Ive spoke many times about the importance of a qualification form on this blog.
Your company Qualification form should be unique. It should reflect what questions need to be asked by the qualifier to confidently determine that he or she has asked all of the questions necessary to determine the following:
1. There is a requirement for your product or service.
2. That funding as been allocated for this particular requirement.
3. That you have the names of the other people involved with this decision.
4. That a firm delivery date has been discussed, and agreed upon.
5. If it is a special engineering requirement, then you know the name of the person within that organization that must be contacted by your engineering person.
6. If is needs software developed, then you know the name of the person within the organization to contact.
7. That you know all there is to know, and all of the ways to contact this person; i.e. business phone #, Direct line, Cell number, e-mail address, Title, years with the company.
8. If all this is done in a professional manner, it should take less than 5 minutes to accomplish. More than that you are leaving yourself open for questions that may not be relevant to the opportunity.
I’ve also put together a FREE qualification form for you to download to help get you on your way to tradeshow success!
Dear Mr. Hill:
You have commented about what not to do when you stand booth duty. Since I will be doing a few trade shows in my territory, please give me some pointers of what I should look for when I am asking/requesting people for stand booth duty.
Jim, Sales Manager
Akron, OH
Dear Jim:
Standing booth duty is hard work, but the return on your effort can be tremendous. The opportunity to generate more sales opportunities in a three day show that you can in 6 months to a year working from your office, should be enough to get anyone interested. But the problem is most sales types don’t look at it like that. They only see that they are going to be away from their family, friends and clients for three days. You want someone who is a good listener, a person that can ask the qualifying questions without jumping to conclusions. A good person in the booth is enthusiastic, positive, dressed to do business, qualifies rather than sells, and gives the attendees the impression that he or she is happy to be here and able to serve you. When you have people like that in your booth, you will come away with a number of qualified sales opportunities.
To your continued trade show success
John Hill, Trade Show Coach
Many Exhibitors still use the simple form that is given to them by the show producer that contains nothing but the attendees name and title, telephone # and Company name.
A company, especially a technical company, needs to develop a Qualification form that has been approved by departments within the organization such as software, engineering, field service and networking so that when the prospect is qualified, and it is a viable opportunity the salesperson doesn’t have to go back to the prospect time and again to finalize on the requirements.
Discussion needs to take place with the different departments within an organization so that they all are part of the qualifying sequence. What you don’t want is to have someone from engineering or software come back to you after you are ready to visit the prospect, and turn that person into a client, that I need to know this or that. It is frustrating for the people in the different departments, but even more of a problem to the sales person who wants to close, and get an order from this prospect.
The Qualification form should flow, and ask key questions that will give the person taking the information a definite understanding that this prospect representing this xyz company is a good candidate who has the financial capability to purchase your product or service. The form should already have answers listed so that it is easy for the qualifying person to simply check off the correct response. If the qualifying sequence is done correctly it should take less than 5 minutes.
How many attendees can you qualify at a trade show if you are efficient, and have an effective qualifying form?
The Qualification form is getting more sophisticated. Many companies have turned to handheld devices manufactured by companies like Symbol Technology. As the questions come up on the screen, and you enter the data, another question is shown on the screen. Depending how you respond to the questions, it may generate another series of questions that brings the person being qualified as close to a commitment as possible, without actually getting an order.
I hope everyone out there has a Happy and Healthy New Year! I thought I would take this moment to recap our first year in social media.
If you haven’t already, please enjoy the first season of my tradeshow podcast entitled Tradeshow Tips located on my youtube channel located here: http://www.youtube.com/user/TradeShMktCoach
I hope you find it useful and ultimately profitable!
Second I would like to thank a few of the twitter friends I’ve made over the year who consistently post valuable information. You may want to take a look at them and see how these individuals can help your business grow:
Many times company continuing the “Branding” of the company products and services and including the trade shows into this as well. VP’s of Marketing will order shirts for the personnel that will be standing booth duty. These shirts will also come with an ultimatum saying, “You are orders to wear these shirts as a representative of this company for the length of this trade show” the problem is they give the booth personnel one or perhaps two shirts and expect these people to appear every day with a clean shirt and a smile on their face.
Oh yes, if you are in a place like Las Vegas you can probably get these shirt cleaned over night, but when you get the cleaning bill, you could have purchased at least two more shirts for what you paid to have the shirt cleaned. In other places over night cleaning service may not be available.
So what do these booth personnel do since they only have one or two shirts? They wear the shirt, then take it off, hang up in the hotel closet, and then put it on the next day. Can you imaging what this shirt will look like on the second day? Besides what it could smell like? It may be necessary to have any prospects or suspects that come to your booth to stand down winds so they don’t get a whiff of you and your shirt that you have been wearing for three days.
If you are going to have your booth personnel wear company shirts please give them enough shirts to make their trade show experience an enjoyable one.
Good morning John:
I read your April E-Newsletter and I see all of the services that your companies offers, especially in the area of trade shows. Why do you call yourself a coach and not a consultant?
Allen, New York City
Dear Allen:
I get asked this question a lot, usually when I meet someone in person. This is the first time I had someone actually write to me about this. Well, I hope I do not alienate too many of my consultant friends and business associates, but I think after they read my response they will have to agree. I was a business consultant for over ten years, back in the eighties. Back then; it was assumed that if you were a consultant you had a lot of experience, besides a strong educational background. As we moved in the business world of the nineties, more and more people, fresh out of school entered into the different industries and they instantly became Consultants. I had always thought that Consultant and Experience were synonymous. Obviously, that is not the case today. When I decided to call myself a Coach, it was because all that I know about Coaches is that you MUST have the experience and the longevity in your field before you can call yourself a Coach. I have that longevity, experience and more to be able to assist my clients.
Plan on meeting lots of new people during this extended holiday break? Think the question “Eh, so what do you do for a living?” is bound to come up? This might be a perfect time to test, practice or hone your elevator pitch in a low pressure situation. Not sure what an elevator pitch is? Watch on:
Not everyone that comes to a trade show is there to do business. People that attend a trade shows could be anyone from venture capitalists, anxious to find another Microsoft, out of work sales people looking for a new job, competitors looking to find problems with your products or services and people just wanting to collect literature and any and all of the give-a-ways that you have at your booth.
The exhibitor has to be prepared for any and all types of people that will stop by the booth. While you don’t want to be mean spirited, you must also realize how much it is costing to have you standing booth duty, and how important it is to generate real opportunities for your company.
If you have someone come to your booth and wants to talk about your management, give that person over to your company’s booth manager and let he or she deal with that person. Trade show are expensive, and attendees, and people interested in getting information so they can make a purchase decision, are in a hurry to see as many companies and visit as many booths as possible in the time they a will be there.
If you spend too much time talking with people not interested in your products or services, you in effect limiting your time in developing meaningful relations with people who want to find out more about your products or services and are there to do business.
If you eat, drink, sit, or talk on the phone you are telling the people passing your booth you are not really ready to do business.
Your trade show booth is an extension of your company or office. It should reflect that you and your company are serious about presenting your products or services, and that you are at this trade show to generate opportunities for your company.
If you do not stand ready to present, answer questions, or talk to the attendees, they will pass you by.
A booth is in effect your office away from your corporate surroundings. The booth should be welcoming, clean, comfortable and appealing. The people, who are given the responsibility for booth duty, should be dressed to do business, enthusiastic and have a smile on their face.
Think about the last time you stood booth duty. Did you meet these parameters?
