Sales & Marketing Management - March/April 2008 - (Page 15)

MARKETING STRATEGY a timeline; and an executive sponsor. The trade show offers a great opportunity to prequalify visitors to your exhibit. Ask as many questions as you can to determine whether each visitor is really an eligible prospect and how far along he or she is in the buying process. For example, you would collect the visitor’s title and company name, whether or not they are actively seeking a product like yours, and what their timeframe for a decision is. You might also ask who else is involved in the buying process. Sorting leads. The first post-show duty of the marketing team should be to process the contacts that were gathered. Only those that are truly sales-ready should be sent to the sales team. Contacts not yet ready should be nurtured. Some prospects will want to learn more before agreeing to talk to a salesperson; they’re likely to respond to offers of special reports, Webinars, tips sheets and an informative, persuasive Website. For some long-term prospects, the timing just isn’t right. These prospects require a long-term strategy of staying in touch to ensure they remember you if and when the need for your type of solution pops up. Regularly distributed, permission-based e-mail newsletters and blogs with RSS feeds are a good way to do this. Since over half of the B2B companies who participate in trade shows don’t bother to follow up with contacts they met there, you’ll already be ahead PERCENTAGE OF of the competition. Your AMERICANS WHO results soar even higher CONSIDER MOST when you segment your TV COMMERCIALS USEFUL … AN prospects according to ALL-TIME HIGH. their level of interest, then follow up with cusSOURCE: ROPERASW SURVEY tomized messages. Odds are you’ll be be participating in at least one trade show this year. By following the advice herein, you’ll ensure the experience isn’t a waste of resources, but rather, a formidable lead generation vehicle. blogs, social networks and community forums. Messages that reach your prospects through multiple communication channels have a far better chance of being recognized and acted upon. [THE PULSE] Choose quality over quantity. When it comes to lead generation, the quality of the leads is far more important than the number you generate. Qualified prospects are those people who hold the right jobs at the right companies who potentially need your product or service and are able to purchase them. Meeting a handful of these individuals is infinitely more important for your future sales than collecting the names of 100 people who couldn’t care less about your product or service. With trade shows, as with other marketing programs, it’s critical to have a company-wide definition of a sales-ready lead. This definition identifies the requirements a prospect must meet before he or she is assigned a sales rep. In B2B companies, this generally includes criteria such as the person’s title, industry and the size of his company; the existence of a budgeted project; www.salesandmarketingmanagement.com Susan Pascal Tatum is the co-founder, president and CMO of Tatum Marketing Inc., a marketing consulting firm dedicated to helping business technology firms use marketing to grow faster. She is the author of numerous articles on marketing and blogs regularly at TechnoBuzz (www.technobuzz.tatummarketing.com). 23 MARCH/APRIL 2008 SALES &MARKETING MANAGEMENT 15 http://www.technobuzz.tatummarketing.com http://www.salesandmarketingmanagement.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Sales & Marketing Management - March/April 2008

Sales & Marketing Management - March/April 2008 Contents Editor's Letter Brian Tracy University Sales Marketing Management Cover Story: Lessons From the Master Maximum Mobility Training Technology Incentives/Motivation Travel/Meetings Book Excerpt - Value Merchants The Way I See It - End the Discounting Habit

Sales & Marketing Management - March/April 2008

For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.