Why measuring success of the trade show could be fooling yourself
Measuring trade show effectiveness using CRM
Measuring the effectiveness of a trade show is more difficult than you would expect.
With all the CRM technology available, it is possible to follow-up and tracing the contacts encountered at the trade show with the goal of trying tracking if the company ever becomes a customer.
However, the days are over when the Founder/CEO came to the trade show and after visiting a few booths and watching a few demos he made his decision. The B2b sales cycle has become much longer and complex.
Still in a few cases the influencer or decision maker for a certain project will be at the trade show. In most cases however the person spoken on the trade show needs to pass on the information and give the contact details of the influencers and decision makers making your lead generating journey less certain.
The true source of leads
It is possible the source of your lead at this company is not related to the trade show encounter as your company will advertise, send out email campaigns, employees will visit the company website and any salesman can cold call upon this company for any good reason not related to the trade show.
The problem lies in the fact the trade show is not the sole effort towards the target market group as the companies in this industry segment will be exposed to several different marketing and sales efforts.
The longer your sales cycle and the more marketing and sales efforts are executed over time, the less clear the source of the lead and customer will be: trade show or not.
Fooling management with a dinosaur
As the trade fair project has been created in the CRM, the salesmen will (should) add on the new contacts from different sources as required by company management. In the end it appears as if the trade show was the origin of the customer as they all fall under the trade show project.
The sales people will know, marketing might know, but management will have no clue and still think the trade show was the source of the leads and thus effective.
In the end it might turn out the trade show is not that effective at all and rather expensive (if not the most expensive) per lead generated or customer acquired.
Could it be that trade shows are dinosaurs of the past that are still kept alive because of tradition ?
Does your company participate at trade shows ?
Any idea how effective trade fairs are ?
[...] Measure the success of your trade show leads as they move through the sales funnel – then measure which of them turn into customers and when they turn into customers. This will help you develop your budgets and strategies for next year. The name of the game is to get more qualified customers into the funnel and get them through your sales process as quickly and profitably as possible. [...]