Going to trade shows, events, conferences, meetings is great fun and the right event can be a gold mine for collecting new leads, networking with prospects or finding future partners.
In today's digital world, a face-to-face encounter with a prospect can be very effective in creating a trustworthy future business relationship. However, just showing up at the show, ready to shake your prospects' hands and collect their business cards will not take you far.
When it comes to creating new sales opportunities, you need to be prepared and have a clear strategy on how you can transfer your encounters into new business opportunities.
To make the most out of a trade show, you’ll want to have a game plan between your sales- and marketing department, a process for storing your leads digitally, some marketing automation and a clear plan for post-event follow-ups. All of this will take a bit of planning, but in the end, it will pay off.
Here are our top tips on making the most out of business card scanners:
Decide who you are targeting at your event and what you want to achieve. Your marketing department can probably help you out with creating beautiful materials to give out to potential clients and also help plan the process for post-event follow-ups.
As much as salespeople enjoy new leads, they dread the moment they come back from a show and have to enter all the cards they’ve collected as new contacts or leads into their CRM.
Make sure your salespeople have access to a card scanner app that allows them to scan the cards they collect directly into their Salesforce®. You don't want them to scan leads into excel only to later upload them into your CRM, as this will slow down the process as well as hinder immediate marketing automation.
There are plenty of scanners to choose from and if your sales guys are using the Salesforce platform, Salestrail Business Card Scanner might be the right fit for you. Collecting new leads is exciting, and entering them to CRM should be just as exciting and easy.
When gathering new leads, make sure you don't settle with entering just their contact information, you want to add as much relevant info as possible about the prospect. Which product are they interested in, how hot is this lead, do you have marketing permission etc. Give salespeople the possibility to add notes and gather everything relevant, while the information is still fresh in their mind.
Meeting new people and talking non-stop can be exhausting and at the end of the day, your salespeople might not remember which prospect said what. What you need is a scanner that allows you to add your own required fields and set relevant next steps. This will allow you to create smarter marketing and will certainly make post-event follow-ups more on point.
Get your leads into a digital form, assigned to the right person and with the right follow-ups asap!
You want to have your salespeople entering new leads instantaneously so that the marketing department has the possibility to immediately send out relevant information. If your sales guys have collected info about which products interest the prospect then the marketing department has the possibility to tailor messages specifically for the person, make it personal.
New leads tend to get cold really fast so make sure your sales guys remember to follow up with their leads immediately after the trade show. If leads tend to be forgotten, you might want to use a Lead Management tool.
Turning leads you’ve collected at a show into sales opportunities take a bit of planning, as there are certain actions you want to take before, - during and after the trade show, but you will definitely gain from spending time preparing for the event.
If you are curious to test our business card scanner app, download the app on the App Store or Google Play.