Marketing Profs

In tradeshow marketing, it is tempting to boast about the busy buzz at your booth and how many leads you generated. But don't succumb to temptation. You would be so much better off if you paid attention to lead quality instead of quantity.

One secret to tradeshow success is your ability to qualify prospects on the tradeshow floor. Here's why:

• Not all visitors will ever be in a position to buy from you or refer you business. There is no point in spending time on unproductive conversations.
  
  
• Mere contact names are no more valuable than a mailing list. Contacts and inquiries must be converted to qualified leads before they will convert to sales revenue.
  
  
• If you don't qualify the contact on the tradeshow floor, you will have to invest in follow-up qualification after the event.

Setting Qualification Criteria

It is marketing's job to provide qualified leads to sales. Sales then works the leads until they convert to revenue—or are declared otherwise "closed." This division of labor increases the productivity of a highly skilled and expensive sales force by ensuring that salespeople spend the bulk of their time in front of qualified prospects.

But the system only works if...

• Sales and marketing agree on the definition of qualified.
  
  
• Marketing never, ever, hands an unqualified lead over to the sales force.

These rules hold true for contacts and inquiries from all marketing channels. But tradeshow leads have developed a particularly bad reputation among sales teams. As evidence, look no farther than the notorious fish bowl. For years, exhibitor managers have been deluded into thinking that their objective was simply to grab business cards and names. But focusing on quantity over quality is, in fact, the kiss of death for a tradeshow program.

Qualification Categories

So how do you develop qualification criteria? At a tradeshow, the meaning of "qualified" differs somewhat from its traditional context in campaign-oriented lead qualification. In that world, you are trying to ensure that the prospect is ready to see a salesperson—according to a very tight set of criteria.

In the case of a business event, however, all you are trying to do is separate the wheat from the chaff. You want to eliminate visitors with whom you can never do business. So you might screen out students, spouses, or hangers-on.

But you want to begin a relationship with any prospect who might eventually become a buyer, influencer, or specifier—or those who might be a good source of referrals, in their own companies or elsewhere. So, your booth-level qualification criteria are likely to be fairly broad.