sales campaign with a couple of days in the middle yet many organizations still struggle to see a clear return. To explore this we're joined by Tracy Shah, Joint Managing Director of Venture Marketing Group. Now Tracy and Robin have worked together for years including through the World of Learning Conference so she brings a unique perspective, having observed thousands of exhibitors across industries and economic cycles.

0:56In this episode, we look at where things go wrong, often before the event even begins, what great stand conversations actually look like and why follow-up is so often the weakest link. And yes, we'll touch on the lighter side too, because even now, one of the most memorable giveaways still seems to be a good pair of branded socks. Joining me is Robin Hoyle, who will help connect what Tracey observes with what great sales teams actually do. Let's dive in.

1:33Tracy Shah:Hi Tracey, and thanks for joining the Mastering Sales and Negotiation podcast. How are you? Really well, thank you, really well. Post-holiday, feeling good. Good, it's great to see you again. And I should, for our audience, own up to the fact that Tracy and I have worked together for quite a long time, both with me being a customer of Tracy's and then subsequently moving on to being the chair of a couple of the events that you run. But you've been involved in the exhibition business for an awfully long time. What keeps you engaged in that side of your organisation? yes I have and I'm really glad you didn't put any numbers to that Robin that's very kind of you very kind of you yes I've been in events for a very long time and absolutely love it yeah I will put a number to it I've been in it for over 20 years um and you don't stay doing something like that unless you absolutely love it um events the sector is really fast paced it's ever-changing and that's what keeps it really exciting.

2:39I'm very lucky that we work in a sector that we really enjoy. So everything that we do is about people and the development and growth of those people. So everything from a franchise exhibition where somebody's coming along to buy their first franchise and become an entrepreneur, to school leaver events where students are thinking about their next steps in terms of what kind of degree course they want to do, where they want to go to university or whether they want to do a degree apprenticeship and that's being part of that journey is really rewarding um right away to obviously learning and development which is really important at the moment i think you'll agree with this robin that people think about their skills and growing those especially in this time of ai and making sure that you've got that constant growth so it is really rewarding um when you go to shows and you hear things like oh i came to your show four years ago and i bought my four uh first franchise and now i've got two and it's changed my life you're having real impact and that that that is an

3:47Tracy Shah:amazing feeling yeah and that experience that exposure that you have to those different types of events because you know although they're all within a kind of identifiable area of of activity they must be very different so so is is there a kind of rule that when you walk onto that exhibition floor and you see some of the stands and you go that's a brilliant stand or oh my words what on earth are they doing i mean are there are there things that just kind of hit you when you walk on the stand you go that's going to be great um there are some real signs of organizations that are going to run that stand and work that show like clockwork and you guys have probably seen this as well but the the sales team that gets in early familiarizes themselves with the show where are the visitors going to be where are the delegates going to be what parts of the show do I need to be in in addition to the stand and then they're on site and they make sure all their sales tools are working and are up and ready to go you know the demos work you know you don't want to be starting the show and opening and logging in finding that your demo is not quite doing what it's meant to be doing um most important tool that scanner that's all working they know how to use it and then you'll see those sales people having that pre-show meeting yeah everybody in that team knows exactly what they're doing and what their role is and how they're going to work the stand and how they're going to integrate with other people on the stand so the non salespeople maybe that's subject matter experts or um an ambassador that they brought onto the sound how do they link him with them so they'll have that really important pre-show meeting and it's um when you walk past you realize it's quite serious meeting that you should not be interrupting but yeah so they they start the show like that um and then you'll see that that runs through the show as well right right up until the end where they'll have the debrief meeting yeah yeah which is equally important right so talking about how that day has gone who they've been speaking to because you know your your salesperson in the corner over there may have spoken to somebody that's really important and you've spoken to someone from the same organization you need to collaborate and connect and talk about that um and refine your pitch as well so you don't have you know you've got to think about what's working and what's not working and that can have a real impact on day two so it just as an example thinking about what might be a trend so in the school lever market at the moment there is a lot of discussion about employability post post graduation yeah so one of the questions that might come up more frequently is well what happens after university how much you how much help do i get um in terms of sourcing that job what are your employability statistics so if that comes up as a common thread of a question that's being asked you then feed that back into day two and maybe you're more proactive in in putting forward those kind of numbers so that kind of operation of a stand that's the kind of thing I walk past and go yeah they they're really nailing it yeah rather than the ones who turned up because they were in the pub because they're away from home for a couple of days so they rolled into a into a relatively cheap hotel two in the morning it's really it's really interesting actually because I think in the early days of me being in this sector, you would see some of those salespeople that it's a jolly and they've gone out and they've got drunk and they're a bit hungover on the stand.

7:23But nowadays, that stuff doesn't seem it doesn't happen anymore because I think it is such it's it's such an important environment for salespeople now. They have got an opportunity to really expand their pipeline over a very quick period. so most of them will take it incredibly seriously do do you get do you still get this sort of you know people that are very busy and important though and they have to be on the phone the whole time in the exhibition which is also something i have experienced yeah so it is an interesting one i think people do know how to behave on a stand because it is a shop window And at the beginning of the day, you're totally on it and you totally get it.

8:09It starts to slip away if you've been on the stand too long and you're a little bit tired. So the tell signs are, you know, you've had a really busy day. It's been amazing. You're slightly tired and actually, but you're really hungry. So you're just going to nibble on that sandwich on the stand. Don't do it. Do not do that. Don't do it. um you you've you've had a really busy day but you really need to answer an email don't open your laptop yeah you know get someone to cover your stand you organize it move off go do it elsewhere don't keep looking at your phone those kind of things yeah generally people are aware but i would say sometimes those little bad habits that are really visible to someone walking past you know that try not to do them yeah absolutely and how do you feel about where exhibitions are now because I think there was a time so you I mean I sort of as a marketing person I went through all of this so you had post 2008 no one could afford to do anything everything was very from a marketing budget perspective everything was looked at in detail are we going to do these events so that there was a little bit of a dip there and obviously covid happened that really scuppered lots of things but I feel like now there is a little bit of a renaissance people want those face-to-face meetings they want those face-to-face experiences so I feel like there's a real buoyancy to that to that to this sector now isn't there absolutely and I feel like I've I've been around for quite some time and I've seen everything and exactly what you said you know recessions and then going into COVID I I would say that COVID was a particularly nervy time I mean I I know it was scary for everyone.

9:53And even post-COVID, it was that kind of, well, what's going to happen? And the reverse happened of what everyone would say. Yeah. Was saying would happen. It just totally bounced back. People are really hungry for that face-to-face experience. Sure. It's that old adage, isn't it? People buy from people. You can get as much information as you need online and do all your research. But how exciting is that? You want to meet the people. You want to have those conversations. And that's, I think that's why exhibitions are just going to continue to grow as they are. They're showing signs of complete growth.

10:29And AI isn't going to, that isn't going to be the next wave of things that stops that growth. I think AI has almost ensured that these face-to-face things become more important. Yes, absolutely. You can get a lot of information. You can go to webinars. You can, the thought leadership and the sort of the conferences around the exhibitions that have grown up around the exhibitions are still important but actually I feel it's the networking side of things that's going to become more important because I want to meet those people and maybe is that sort of the thing that you're thinking about some the network networking needs to become more organized almost so that people are really going to meet the important people that they need to have that in their industry absolutely so one of the things that that we will look at is you know what is the experience of somebody attending an event and what are their priorities and and that differs between each sector as i've explained this but a b2b to event in particular um networking is very high um how you facilitate that networking can be through lots of different methods and those are things that we work on um but people really want to collaborate and they want to share experiences because sometimes you'll walk into a show and you think I need this particular thing and that's what I'm here to do but then you have a conversation with someone like Robin and then you walk away and go okay actually I was thinking that but now I think that that and that as well and that's what I need to do and that is what comes from those face-to-face conversational interactions um you just everything about what you're doing just

12:12Tracy Shah:expands once you've been to an exhibition and i think that that opportunity to expand your thinking to consider things differently i think there's an element of that which is both unique to the to the face-to-face environment because you have conversations there that you wouldn't have on a team's call or a zoom call or whatever it is but also there's that real opportunity to interact with people which is facilitated by created by the way that you organize the event to what extent do you expect the organizations who are exhibiting those sales teams to take advantage of that to drive some of that to be you know active participants in that process because sometimes you do see some organizations, no names, no pack drill, where they talk a lot to each other or they talk a lot to other suppliers within the market, but they don't actually talk an awful lot to customers, potential customers or exhibition visitors.

13:19Tracy Shah:And when those organized activities happen, somehow it feels like they're all surprised that they've now in this situation where they're not next to their stand, they don't have their laptop, they don't have their brochure, they're just expected to talk to someone. How do you get people preparing for that, thinking about that as part of their stand strategy, a part of why they're at the event? Yeah. So we provide a lot of information to help people get ready for an event. The one thing I would say from a sales perspective, if you're a sales team and you're going to an exhibition make sure you're part of the preparation process don't leave it to your marketing team don't leave it to the other stakeholders involved you want to be at that table because when you're creating your strategy it's not just about those two days it's about what happens before it's about what happens on the two days and what happens after it's like a it's a it's a it's a week weeks long campaign if you think about all the things that you need to do you know it's not it is two days but it's so much more than that so much more and you can take advantage of lots of things that the organizers are doing that you know the organizers want you to be successful but you have to meet them and bring what you want to do you know make sure you are you are in the magazine make sure that you're taking advantage of all the promotional opportunities that they're putting in place for you as a sales team what you should then be doing is syncing in with what marketing is saying making sure that you are inviting people to that event that you are telling people that you are there really you should be inviting everyone from every part of your pipeline sure um be that someone that has stopped talking to you and you can't get hold of them right the way through to somebody that's already a client that it'd be really good to just say hi to them invite everyone because you should be as part of your strategy moving your entire pipeline on that just that little bit more yeah yeah and that idea of of inviting people and having the the kind of customer profile sorted out how how reactive responsive are visitors to the exhibitions to that kind of pre-prepared conversation and and how else has their behavior changed over the time that you've been involved have you seen a a shift in the way that the visitors come prepared ready or not yeah um visitors like it if they're invited to an event and they're given a reason to go and that might be um an exhibitor saying come meet me at the show let's grab a coffee here's a vip ticket here's a here's a complimentary pass to a networking session or whatever it is they like that kind of invitation and it responds they respond well to it and the organizers can often supply you with additional marketing tools to make sure that your brand is out getting out there on those invitations before the event so like we said Rachel that marketing branding experience is starting way before the exhibition in terms of how visitors are turning up they are turning up prepared people don't have time to waste when they're going to an event they want it to be valuable and therefore they put in the time to make sure it's valuable um so they will turn up having done their research quite you know to our franchise exhibitions we help visitors in that journey they will come knowing what a franchise is what kind of questions they should be asking the exhibitors and usually a short list of things that they want want to go and talk to and consider that's not to say that they won't come away with a completely different list because that's what that experience is about right you're learning you're adding things to it um so what they came to get is often very different what they go away with but that that is part of it yeah yeah and that that serendipitous piece is is is still important but that level of preparation so visitors who are time poor who are making schedule available to attend an event and are saying actually there are these four or five organizations that I really want to see I see this person is doing a seminar as well I really want to be involved in that you know that there is a there is a plan and yeah there's space for happenstance you know the idea that I'll just bump into somebody and have a conversation I wasn't expecting yeah but it's very much more rigorous from a visitor point of view do you see um sales organizations who who get that bit right how far do they manage to progress people down that pipeline i suppose is the question because you're talking about that as a as a concept how much can you reasonably expect to achieve it really it really depends on on what you're selling and and how large the amount is and you know what what sector you're in but we we can see organisations using the exhibition very effectively in that way.

18:32And what tends to happen is they are constantly exhibiting. So they're exhibiting our events year on year, and they're building on that pipeline. And salespeople put it in their diaries as a key point. That means they're going to get a dump of new leads, which is great, but it's an opportunity to have those face-to-face meetings with people they may not have been able to shift the dial on. get them face to face because let's face it they are they are busy but if they've taken the time out to go to an exhibition they're ready for that conversation um so it's really hard to put an exact time scale or a statistic on it but we've seen it happen definitely i mean the other factors to think about are external ones so what is the pressure to buy on that visitor so for example in the school leaver market, you've got the UCAS deadline.

19:25There has to be a point at which they're making a decision or an apprenticeship deadline for an application. With the franchising side, if it's a big lifestyle choice, if you're about to give up your job, potentially move home to somewhere closer to where you want to set up your business, that might take a bit longer. But if you've just received a redundancy package, there is an urgency to make that decision and make that lifestyle change which might mean you're moving quicker through that process for something like learning if if you're looking to make a big spend if you're saying actually i'm going to junk our entire system and buy a completely new one that's fully integrated that's going to take time right and and and therefore that process may be may be very different i also think that from a exhibitor perspective just going back to that point that you've made if you are going to buy something a substantial piece of software or a substantial investment for your business ensuring that you've got some longevity in that particular exhibition or trade show is also key because those people want to know that you are around you are there you are part of this sector and you are going to be around for a decent amount of time yeah and we used to get this we used to a lot there were certain trades you could not you couldn't not attend you had to you had to go to them you had to be part of them to be in that sector in that business as part of that it was essential really that you were there you know that's still that's still that branding and and you know that branding is still a huge part of it yes the branding is pieces is really critical that kind of sustained visibility with your with that market over a period of time is really important and if you have been absent for a period of time thinking about how you come back is equally important so your objectives when you're looking at your strategy will be multi-layered you know you want to definitely receive get as many leads as possible but you also want to think about how you want to announce that you're back back doing shows that you're you're reintroducing your brand to that community so thinking about all of those things will really help with your strategy and you've also got to think how you justify this as well because brand building from a marketing perspective is always very very hard you you can come from an exhibition you can say to the fd look we got you know 150 leads you know these are really qualified great leads the whole brand building piece is so much harder to say look we need to be there we've got to do that we've got to do this show and we've got to launch this product at this show we've got to do that and that is just much harder to justify it's it yeah it's the eight-old problem with marketing right how do you prove return on investment on just putting a brand out there but it is so important and I think most board members completely understand that and you know will quite often come to their marketing person and say why am I never seeing my brand in the places that I need to see it and you know so i think i think it has always been a difficult conversation that hasn't changed but it is something that is critical when you're doing your exhibition to to really focus on your brand making sure that your stand represents your brand and and how that brand is um portrayed around the hall not just in the logo but you know who is representing you as a speaker who is representing you in the networking areas do they know their stuff are they saying the right

22:56Tracy Shah:things is yeah all part of it and i think that that connection between the kind of marketing objectives the brand building the the recognition of of you as an organization and hopefully you know a bit more about why you're there and what you understand what you do so so there's not just about i recognize the brand but i recognize what the brand does what the purpose of it is where it sits in the marketplace but that that connection between that and the sales strategy I think we find that with some of our clients is tricky it's a complex area for them to get right so particularly if you've got an innovative organisation they're launching new products so where does the customer fit into that how does the sales people how do the sales people explain, communicate that how does it get communicated to the sales team that this new thing is available and what it does and what it is and so you know to put not to find a point on it to make it quite simple a lot of the time what the product is leads on the communication internally and therefore leads on the communication externally so whether that's the marketing comms or whether that's the sales people talking about this new thing it's quite feature heavy it's quite it's got one of these it's got this thing and you press that button and it does that none of it is about why none of it is why should i be interested so how how do you see sales teams marketing teams working together in preparation for a show to ensure that there is a clear customer focus uh around the messaging which is being given and they can see themselves in the final solution absolutely nail on the head And that's why it's so important that those marketing people are meeting with the salespeople and other stakeholders to make sure that they've got that coherent strategy before they even get on site.

24:59They're talking already about what they're doing with the leads that are coming in and how they're going to divide those leads up. Every salesperson should be following the same process on the stand. Which bucket does those leads go in and what is going to be the follow up? and branding will be part of that so just as an example at lnd and one of our world of learning if you come across someone that you're talking to and they're from an organization and they're not looking for what you're providing them it is not a lost contact because that person in two years time very well may move to an organization where they are going to be looking for something that you have so what it is about growing your network as well so you have a positive conversation you might point them in the direction of what they need what pot do they then go in and what does marketing do with them all of those things need to be discussed and agreed between marketing and sales what marketing will bring to it is the customer focus is the you know should we be giving out white papers should we be inviting them to webinars where we're giving out some really valuable content what the sales people will bring to it is how do we want to sell that product and somewhere in between they're finding the sweet spot yeah yeah yeah yeah and just yeah

26:24Tracy Shah:coming back to leads leads obviously very very important what makes a good lead from an exhibition what what makes a you know an absolutely gold standard that's that's what a lead should look like when you leave an exhibition yeah so yeah all sales people will say i want to collect as many leads as possible insert the word quality that's what you need it's it's it's the quality don't forget that word it's the most important one what does a gold standard lead look like it's someone that you have had an actual conversation with please never scan someone without starting a conversation and that conversation is not I just need to scan you don't do that um so you have a conversation you find out what they need what their aspirations are what their business problems are and how you might be able to help solve that you have that conversation you think about what the next step is and when that person has walked away you make a note because if you don't you will forget really quickly and you put them into the relevant bucket and that's when you go back to the office you're looking at really high quality leaves all neatly put into the relevant boxes and you know what to do with them next yeah yeah and that idea of capturing that kind of information which goes beyond you know name phone number email address, position in organization, organization, organization numbers, you know, all of that, you know, factual stuff, which you can find on it, very useful.

28:04Tracy Shah:But what's the problem? What's the issue that they're dealing with? What are the challenges that they're facing? Where are they looking to take their department, organization, future in terms of your franchise sales? How does that work in terms of capturing and communicating that within the organization? is that pre-planned is that pre-organized should it be do we have that both strategic focus why are we here and tactical focus how we advance that objective how we achieve that objective what do you see organizations you've talked about the pre-stand briefing and all the rest of it but what's the essence of that pre-planning at an individual salesperson level or the organization with a sales team level, how does that translate into effective performance on the moments that they have on the stand?

28:58Yeah, taking responsibility for the conversations you have, I would say. So a salesperson should not be coming back to the office and handing the leads to the marketing person and saying, there you go. They should be hungry. They should be saying, right, I had all these amazing conversations. This is what I'm going to be doing with those leads. And this is how I'm going to progress them they take responsibility for it at some point they may give that data to marketing to say this do xyz with it um but they they should be and quite often we see people do sprints after an exhibition so they will say for the next two weeks they've freed up their diary we are going to work on these leads and I'm going to put all these leads into my existing pipeline um and they'll go into wherever they need to go into and then they're in my cycle but i need to focus on them for the two weeks after the exhibition and that is a really effective way of doing it i suppose it's an extension of what we would what we see is that advanced continuation piece isn't it in a sales conversation absolutely so so we've got we've got

30:02Tracy Shah:terminology specific terminology i won't bore you with all the details but fundamentally if the salespeople's doing a lot of activity but the customer or potential customer is doing nothing we would call that a continuation in other words they've not said go away but they've not committed to doing anything either. And the advance is then the follow-on from that, which is they are taking some action, whether that's to attend a webinar or it's to agree to a meeting or it's to introduce you to somebody else within their team. Whatever that action is, they have made some commitment to progress the sale forward.

30:35Tracy Shah:And for me, that's what defines the quality. So when you were talking about quality leads, not just names and addresses, but a quality lead which says here is um you know tracy shah and between now and the next time that i speak to her tracy is going to speak to her colleagues and invite them to the meeting that we're going to have in three weeks time or whatever it is assuming they're available yeah that that kind of commitment to really engage with the organization i think is is an important benchmark for what works and what is a good outcome for the organization's perspective. I want to come back to that sprint then because there's also an interesting idea, I think, within sales teams is that they tend to be territory-based or they've got an industry vertical that they look after.

31:32Tracy Shah:And by definition, on an exhibition stand, you may be talking about somebody who is not your customer to all intents and purposes, not your prospect. Yeah. And therefore there's a handover process, a briefing process that needs to happen there. Do you find, how do organisations deal with that? How do good exhibitors kind of preempt and manage that process? Because it could lead to people going, well, that was my lead. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So a lot of them will have sorted that out before they've even got onto site. They will have their strategy. But everyone on that stand is motivated and understands what the business goals are and are incentivised accordingly.

32:19So they will want their colleagues to succeed as much as they want themselves to succeed. And if they're sharing leads or handing leads that way, they're getting the same back. So I think it is managed by the person at the top, the person responsible for booking that stand or responsible for setting the strategy. They're there to make sure that the people on the stand are so motivated and are making the most of every opportunity of being there for whether it's two days or three days. It starts there. what do you think about the role of the actual exhibition stand itself because we used to have this conversation a lot and so the sales people will say well we need this on the stand we need this game we need this piece of tech we need this to get people on the stand and we'd be like this stand cost a lot and we can't now do this as well and it's this is over to you and there's this sort of that balance isn't there between a gimmicky stand that brings a load of people that actually but they're not the people that you need and then there's the stand that doesn't look great but maybe the sales people can can save it like do you ever see do you ever see those those kinds of scenarios yes I mean you you definitely need a bit of both you know you need a stand it doesn't you don't have to spend a fortune on a double-decker stand that has you know all sorts going on and bells and whistles that you don't what I see as a good stand is a stand that clearly delivers what you do someone walking past says I recognize that brand or I I can see from the logo I've seen them before I understand what they do as a company that's and their marketing message is clear that that's what you want and then you need your good sales people on that stand because you want them to establish rapport.

34:19You want them to have good conversations. You want them to build relationships. So you need a bit of both. You can't make do without good salespeople. I have seen really good salespeople work a stand when their actual stand has not been delivered. So you can cope without a stand. You can't cope without good salespeople.

34:45Tracy Shah:yeah poor devils i kind of feel for them that was that was a lot of recognition and nervousness on their behalf absolutely yeah how do you mean it's still on the m4 that's not a good conversation to have with people is it yeah we've all been there yeah absolutely right i think i think there's a there's a key thing there that you talked about around around having what you need on the stand I mean, personally, I would argue nobody ever bought anything because they got a nice stress ball off your stand. But in terms of brand longevity, I've still got things. I have a pair of sunglasses cleaners that I must have picked up about 10 years ago, branded sunglasses cleaners, which are really smart.

35:29Tracy Shah:So the giveaways, the freebies, they do have a role in brand building and brand recognition, but they don't go a lot further, do they? they do they do so quite often they're there as to help the sales people they're a conversation starter yeah there's something to talk about you know if you're finding it it if you want to start a conversation the worst thing to say is how can i help you you know you want you want to start a conversation and sometimes the giveaways are a great way to just start a chat they're also a great way to move a conversation on if you're talking to someone and actually they're not the right lead for you and you want to close that conversation then a giveaway is quite good they're just quite good tools for sales people to use so i think they're great branding um but use that using them wisely is is a good thing you know i've seen um giveaways where they're really they're really cool giveaways but you won't get them and unless you've had a proper conversation and that's that's a good it's a good way of doing it so if i ever get someone saying to me have this water bottle bye bye i know i am not i am not i am not the right punter i'm not i'm not good for them no no but also also you know that they're gonna have to take all that stuff back on a train that's true i was talking to someone yesterday about it and they were saying the best giveaway is still socks socks socks really have you not seen this yeah it's really popular this is this Branded socks.

36:57Tracy Shah:This has passed me by, clearly. I need some branded socks. I'm going to need to get all over this.

37:06Comfy branded socks. Right, okay. You heard it in here first.

37:10Tracy Shah:Exactly. Can we, so I've started, I've used my, you know, sunglasses cleaners or stress ball or whatever it is as an icebreaker. I've got into a conversation with a person. I've got an understanding a little bit about what it is that they are concerned about at the moment, or what's keeping them up at night maybe, what the pressure is from within their organisation to do things differently. I've captured all of that and we've taken the show down and we've all had our debrief huddle there. Maybe the next morning we've got some time in our diary over the course of the next little while. What do we do?

37:45Tracy Shah:What's a good follow-up at that point? How do we take that into the realm of beyond the exhibition? Yeah. every follow-up has to be unique and if you've taken down the note of where you're putting your leads at each stage make sure it's unique automation is great but if someone receives an email and they know it's automated and it's got standard text of it and you haven't referred to the brilliant conversation you had it's lost so speed is important because you want them to remember the conversation you had and making sure that follow-up is personalized is really important the marketing bit is going to come out in me now make sure that data is going into your crm and you are tracking it because it doesn't it doesn't actually matter when that lead comes good you know it doesn't matter if it takes a couple of weeks or actually it takes a lot longer than that you it's still a really important lead and being able to track where it came from and what that process is is really important putting leaving it in an excel document or putting it on a google sheet or putting it in your top drawer is is the worst thing that you could do yeah i can't stress that enough absolutely yes i know you're with me on it rachel definitely and then in terms of the follow-up so the follow-up's managed it's in the crm you're tracking that process what what does good return from from a sales perspective specifically what does a good return on investment look like what what does what what are the kind of boundaries that people would look at because sometimes they just count the number of leads and they go well that was a really successful show we got x hundred leads but actually the quality pieces maybe that's the easy thing to count we haven't necessarily got good measures around how what where that that that's likely to lead to or how many of them convert so what does what does good roi look like from your perspective?

39:46Yeah, so our clients have quite sophisticated measuring techniques. They will be looking at the things like brand and all of those other things, but the leads coming good are quite important. So as I said earlier, we will get feedback from exhibitors or direct from clients where they say, I've been to your show and I bought a franchise and this is where I am now in my journey, or I applied to that university, or I spoke to this L &D supplier and I purchased this. So keeping track of who is doing what and when they're purchasing, really important. But you can't really put a statistic on it because it varies so much across different sectors and also within different organizations.

40:31If you're selling something that is quite small and quite niche, it's going to be very different to selling a large-scale software solution.

40:41Tracy Shah:Even if we look at the show that you and I are most intimately involved in, which is World of Learning and World of Learning Summit, and you've got exhibitors there who are selling massive technological change for an organization. If we put this system in, whether that's a learning experience platform or whatever it is, it has ramifications across the entirety of the tech stack within their organizations. Big stuff. And then you've got people who are saying, would you like to book your next meeting in our hotel? which is quantifiably a significant lower level decision to make you know but but that idea so there's bound to be there's bound to be differences there in terms of how they measure what works if you've got those individuals who are selling big stuff long sales cycle you know we're talking about a year plus before a deal gets signed is the idea that they are routinely at that exhibition or they're there again next year and they're still talking to but does that help is that part of the overall process and do you ever get to find out what happens as the exhibition yes absolutely we go out of our way to find out what's happened absolutely and we hear it from both the visitors and the exhibitors.

41:59If an exhibitor is doing what I think they should be doing, which is inviting people from every part of the pipeline, even if they've got someone that's at the stage where they've pitched and they're really looking at and they're nearly about to sign, that interaction at the exhibition, that social event, that taking them to dinner can help massively. So it is, even with the big stuff, you're moving everything in your pipeline along. And if you use that strategy, it works well I think maybe we know the answer to this then but I think if we were if we're wrapping this up now and we say to we think about a sales director who's got an exhibition in eight weeks time what's the one piece of advice that you would give to them now what do you need to start doing now shout about it tell people that you are there send out those invitations it's um it's such a good opportunity for your sales team to grow their pipeline like it just use it and use it well and what's the one thing that they should not do nothing they should not do nothing so as soon as you know you are going to an event get involved do not leave it to um potentially marketing or the other stakeholders make sure that you are representing the sales team and you are having your say about how that stand should be run

43:23Tracy Shah:excellent advice yeah and i think one of the things that we've seen organizations do and we've been involved in doing is that idea of saying right this is the next 12 months this exhibition is coming up and and you know whether and it might be months and months away yet but we've already got it on everybody's calendar not just internally but maybe even externally as well sometimes so that that doesn't come as a shock to people and i think that proactivity from what you've told us today is is really key in getting getting individuals on board and and active and and ready to go when the when the exhibition starts yeah definitely i would leave it with one thing as well i have seen um an exhibition come before and they've booked the day before the show they still smashed it and they still smashed it because every single salesperson knew exactly what they were there to do and they went out and did it so as long as it doesn't matter how long you've got as long as your strategy is in place and your objectives match the time that you've got you can still do it excellent advice good stuff there's some great stuff there thank you very much tracy thanks tracy that's great to speak to you really enjoyed it lovely to speak to you Thank you.