HINT: Follow-Up Matters!

So you’ve made it through the show and returned to your office anxiously looking forward to diving into the qualified leads your booth staffers generated at the show.

But wait, whats that other pile on your desk? You know, the one that is on fire and now behind schedule. Because you were at a tradeshow things piled up and the requests from your boss, your staff and your clients kind of take priority. So the Golden leads get set aside and unfortunately, too often, eventually buried.

Then one of three things happens:

1. the leads get shoved aside until out of sight, out of mind occur;
2. eventually, to lessen your guilt for not following up you do a generic e-mail blast that effectively negates the benefit of the personal interaction that happened at the show; or,
3. you buckle down and do it right!

Here are a few tips to doing it right:

Have a post-show lead management plan in place before the show. Schedule your first day back in the office as if you were still at the show,  giving yourself time for proper follow-up and internally disseminating leads. Be sure your “lead-card” or lead retrieval system has a methodology to flag timely or hot prospects so they don’t get buried with the also-rans. Understand the correlation between lead management and measuring the return on your company’s objectives.

Your lead management plan should include assigning responsibility for at-show handling of the leads, database entry, dissemination/ delegation/distribution of leads.

Your plan should also include monitoring what happened to the show generated leads once turned over to those responsible for further qualifying and/or sales follow-up. If you want to vastly increase the value of your show program, follow-up matters!