Your Key to Trade Fair Success: Lead Management Begins at the Trade Fair Stand 

Imagine that your leading trade fair starts in a month. The management expects an exemplary organization from you. You talk to the booth builder every day, have your head full of questions about logistics and of course you want to put together an unforgettable evening event. Why all the effort? Of course: Your company wants to present itself and its latest products in the best possible way. When your customers drop by and feel confirmed that you are the right supplier: Wonderful! As a marketing manager made of real grist and grain you want one thing above all else: to bring home as many interesting leads as possible. 

This is it. The booth is set up, the technology is running. The internet connection is bad again. But good: That's almost always the case at trade fairs. You can take a breather. Now the exhibition halls open. The stream of visitors slowly begins to flow. The first interested party is at the stand, a conversation is held and business cards are exchanged. Your colleague from the sales department casually scans the business card. Zack - the contact details are immediately stored in a CRM app on his tablet. In direct dialogue with his contact person, he records the current demand, talks about budgets and schedules and notes this information in a digital trade fair report. This information is also stored in the central CRM system - as soon as the network is available - and linked to the trade fair date, contact persons and the trade fair. Why is all this so quick and uncomplicated? Because you use a trade fair app from your CRM provider that is fully integrated into the CRM system. Lean back and relax. You have already done a large part of your work. A dream? Not at all. 

Did you know?

The term "lead" comes from the English language and describes a qualified contact to which a possible business potential is assigned. In this specific case, it is a prospective customer who has agreed to the collection of his contact information for the purpose of initiating business. The initial contact or exchange of contact data often takes place online, for example with the classic registration for a newsletter or via a contact form. Of course, new leads can also be generated through personal contact. Trade fair appearances are often the ideal meeting place for successful communication between suppliers and interested parties.


How to coordinate your lead management with the help of a trade fair app

The be-all and end-all at a trade fair and yet so difficult to implement: No information should be lost. Every contact must be documented and the post-processing of the trade fair should be completed within a few days. If you use a trade fair app of your CRM software: Best of all! Then you can face this challenge with confidence.

Contact data such as name, telephone number and e-mail address are read out by photo using OCR text recognition or QR code. In the next step, freely configurable questionnaires are used to quickly and easily document the contents of the conversation and, if required, supplemented by photos or an initial drawing. Check boxes and drop-down menus help with the convenient entry. Once the visit report is complete, follow-up processes can be initiated fully automatically. For example, if the contact person wishes to receive a quotation, the software can generate a corresponding task for the internal sales force in the background from the questionnaire.

Important

When entering new persons you must observe the DSGVO and data protection! Therefore, please make sure that your trade fair app offers the possibility of giving consent for selected purposes as easily as possible, e.g. by finger signature.


An effective lead acquisition for a successful trade fair appearance

In business, reliable communication is crucial for success: Rely on a trade fair app that you can use intuitively while talking to the customer. Dealing with potential customers requires sensitivity: thanks to the multimedia support, you can easily arouse interest and create trust. Your potential customer invests a lot of time in a conversation with you and should not be disappointed under any circumstances. Smooth cooperation with the office staff, who will contact your potential customer immediately if desired, is crucial for this.

The latest technologies help you to concentrate fully on your prospective customer. By using high-end technology, they show that your company is up to date in every respect. The risk of lost trade fair sheets and the annoyance of your office staff over illegible lead entry sheets are a thing of the past for you.

A further advantage: When making contact, use the knowledge from the visit report for a personal and targeted approach. Your prospect will be impressed that you can remember the conversation so well!

The right timing and tailor-made equipment for action

Modern CRM software offers you the right tools for a seamless follow-up process and successful cross-departmental lead management. With the numerous functions of a trade fair app and proven lead management, you have the right solutions at hand to strike while the iron is hot. That means: Create new leads and quickly get in touch with your prospects. All conversations at your trade fair stand can be depicted easily with the support of innovative highlights.

Which functions the trade fair app should offer:

  • Automatic recording of all contacts by reading the business cards
  •  Freely configurable questionnaires 
  • media library of e.g. documents, specifications, images, videos etc. on the questionnaire
  • Add photos, sketches and documents to the questionnaire 
  • Assistant for creating appointments, recording all participants and assigning them to activities
  • Subsequent processes triggered fully automatically 
  • Communication of all internal participants via a collaboration platform
  • With a speech-to-text function, dictate annotations simply by voice input and enter them as text in the trade fair report
  • DSGVO-compliant recording of contact data

Your added value:

  • Even during the event, you transmit important data and customer requests to your back office. This way your potential customers receive your feedback even faster and appreciate your professionalism.
  • In addition to facilitating data acquisition, errors are reduced to an absolute minimum with the support of freely configurable questionnaires in the app. The important information is then further processed by your colleagues in the office using a uniform tool.        


The analysis as the finale of a successful trade fair

After the fair is before the fair. You probably know the famous quote we've modified here. Of course you would like to evaluate the result after the trade fair. Was the goal achieved? How many new leads could be generated and what potential is hidden behind them? Don't worry. You will also complete this last task without much effort.

The collected data can be easily analyzed and evaluated in your CRM. After the visitors' contact data and visit reports have been transferred via the CRM app, you have the necessary information in the CRM Enterprise system. All planned and unplanned visitors are stored with the participant status. Now you can sort, for example, by contact group such as customer, lead and also supplier or by division. All inquiries are clearly prepared in the lead management portal and further processing is initiated with just a few clicks.

Did the trade fair result in new business opportunities or were offers even made? All these processes lead to your leading trade fair as a source of business. So tracking the Customer Journey is no problem.

Bottom line:

What positive effects can you expect? In addition to a quick recording of your visitors and trade fair reports, the data is immediately transferred to your CRM database. With the help of a software wizard, the creation of the appointment­, the assignment of contacts and appointments to the event and the maintenance of the participant status at the event and appointment are recorded and secured. This is important for sales and marketing to­ keep track of the trade fair visit.

The office staff can thus start the follow-up work without any loss of time. The number and quality of the leads you generate can be checked and quantified. The recorded data can be easily analysed and evaluated in your CRM. This allows you to evaluate your success and find out which trade fairs were successful and which are promising for the future.

We wish you much success for your next trade fair!