In many consultations, I hear that the expected success often fails to materialise after a trade fair, even though there were many good discussions and you had a lot to do during the trade fair days and were very satisfied with the trade fair. There were many contacts, business cards were handed in, interest was expressed, but in the end little was achieved after the trade fair or no new customers were acquired at all.
What might the reasons be and what went wrong?
A few elementary questions come to mind:
• Had you agreed a clear trade fair objective?
• Was this target quantified in terms of value and time and did everyone on the stand know this?
• Were the right people on the stand?
• I mean friendly, focussed, motivated and energetic people who wanted to win?
• Did everyone know what their job was and had they been trained beforehand?
• Had fixed appointments been made in advance and was about 80% of the total time available scheduled?
• Had these appointments been confirmed on the phone beforehand?
• Were the points discussed at the trade fair meeting and a follow-up appointment confirmed on the following day at the latest?
• Did all relevant employees have enough time after the trade fair to complete the “future papers” (i.e. the completed trade fair protocols) and to attend the necessary follow-up appointments?
Prepare a trade fair more consistently and check the processes!
Calculate how expensive each individual customer contact at the trade fair was (total costs: contacts)!
Take the chance out of trade fair success!
This is possible, but it takes hard and consistent work.