The Trade Show Strategy That Wins More Customers Part 3

You've invested the time, money, and energy to exhibit at a trade show. Now comes the step that determines whether your investment pays off or becomes a costly missed opportunity.

In Part 3 of this trade show mini-series, 10 Keys to Thrive, Jim Krigbaum shares the proven follow-up strategies that transform business cards into long-term customers and profitable relationships. While many companies focus on preparing for the event and working the booth, Jim explains why consistent follow-up is the real key to maximizing your return on investment.

In this episode, you'll learn how to organize and prioritize your leads, build an effective follow-up system, leverage email marketing and CRM tools, identify your hottest prospects, and use multiple communication channels including phone calls, email, LinkedIn, and WhatsApp to stay connected. Jim also explains why trust is often built over months, or even years, and why persistence consistently outperforms pressure in business development.

You'll also discover how to conduct an effective post-show debrief with your team, evaluate your trade show ROI, improve your strategy for future events, and begin planning next year's success while the experience is still fresh. Whether you're exhibiting at your first trade show or your hundredth, these practical insights will help you create stronger customer relationships, increase conversions, and ensure every event produces measurable business results.

If you're serious about turning trade shows into one of your most profitable sales and marketing channels, this episode delivers the step-by-step follow-up process every business should have in place.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome back to 10 Keys of Thriving Business and Life. I'm your mentor and host Jim Krigbaum. Today we're on the third session of the miniseries on trade shows. We've covered what to do before a trade show, how to identify the right trade show, how to plan for it, and I could go on for days at that. And hopefully you'll stay tuned to some other sessions where I do. The next session we did was on what to do while attending the show, and now we're on to follow-up. And follow-up is, I don't want to say it's the most important thing because all steps are important, but if you don't follow up, the other two steps were completely worthless. So follow-up is important because, like the execution on Charm Dance, without execution, nothing happens. So we're going to cover the follow-up. Join us at the end of this session. I'll give you some ideas on how to do the follow-up and what to do moving forward to improve your return on investment.

SPEAKER_01 0:48

If you're not getting the results you want in your business, your team, or your life, it's rarely a lack of effort. It's a gap in how you think, decide, and lead. So welcome to 10 Keys to Thrive, where practical wisdom meets real world results. Each and every episode gives you simple proven tools to improve your decisions, strength in relationships, and drive better outcomes right away. Drawing on decades of global leadership experience, Jim brings practical insights shaped by real-world challenges and results. So here's your host, Jim Krigbaum.

SPEAKER_00 1:31

Welcome back. The buyers have attended the show and you return to your office and you have a stack of cards. And everybody that was at the trade show has a stack of cards. What do you do? Well, the first thing you need to do is consolidate all the cards. Get the cards from everybody else. No account is exclusive to any individual. Now you may assign accounts to an individual later on, but at this point in time, you need to get all of the leads entered and you enter them into your contact list. You enter them into your Outlook or Johnson contact or database you have for potential customers, your lead list. You develop an Excel or CVS document that you can upload into a MailChimp or other mail service program that'll allow you to send bulk and mass emails out to these people. So you've got the information, you've gathered it, you've debriefed your staff. You sit down and talk about what went right and what went wrong. You take notes, you make sure that in the future you capitalize on what went right and you correct what went wrong. You've gathered the cards, you're now trying to figure out what to do with them. You've entered them into a database, you've got them captured. Now, do you send something out right away the day that you return from the show? I don't recommend it because the people who return from the show, they're busy. They've got hundreds of activities that they've missed while they're at the show. Give them some time to catch up. Sometimes that's a couple of days. I would imagine, in most cases, by Thursday of the week after the show, they're caught up. So on Thursday, first thing in the morning, send out an email to them. Say thank you for visiting our booth. We appreciate it. We'll be in touch with you to answer specific questions. Please let us know how we can help. A simple thank you to everybody, to everybody that stopped by your booth. The next thing you need to do is take a look at that list and determine who on that list is somebody you should follow up on. Now, if you sent thank you out on a MailChimp or other service, you're able to see who opened it, who opened the email, and who clicked on your website. So you're able to get a list of the top perspectives, a list of the people who have shown the most interest. Follow up on them. Assign them to somebody on your team to be responsible for following up with that account. Take the notes that you have from the trade show. You've gathered notes, and on your notes will say send a sample or send a specification or send a price quote. Make sure you do that. Trade show is a complete waste of money if you don't do that follow-up. Look at what you promised them and follow up on it. Do what you said you were going to do. If you don't, you're lost. People return from the shows, they've met with three people or four people or five people that do the same thing you do. The company that follows up the most, the company that follows up consistently is going to get the business. The company that does what they said they were going to do. You're going to send samples, send samples. Make sure when you package the samples that you package them so they arrive in good condition. Make sure that you send enough samples that the buyer can look at it, but the buyer's buyer can look at it. I was always amazed when I'd ask for samples from somebody and they would send me one. And I'd say, what am I going to do with one? If I open it, my customer can't open it. My job as a middleman, my job as a trader, my job as a broker is to send it to my customers and let my customers get the feedback. That's one of the reasons why you don't expect to get orders at a trade show because a person buying the product, in most cases, they're buying it to resell it. They don't want to make a commitment to resell it unless they know what the demand is, unless they know that their customers accepted it. If they have ongoing demand issues, then they may be give you a purchase order if it's a commodity. If they're already buying from somebody else, that supplier is unable to supply, they may be willing to give you a purchase order at the time. Otherwise, they won't. When they get back home, they'll ask for samples, they'll ask for details. Send those on, follow up on them. You've entered them into a database. I recommend that you contact that database on a monthly basis. Once a month, send them an email, giving them an update on the market, giving them an update on your company, give them an update on changes. I also suggest that you take the top leads, the ones that have opened your emails, the ones that have expressed the most interest, you pick up the phone and you call them. Or in some cases, there's a lot of places where people don't answer the phone. I try to reach buyers and the buyers don't answer the phone. In some cases, they don't even let you leave a message. I'm sorry their mailbox is full. How many times have we all heard that? What do you do then? Well, in some cases you can text them. You can use WhatsApp depending on where you're at. In some countries, WhatsApp is a very major portion of the business dialogue and negotiations. You have to figure out what it is that the customer's using to communicate with. They may not answer your call, follow up with an email. If they still don't answer, follow up with the LinkedIn note. The chances are they're on LinkedIn, ask them to be connected. Once they're connected, you have the ability to reach out to them and say, hey, Bill, do you still need that sample? Are you still interested in our product? Develop that dialogue. Make sure you post on your social media that you were at the trade show and you had great results and thank everybody that stopped by your booth and ask them to contact you. You want to make sure that you keep that dialogue going. A trade show is to develop dialogue. Develop people's interest in your product, whether it's a new product, an old product, commodity, or a niche product. The objective of a trade show is to get people interested in it. The results from a trade show are to follow up on those leads. There have been situations in my business where I met somebody at a trade show, I got their business card, and every month I would send them an update on the crops. I'd send an update on the market, I'd send them a newsletter. And in some cases, it took three years for them to do business with me. In most cases, the person you're trying to sell to is already buying from somebody else. Because they're buying from somebody else, you have to win their business. Again, you have to answer the question, why in the world would they buy from you? And one of the things that dissolves that is that because you've built trust, and sometimes it takes time for them to build trust with you, so you've got to be consistent. You have to be there when the other company that's supplying them falls down. Follow up on it, consistently follow up. Now that you've been to the show, you know what your customer potential is. You still don't know your return on investment, but you know the potential. You're able to determine if you're going to go to the show next year. Determine if that show was right or wrong for you. If it was right, make a decision right away to book a booth. Make a decision right away to book your hotels. Maybe not necessarily your plane flights, but your hotels, you can always cancel them. Can't always cancel the booth. Understand what the policy is there. But if you're able to make a commitment to follow up on the next year's show, start planning now. We talked about planning. Now's the time after the show to start. It's never too soon to start and planning for the next show to maximize your returns. Here's some homework for you. We've already covered identifying the show, we've covered attending the show, and we've covered follow-up from the show. Make a chart with three different things prior to the show, at the show, and post show. Rate yourself on each one of those. Make sure you have a session with the people that attended the show, a debriefing to go over and say, how did we do here? What did we do? Should we participate in the show next year? One of the things I've talked about is my businesses were always run as a democratic monarchy, meaning that I listened to what everybody had to say, everybody had a vote, everybody had an opinion, ultimately the decision was mine because it was my money that was being spent. So listen to what they have to say, take the information into consideration, look at the report on the show. In some years the shows are not as good as the past years because of COVID, because of travel restrictions, whatever it may be. Figure out if there's an exception as to why the show was good or why the show was bad. Then make a decision on whether to participate again the following year. Thank you for joining us. If you want more details on trade show and feedback on my experience and the experience of our team on trade shows, and we've been to hundreds of them on a global basis and products, everything from fruit to cosmetics to textiles. Let us know how we can help. Let us know what questions to have, and we'll answer those and help you build your business and help you achieve your greatest potential and achieve your greatest success. Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 9:36

So that's it for today's episode of Ten Keys to Thrive. Head on over to Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen and subscribe to the show. Be sure to head on over to tenkeystotrive.com to pick up a free copy of Jim's gift. And join us on the next episode.