Ian Altman: Welcome to the Same Side Selling podcast. I am your
host, Ian Altman. One of the common questions I get asked,
right about this time of the year, almost every year is, what
do we do when it comes to trade shows, we invest money, we show
up at these trade shows, but we don't always get the best
results out of them. And invariably, what happens is we
get a few people come to us and say, Wow, I'm really interested
in what you do. They captivate our time, we spend a lot of
quality time with them, we may miss other opportunities. So
what are some strategies that you can employ in trade shows to
make sure you get the best results? For starters, what we
want to do is want to make sure we're focused on specific
objectives and goals. If there are attendees who we know we
want to connect with, before the event even happens, we want to
meet with while we're there, we want to reach out to those
people in advance. Now, we can't just say, Hey, I'm going to be
the show, I want to show you our stuff, because then we sound
like someone who's just a stereotypical salesperson. And
when that happens, what happens is that prospect thinks, oh, I
don't need to spend time with them just so they can try and
sell me something. So your first outreach should be something
along the lines of here's some trends that we've been seeing
lately in our industry. And I'd love to talk to you about those
and see if you're facing those, you might be facing different
ones, something along those lines, you get someone to say,
wow, they have their finger on the pulse of trends in our
industry, they might be helpful, then at that point, once you
engage in that level of conversation, it's a matter of
look, let's connect here and I want to learn more about what it
is you're doing. I don't even know if we have anything that
would be helpful for you. But we work with a lot of people in
this industry. And I'm happy to talk about different trends,
different initiatives that we're seeing, to see if those line up
with yours. We might not do anything together for years,
which has the added benefit of being true because you may in
fact, not do anything with them for years, because at this
point, you don't know enough about their situation, to know
if you can help. Now, what about at the tradeshow? Well, for a
lot of organizations, the goal is how do I capture as many
business cards as many contacts as possible. And I don't think
that's a great strategy. Because if people are not a good fit for
what you do, then you're just collecting names of people who
you're going to be breeding with information that isn't relevant
to them. If you want to get top results for your team, take a
look at the Same Side Selling Academy. Just visit same side
selling.com to learn more. So when someone comes up to your
booth, there's a couple things you want to do first, in terms
of booth design, you want to focus your design and messaging
around the problems that you solve, instead of describing
what it is that you do. research I've done across over 10,000
executives says that the first thing people care about is what
problem might you be solving for them? Why is that problem worth
solving, and then what's the likely outcome or result if they
actually implemented whatever it is you're offering. So describe
the kinds of problems that you solve. And ideally, you want to
pick the top two or three things most likely to resonate with the
attendees at that event. And here's a little trick, if you're
showing up at an event, and you don't know the three biggest
problems that you're solving for people, you probably should not
be going to that event. In fact, you want to make sure you're
showing up in a place where most of the people there are a
significant portion of them have the kind of problems you're good
at solving, or at least you know, that's where those people
go to hang out. What that allows you to do is if your messaging
on your on your booth is centered around, what kind of
problems? Are you good at solving them? When someone comes
up to your booth? The first question you can ask is, oh,
what inspired you to stop by today? And usually, they will
say, Oh, that second bullet on that backdrop, really caught my
attention, you just say really why that one. And now we're
talking about what they're looking for, not what it is that
you're selling. As soon as you start showing a demo, showing
some sort of capabilities, you look and act like a
stereotypical salesperson. And think about what happens when
you walk into a store. And the salesperson says May I help you?
You probably like the rest of us say no thanks. Just looking
because we've been trained to believe that we don't want to be
sold to we don't want someone else trying to sell us
something. And so it gets that knee jerk reaction that says,
Look, get away from me, which is a totally reasonable reaction I
have. So instead, we want to make sure that we're focusing on
their issues. Now, some people will say, wow, this person is
really interested. I'm going to focus my time on them. But I
often ask is, so you spent a half hour with that person,
right? Oh, yeah, they were really interested. Okay. How was
their level of interest? And how good of a fit are they compared
to the three people who were behind them? Who lost patience,
lost interest, and went on to the next booth? And the answer
is we have no idea because we didn't talk to those other
people. So the idea is to have a specific game plan at a trade
show that says look, my goal is kind of a kid Catch and release
program like fishing, I want to attract the interest of my ideal
client, I want to find out what's important to them. And is
it important for them to try and solve. And then once I gauge
that interest, I either want to set up a specific time, when
it's not the typical show hours to meet with them and in depth,
or I want to schedule the time I take out my phone or something
like that and say, Hey, why don't we schedule a time for the
second day after you return from this event. And we can talk
about in greater detail to see whether or not we can help. I
don't want to monopolize your time, I'm sure you want to see a
lot of other people here. And I'd be happy to talk to you next
week to see whether or not we might be able to help. What that
does is it allows you to pique their interest and you don't
seem desperate. Instead, what people do is they spend all this
time with that individual and they they totally overlook the
people behind them who might be even a better fit. The idea is
to come out of the show, saying, here are the subset of people
who had a genuine interest who impressed upon us that that
problem was costing them enough to make it worth finding a
solution. And we've already scheduled a time next week for
us to follow up with them and find out whether or not we can
help. See, the idea is that we want to come away with a list of
people who have interest in what we do. And we're still not quite
sure where the fit is, rather than have 1/10 A number of
people who we think are interested, but we may have
missed some of the better opportunities. So as you're
looking at trade shows, just to recap where we're at. First,
make sure that your messaging on the trade show is focused on the
problems that you solve, not what it is that you're selling.
Then, if there are people who you know, are attending the show
you want to meet with, reach out to them in advance, talk about
the trends you're seeing in the industry, not just you want to
show them a demo. In fact, we want to avoid demos in these
trade shows wherever possible, because once you're doing that
you look and act like a stereotypical salesperson. Once
they come to the booth, we ask questions like What inspired you
to stop by today? And they'll usually talk down about
something they saw. That's a problem. You say? Why that one,
now they're talking about their problem, then we want to gauge
how important that problem is for them and set up a follow up
time to take a deeper dive. If you follow that approach, you'll
get a much higher conversion rate than you might otherwise
and you're not going to come across like that pushy
salesperson. If there are topics you'd like me to address, just
drop me a note to Ian at Ian altman.com Of course visit same
side selling.com And I will see you next time on the Same Side
Selling podcast so long