Ah, trade shows. I have a love-hate relationship with trade shows. I know that’s odd considering we do marketing and trade show training, but hear me out.
I love them when there is a good trade show marketing strategy in place. Good times. You can get a ton of leads, opportunities and move people down the sales funnel. You get to work with a team, and everyone pulls together.
However, when there is no strategy, and the plan is “go to the show” then there are problems.
While there are a lot of things to consider for the marketing side of a trade show, one of your primary goals is to generate leads. Hopefully, you get a lot of potential leads from the show floor. Now we raise the question; How do you handle the leads on the trade show floor?
At a former company, at the end of the show, we sat in a room after the show and distributed leads. And by the end of the show, I mean days later after everyone was back in the office.
“Triage your leads at the end of each day, every day”
If you are doing this, I am metaphorically hitting your nose with a newspaper. This is a bad, bad approach!
Mainly because of the time lag. There is no possible way that you remember the nuance of your 3-minute conversation from Monday on Friday. Especially since you had 50 similar conversations.
That is the reason you need to triage your leads at the end of each day. Get them in and get them distributed.
You might feel weird doing this on the show floor, but I have done it many times with no ill effects. Some people are worried that their competitors are going to overhear. If you are concerned about that, have a room rented off the show floor where you can distribute the leads.
But most of the time that is overkill. Frankly, most people are exhausted after working the show and just want to go. Their tiredness affords you some semi-privacy to distribute the leads.
Now you have the leads, and you can get them into the hands of people who can help. But some of those leads are not going to be that great, right?
For that reason, we fall back on B.A.N.T., which you probably know stands for:
- Budget: Do they have the budget for your solution?
- Authority: Are they the decision maker? Or at least an influencer?
- Need: Do they have a need for your solution?
- Time Line: Are they interested in making a change in a reasonable timeline?
For different circumstances, we might use a different qualifier, but seat of your pants on a trade show floor the quicker you can qualify the better. Remember for a trade show we want to qualify and move on.
So how do we triage the different leads that we get? Typically we divide them into an alphabetic order. 
A: A leads, oh those sweet A leads. That is why we come to the show. These are our targets. They meet every one of the BANT qualifiers there maybe a little wiggle room if we haven’t gotten all of our questions answered, but they are it. Depending on the size of your show and how alignment in the industry, this is probably about 10-15% of your leads. These are sales ready. Get them into a nurturing program, but sales must contact them within 12-16 hours at the latest.
B: These leads are giving the A’s a run for their money. They meet at least three of the qualifications, but there are a few more questions. They are ready to turn over to sales but might need some massaging. Give them to sales but remember they need to go into a nurturing program as well.
Depending on your lead volume you might contact them within 12-24 hours, but they need to be in sales hands.
C: C’s are tricky. C leads may meet part of our BANT. They may be a company that we target that we can help, but they may not be ready, AND this person doesn’t have the authority.
However, these are people that we want in our ecosystems. We want them to get our information; we want them to get our newsletter or connect on social.
The best idea for these companies is to nurture them and keep your company front of mind. While they may not be great leads now, they have potential.
D: OK maybe they have potential. Not a lot. They meet maybe one of our BANT qualifications. Probably “Need”. But they don’t have the others. They could use our solution maybe at some point in 18-24 months. Don’t disregard them, put them in your nurture stream.
And hey maybe they will remember you when they are at their next company. They may also be a possible supplier, or even excited college student looking to break into the industry.
Which brings us to F: This is pretty much competitors. Ditch them; they will follow you anyway on social if you are doing a great job.
We hope this helps you get a better ROI from your trade show marketing. Want to learn more about trade show marketing strategy, get our guide.