The conference hunting salesman by attending as a Member
Conference booth disadvantages
On most conferences companies can have a booth in the area where coffee breaks are organized at a high price. As a salesman you have booth duty and passively you have to hope someone shows interest.
On the booth you are a salesman and not part of the community.
Attendee opportunities
By just attending the conference a minimum amount of money is spend but you have no visibility.
There are several advantages by attending:
- You are part of the crowd – not immediately identified as a salesman
- You can move around freely like a hunter looking for your prey
- When leaving the conference room for the coffee break use the subject of the last speaker for starting a conversation
- Any possible contact or event can be exploited
The very short sales pitch
You need to make your sales pitches face to face during the coffee breaks, the lunches and the dinners.
Hope for a walking dinner as this gives more opportunities to communicate with people: sitting at a lunch or dinner table is wasting your time. During a walking dinner take small portions in order to be able to move around: you are not there to eat but to make contacts.
These sales pitches are is a tricky thing to do as there are several constraints:
- Time limitation of the break: the clock is ticking away your sales time
- Finding a group of people: look at their name tags and company names for:
a) non-target companies
b) avoiding other salesmen
c) avoiding the conference organizers as you didn’t pay enough
- Finding a suiting subject for a conversation
- Jumping into a conversation which you need to steer onto a subject related to your product
- Having a short 25 second pitch relevant to the previous conversation
- Making the sales pitch entertaining and to the point
- Organize to have your business card ready to exchange
Don’t waste time as the number of breaks during a conference are limited.
Goal: the business cards
Once the sales pitch done, you need to present your business cards to all of the people in the conversation group. In most cases people will give their business card just because of courtesy.
If they don’t have any questions then excuse and disappear. If they have questions make sure you can answer them briefly or else promise to contact again: a reason for getting their business card.
Your goal is not to sell but to paint the concept and collect business cards.
These short performances you can effectively do about 3 to 4 times during each break collecting about 9 to 14 business cards. Totaling 37 to 64 business cards over 2 days of conference attending, which is to my experience many times more than having a booth on a conference at a many times lesser cost.
Just hope there are not too many vendors on the conference which will decrease your effectiveness and opportunities significantly.
Conclusion for attending
If your product, solution or service is suited or you can find a method to describe the advantages or benefits in a very short pitch this is way cheaper than having a booth.
In order to perform as a conversational salesman amongst the attendees, you need to be good in conversations and at the same time entertaining.
Make sure the company website is viewable from a mobile device as more people than you would expect will look-up your website during the next speaker as a website brings credibility and they will remember you longer.
Are you a booth salesman or conference hunting salesman?
