- Start by calculating:
- How many of your target audience your team needs to meet in order to close one deal/achieve your specific objective.
- How many such deals you need to make the exhibition/trade show cost effective/profitable.
- How can you make hitting these targets fun/rewarding for your team?
- Track how well you are delivering objectives on a daily basis.
- Don't frustrate or demotivate your team by setting unachievable objectives. Here's an example of a calculated target.
- Total show attendance over four days: 10,000.
- Percentage of audience that fit your customer profile: 10% (1,000).
- Average time with prospect: 15 minutes.
- Number of active show hours (subtracting early mornings, late evenings, lunchtime and when major seminars/conferences are on): 24 hours.
- The target for each team member is therefore to talk to 96 prospects - to acquire on average 24 (warm?) leads a day.
(If there are 1,000 targets attending the show, then you could, in theory, have up to 10 staff working the stand)
- Next action:
- Check your target against expected levels of downtime.
- Review it against historical data.
- Discuss/agree it with the team.
- Agree with the management team that this is a cost effective target.
- Look at your booth design. By optimising the layout and flow you can reduce downtime considerably. Research shows that some exhibitors can experience up to 90% downtime. Good stand design and well-planned/implemented pre-show marketing to your targeted audience can reduce this drastically.
Note.
Some recent research showed that more than 80% of leads generated by exhibitors at major trade fairs are not followed up afterwards (incredible!) and of those propects that did get something sent to them, 43% received the information after they had made their buying decision.