Clean Up Your Trade Show Leads

Report Card Time

In an effort to track the quality of leads, make a habit of getting complete information from every visitor to your exhibit. This includes ensuring that handwriting is legible and contact information is complete.

To help determine the urgency and follow-up priority of each lead, use a code:

A = Hot lead. Is ready to purchase in the next six months. Needs a sales call immediately.

B = Warm lead. Purchase planned within six to 24 months.

C = Cool lead. Purchasing time frame of more than 24 months.

D = Long-term lead. These are inquiries requesting literature, etc.

Memory Book
A card reader may be appropriate for some shows, but the information it records can be a little impersonal. Instead keep a "lead book." The first page of the book should list the name/dates/location of the show. Salespeople can tape or staple the prospect’s business card to a page, then make notes, diagrams, whatever. The concept may seem old-fashioned, but it does allow salespeople to take more extensive notes - which are extremely helpful for follow-up. And if someone forgets to initial a lead, salespeople can recognize their own handwriting later. Also, after each show, you have an impressive "memory" book for upper management to see (instead of a bunch of scraps of paper).

Schmoozing 101
Want to impress your business contacts or customers? Then remember something personal about them. By the time you collect a business card or create a new entry in your ACT!, you’ve probably gained at least one tidbit of personal information. It could be something as simple as the name and age of a child or as detailed as the fact that the family dog is scared of tape measures. No matter what it is, jot it down. The next time you contact this person, simply flip to their name for a quick reminder, and find a way to slip this personal tidbit into the conversation. You’ll impress your contacts with your seemingly long-term memory and the fact that you cared enough to remember something near and dear to their hearts.

Do you think it’s impossible
to create that show biz feel?

Well, Magnussen Home Furnishings Inc does it year after year.

Magnussen’s show biz theme was born of necessity, beginning with in October 2001, just days after September 11. Customers were too frightened to travel, and show attendance plummeted. Magnussen shipped in two tiger cubs from South Carolina and allowed attendees to pose for pictures with them. The simple aren’t-they-adorable promotion and stuffed tiger give-a-way helped Magnussen maintain the previous year’s booth traffic, while show attendance plummeted at least 30 percent.

The theme for April 2002 was “Oasis,” which made a huge splash with a spa theme. Massage therapists kneaded attendees’ aching muscles while electric massage chairs and foot massagers caressed other sore parts. Smoothies and health foods like trail mix and fresh fruit rounded out Magnussen’s now-standard non-furniture theme. Attendance increased approximately 10 percent.

In October 2003, the company conjured up the “Magic of Magnussen.” Two alternating magicians in the lobby area leading into the booth worked their magic. Meanwhile, Magnussen staff handed out decks of playing cards in which every card had a different photo of one of its products, and a stuffed bunny popping out of a black hat. There was no hocus-pocus about the results: another approximate 10-percent increase in attendance.

Magnussen used “Star Power Unleashed” (referring to the power of its licensees as its stars), as the concept in the October 2004 show: A troupe of four Chinese acrobats balanced and juggled tables, dressers, and beds. Besides the table-tossing talent, it hired a caricaturist who used digital software to draw customers’ exaggerated likenesses on an overhead screen that could be seen across the show floor, and then printed them out and gave them away. The results were anything but cartoonish: the now-standard approximate 10-percent jump in attendees.

To Magnussen, Art Deco (their 2005 new furniture collection) meant a big band, which of course also meant ballroom dancers. The idea spread to penguins, which naturally look as if they’re wearing tuxedos on their pear-shaped bodies. The penguin theme was flexible enough for Magnussen to use in a variety of ways in its 35,000-square-foot booth.

First, pre-show invitations depicting a couple in formal dress led by a pack of penguins were e-mailed to 17,708 customers. Exactly 4,267 opened them, a 24-percent return well above the industry average of 16.7 percent. Then, Magnussen hired three teen-agers to waddle in the exhibit hall, in front of the convention center, and up nearby streets in penguin outfits with the Magnussen logo sewn on the back.

The male staff members worked the floor in tuxedos, and female staffers donned white blouses with the company logo. A milk-chocolate fountain with pretzels, marshmallows, fruit, and cookies for dipping was also added to the booth. In the lobby, a local eight-piece band serenaded customers with tunes of the era (the jaunty notes could be heard well across the show floor, of course) for 15 minutes at the top of every hour, while two pairs of professional ballroom dancers in black-and-white tuxes and evening gowns glided through the exhibit’s lobby and hallways.

But the penguins were the real drawing power. The company arranged for two trainers from Birds and Animals Unlimited, an Irvine, CA,-based firm that provides animals to the TV and movie industry, to fly in four African penguins. Magnussen’s own craftsmen built an eye-level 10-by-10-foot temporary habitat.

Magnussen passed out cookies cut in the shape of penguins, a giveaway commemorative poster featuring the penguins, and a penguin-heavy seven minute multimedia flash presentation on DVD, which its sales team used to pitch clients. Interspersed with music from the 30s, black-and-white period footage, photos of Art Deco buildings, and footage of the penguins, were photos of Magnussen’s new products.

Magnussen made a donation to the Southern African Foundation for the Conservation of Coastal Birds (SANCCOB) and set out a collection box reaping about $500 for the organization. Magnussen displayed the penguins for several thousand visitors for four days. On the fifth, it transported the birds to the Natural Science Center in Greensboro, NC, where the Center displayed them for visiting classes of school children. The charitable acts resulted in free advertising in the form of local TV and newspaper coverage for Magnussen.

Timeline of a Tradition
Starting in 2001, the company initiated a tradition of non-furniture motifs, along with the occasional tradition of stuffed-animal giveaways. The results are as steady as a Shaker table: a regular approximate 10-percent increase in attendance over the previous shows.