I've stood on many an exhibition stand and my LinkedIn timeline now seems to be full of people at exhibitions, saying "it's great to be back".
The whole point of conferences and exhibitions is to generate leads, right?
But are they?
(As an aside, have you noticed that these photos being posted on Linkedin of a companies exhibition stand and employees have no prospects or customers on the stand?) Anyway, on with the blog.
Thought I would share a story of what happened recently in a clients of ours.
The whole of the sales and marketing team took themselves out for a week (5 days) to be at an exhibition in London. This took an investment of a whole week of time, plus the cost of travel, plus the cost of the meals, plus the cost of the stand, plus the cost of the hotels
This netted them 45 business cards.
Not sure if you think that is a good or bad result, but 45 business cards of new people they hadn't spoken to before.
The alternative approach
On day one of exhibition, the CEO decided to sit down with a cup of tea at his computer and use the new social selling skills and methodology, our partner, Crux had trained them on.
There was no travel time, no cost of expenses and no cost of a stand.
The result? 10 actual meetings.
Now, in the story that the CEO tells, it took him the time it takes to drink a cup of tea to get those 10 meetings. Let's assume it took him half a day or even a day.
The result was
Conferences 45 business cards Vs social selling 10 meetings
The 45 business cards cost of 5 days for all the salespeople and marketing people, plus the cost of all the expenses.
The 10 meetings cost the CEO half a day.
It does make you wonder about the ROI and where you should be spending your sales and marketing $s?
NB: The CEO did ask the question, should our sales and marketing strategy be based on chance? The chance that somebody will walk by our stand?
Or should it be based on a strategy. a process and a methodology?
It's your business, you will have to answer that one yourself.
Now picture this
Tomorrow, you and I are going to meet at the lobby of your target customer.
Imagine that I have a key card to get into the building, we wave to security and I let you through the security barriers. Impressive eh!
We walk over to the elevators and I press the button to go up to the relevant floors where we can meet with the people you need to sell to. Now you have never met these people before so i will introduce you. That will mean you will get to meet the people you need to meet in this target customer of yours.
Pick whatever department you want, I will take you there and introduce you.
For example, say you sell accounting systems, ERP systems, then I can take you and introduce you to the people in Finance. Or maybe you sell human resources (HR) software and I take you to meet the HR people. Or maybe you sell CRM, customer experience (CX) and I can take you to meet all the people in marketing and sales.
Now if I walked you into finance, (or any of the other departments) and I started to introduce you to the people there one-by-one. Now, you wouldn't hand everybody a brochure and walk away, would you?
This is your chance to get into the business, meet the people, build relationships. Kinda cool!
As I introduce you to the people in your target department, you would hand them your business card. You might get people to scan the QR code on LinkedIn so you are connected.
Either way you would also want to be remembered. So you might ask them a question about themsleves, maybe you spot that Manchester United mug on their desk, the Nick Saban bobblehead (doll). The photo of their family on their desk, you would start a conversation about them. You might crack a joke. You would start building trust. Maybe you would ask them about the business, be curious about them and the company?
As I walk you around the department, and introduce you to more and more people, you would get to know more and more people and the department would get to know you. In fact the whole department will know you, just think of the competitive advantage you now have.
We haven't needed to talk about product, we are connecting as humans, we are having conversations. We are being social.
Just through this simple way of showing you around and introducing you to people, you are front of mind and your competition is not. This is so powerful!
I've now walked you around the whole department, they know you, you know them. It's time to see the big boss and I take you in and introduce you.
You look around the office and see the photos of her fly fishing, you talk about when you had a fly fishing lesson in Scotland when you visited there last. You connect, you have a conversation.
One of the things we do in life is find commonality with each other, because when we do that we start to know, like and trust each other.
You then ask her some of the business related issues you picked these pointers up from her staff you have been talking to.
If it's finance you might ask her about how long it takes to close the month end books, if it's human resources it might be about sourcing internal talent, if it's CRM you might ask about onboarding sales people.
I could go on, but you should get the picture now.
It does not matter if you know nobody in this company, they could even be using a competitive solution. But by the time I've walked you around, they know you, they know you as a human, they are aware that you work for a company and you didn't even need to pitch to them. Now it's time to start moving some of those conversations to commercial interaction.
This is social selling
Now you can stop imagining, what I've described to you is social selling.
This is so powerful, so natural and is the killer blow you need today.
Here at DLA Ignite, teach and coach you, to digitally walk into companies, build influence and trust, across the whole team from the ground floor to the top floor. From your ideal customers, to the stakeholders and the budget holders.
It could be new business, you could be trying to displace a competitor, it could be "landing and expanding" it could be part of an account-based marketing (ABM) strategy.
Either way, using social selling and influence from DLA Ignite is the fastest way to success and we can get you there.
On to the second story.
Now Imagine .....
How about if I said, I can take you to a place where all your prospects hang out, would you go?
I can pick you up in the car tomorrow and you can hang out there, having conversations with them.
When you arrived, what would you do?
Grab a coffee and go up to the first one and start a conversation? Of course you would.
Or would you walk in and say "buy my stuff, because we are great". Of course you wouldn't, as somebody would call security.
That's the difference. Selling on social is ...... social. You have conversations with people.
You don't go up to people and pitch to them as people will call security.
The great thing about social is that there is no "prime selling time (PST)", you can have as many conversations as you want. One of my customers, does his prospecting between putting the kids to bed and when he goes to bed.
It's time to bring your demand generation into the second decade of the 21st century and it's time to "start fishing where the fish are" ...... on social.
The third story is about how you can bring all this together
One of the benefits of getting all you team(s) to social sell is that you as a business will start getting what we call digital dominance. So what on earth is that?
Imagine this
You are at a conference and there are a drinks event that evening where all the people from the conference are invited.
You have a conference call which makes you late for the drinks.
You arrive and everybody is there.
As you look around the room, you realise that the people in the room are your prospects and customers. Which is great news. Each of these prospects and customers are talking to somebody, they have a drink in hand and they are laughing and joking.
The question is this, these prospects and customers, are they talking to people from your business or are they talking to the competition?
If they are talking to your people, that's going to be great and make you feel great, if they are all talking to the competition, you are going to feel a sickness in the stomach.
Now think about this in a digital landscape, LinkedIn, Twitter, all the research shows that your customers are hanging out on digital somewhere. Where these prospects and customers hangout, are they talking to people from your business or a competitor?
It's no different from the drinks event.
This is your challenge and also your opportunity.
It's time to stop hiding behind the phones and the brochures and be the business that is out there having conversations with your prospects and customers on digital.
Your job is to do this, before the competition does it and owns the space.
Owning your market sector or vertical, is digital dominance.
Related: The Great Resignation Is Here. 3 Ways to Win the War for Talent