Making the Most of Your Exhibit Appearance: Six Tips for Following Up

Most advice articles on exhibiting end with a simple exhortation to “follow up with those leads!” after all the tips about the booth, the mingling, and the giveaways. But most exhibitors don’t have an organized method for reaching those prospects—and according to research, about 80% of leads at exhibits are not pursued after the show. That’s a lot of missed revenue.

Exhibits are exhausting—there’s no question. And it’s tempting to simply take it easy after the show is over. But following up with contacts later will pay off far more than making sales on the exhibit floor. If you get organized about follow-up—even before the show is over—it won’t seem so overwhelming when you’re back in the office. Here are six tips to minimize the workload while maximizing profit.

Incorporate a follow-up plan into your pre-show preparations. If you don’t plan out exactly how you’re going to follow up with your leads after the show, chances are you won’t. Plan for how you’ll record and organize important lead information while at the show, as well as how you’ll start the follow-up process at home.

Make templates. Yes, it’s crucial to personalize those emails and letters to prospects when you follow up. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t make things easier for yourself by writing basic templates you can make slight changes to when you get home. Before heading to the trade show, write a basic “nice to meet you” email, a basic nurture letter, and any other templates you might need. This will take a lot of the work out of follow-up when you get back in the office.

Think about follow-up before you get home. You accumulate a lot of business cards at exhibits. Most people scrawl a quick, cryptic note on the back to remind them of who this person is and what they talked about, but these notes are hard to decipher when back at the office. If you come home with business cards coming out of your pockets, chances are you never get around to calling all those people.

Start organizing those valuable contacts while you’re at the trade show. Carry a three-ring notebook to note leads in. Staple business cards to the inside, and add notes about who the person is, what they were interested in, and why the company should get back in touch.

First things first. When you get back to the office, there will be plenty of distractions—piles of paperwork, overflowing inboxes, and unanswered phone messages. But before you get involved in a new project, start your follow-up process. If you allow all those other office distractions to draw your attention away, you may never get back in touch with all those leads. Start the follow-up process the day you come into the office. Your early response ensures your contacts will remember you, and it sets you apart from the crowd.

Send an email. It may take some time to organize your leads into actionable categories—so send each one an email immediately after getting home. Tell them it was great to meet them, and they’ll be hearing from you again soon. You’ll be sending them an information pack, giving them a call, or whatever you promised to do at the show.

This can take only minutes for each lead if you wrote a basic email template beforehand. Just add a few personalizing elements, hit “send,” and move on to the next one. This ensures that even if it takes a few days for you to fulfill your promise, those contacts won’t forget about you in the meantime.

Organize your leads by action. Many people try to organize their leads by how urgent or “hot” they are. But if you divide your leads into various levels of urgency, you may only call the most urgent contacts—and forget about the rest.

Instead, organize your leads by the action you must take for them. Separate contacts into categories such as “call,” “send information,” “send letter,” and more. This will give you an idea of what specific actions to take with each one—and make it easier for you to get things done.

The follow-up process is just as important as the booth, the giveaways, the literature, and everything else that goes into a successful exhibit. To get it right, it’s crucial to plan for it in as much detail as you would for your exhibit appearance. Do as much as you can on the front end to minimize the work you’ll have to do later. Organize your notes at the exhibit, plan a follow-up strategy before the show, and don’t procrastinate when you get to the office. This will ensure you get the most from your next exhibit.

G Green is director at http://www.justdisplays.co.uk/ based in Essex.