Sales Coaching: Be a Trade Show Success

By: Cheryl A. Clausen


You can find your very best prospects at trade shows if you know how to take advantage of the opportunity. Rather than spending hundreds or even thousands of dollars renting a space at the event you can reap the benefits without having to rent a booth. The problem with renting a booth is that you are trapped in your booth unable to roam the event and mingle with the other vendors. As you begin to investigate trade shows you'll find that most are annual events making it easy for you to plan a year in advance. This gives you you plenty of time to plan your sales strategy for using this sales coaching tip. In most cases the event will be held at a hotel or a convention center connected to a hotel. That's great for you because you can rent a meeting room during the event and use a pre-event direct mail campaign to invite prospects to visit you and get a special valuable gift. You could even host a private cocktail hour at the end of the day just for your best prospects.

When you walk the trade show make sure you meet as many potential prospects as possible. A great way to make sure that happens is to know the names and locations of every vendor at the event. As you meet people be sure to have something of value to offer them. This helps you to make a connection. Have your entire marketing and sales strategy mapped out for the event far enough in advance to have everything prepared for the big event. Proper planning ensures you can get the most value from the time and dollars you invest in the event in terms of the valuable leads with real potential for insurance sales success.

Arrive at the event early so you can get set up and know where everything is before the crowd descends. Contact the people running the event and volunteer to help. Working in some capacity at the event for a few hours will help you to get exposure to the right people. You may want to greet attendees as they enter and hand information about the event.

One way to gain the favorable attention of the vendors is to bring them an early cup of coffee. As you introduce yourself, be prepared to position yourself in a way that grabs attention and interest. Have a great attention getting core marketing message prepared and practiced for the event if you don't already have one. Start solid connections by having something to offer the people you meet that they would really want.

Your offer is the key to the whole lead generation process. Come up with something that is a value added proposition. Something your prospects would really want and it doesn't have to be something tangible. In fact, information that isn't readily available but really helpful or useful will encourage others to reach out to you.

The first step to using this sales technique is getting the attention of the people you want to connect with. But you don't want to do it in a pushy way. Remember you're not a booth holder. You're either walking the trade show or inviting people to connect with you at your own event near the trade show, so you just need to meet and greet people and make a friend; and then mention this valuable something you'd like them to have.

Don't waste the leads you get at trade shows. When you don't follow-up or follow-up fast enough those initially hot leads turn into cold cold calls. And you certainly didn't need to go to all that planning to get a cold call list. Have a system to follow-up with those leads in within 72 hours. Your follow-up plan of attack should include your approach to expanding on that initial connection and building the relationship. Top producers are top producers because they put this sales coaching idea to work for them and they work their plan.

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About the author: Cheryl Clausen can help you get increased sales. For Insurance Sales get her free ecourse. For Sales Coaching look here.