Speaker 2: 0:20

Yeah, meet Evan Polin, the president of Polin Performance Group. A master in sales coaching with over two decades of experience, evan is not just a consultant. He's a force in sales, focusing on mindset planning and skill development. He's also the co-author of Selling Professional Services, the Sandler Way. Joining him is Craig Andrews, partner and CEO of Beholder Agency. An expert in growth marketing With 20 years under his belt, craig blends marketing creativity with strategy to propel businesses forward, making Beholder Agency a leader in effective marketing solutions. Together, evan and Craig are here to share their wisdom on winning strategies, best practices and transformative insights that will fuel your growth. Get ready to revolutionize your sales and marketing approach right here on the Sales and Marketing Playbook Unleashed.

Speaker 1: 1:11

And welcome to the Sales and Marketing Playbook Unleashed. I'm Craig Andrews and I have my partner in crime, evan Poland. How are you doing today, evan? I'm doing great. How are you doing Craig? I'm not too bad. I'm excited because this is going to be our Subway series. You like how I was using the baseball terms there. There you go, three-part series in which we're going to be talking about trade shows today. So why don't you give everybody a good introduction about what we're going to be talking about in terms of trade shows today?

Speaker 3: 1:36

Sure, and for both my clients and Craig's clients. We're kind of right in the heart of trade show season and what we thought would make sense for us, for our listening audience, is to kind of share with you a three-part series on trade shows. We're really complex folks here. It's a really kind of weird way that we're putting this together. So today's episode is going to focus on what to do from a sales and marketing perspective before you actually even get to the trade show. How do you best prepare, what should you do to set yourself up for success before you ever get to the trade show?

Speaker 3: 2:14

Next episode will be what do you do once you're at the trade show? How can you be as effective as possible working the trade show so that you, so that your company, don't make a huge investment of time and money that doesn't give you any kind of return on investment? And then last and this is a place where a lot of companies really drop off and really kind of drop the ball is what do you do once the show is over so that you can really jump on the opportunities that you created at the show, to make sure that you don't spend all this time, all of this money, all of this effort just to kind of lose the opportunities at the end. So hopefully you'll all walk away from each one of these next three episodes with really good takeaways, really good tips of how to maximize your time, maximize your effort when you attend trade shows. So, craig, anything to add to that? Absolutely.

Speaker 1: 3:12

So here's the important thing this is a marathon, not a sprint. This is a three-part to one event. Everybody gets super excited hey we get to go to Vegas. Hey, we get to get to go to Florida or Orlando. Hey, we get to go to this remote place and have a lot of fun. But the reality is there's a lot of work beforehand, there's a lot of work during it and there's a lot of work after it. So just be prepared for the long journey ahead of you.

Speaker 3: 3:36

And for the companies.

Speaker 3: 3:38

Not only is it the financial investment that you're making in actually signing up for the show, flying your people out there or driving down there the hotel, but, depending on how long the show is, you're taking one, two, three days a full week out of the office, taking you away from doing other things.

Speaker 3: 3:59

So you better maximize that time out of the office and you better make sure that you're going to get a really good ROI. And what we're going to do over these next three episodes is really give you that playbook for what you should be doing to make the most out of that trade show, to make the most use of that time and effort. And a lot of what we'll be talking about will be if you are exhibiting at the trade show, but we'll also make sure to give you some really good tips if you're going to the trade show as an attendee, in terms of what you should be doing when you're at the trade show as an attendee to make sure that you're getting the most out of that as well the most out of that as well.

Speaker 1: 4:42

And to add to that so I know, evan, you're very big in preparation, whether it be networking, like we just talked about in terms of the elevator pitch, this is a nice little seaway into how to get into the trade shows, and so a lot of the preparation we're going to have Evan explain to you guys, in terms of preparation from the sales perspective, before you even go to the show. So go aheadan yeah.

Speaker 3: 5:04

So the first thing and again this goes back to our um, it goes back to our uh, back to school kind of episode that we did a while back. You know, doing the homework, doing the preparation, is key. So a couple of things that you need to do before you get to the show to make sure that you're well set up for success at the show. First, do your homework. In terms of who the trade show is attracting, you can have the best booth, you can be really, really well prepared. If you're not in front of the right audience, none of it matters, so. So you need to be looking at who is the show attracting? Are there going to be prospects there? Are there going to be clients there? Is it the right kinds of company? Are the right people from those kinds of companies showing up, um, or is it the wrong audience? So a couple ways that you can do this.

Speaker 3: 6:05

If you are paying to be an exhibitor, I am reaching out to the show. I am asking them for the list of exhibitors. I'm asking them for the attendee list. I want to get weekly updates as the show gets closer in terms of who's showing up. If I can't get that, I want to get the list of who showed up last year. If I can't get that, I want to get the list of who showed up last year, because I find that typically 85 to 90% of the people who were there last year will be there this year. An overwhelming majority of the exhibitors who were there last year will be there this year. So if I can't get this year's list, getting last year's list will be good enough.

Speaker 1: 6:52

Make sure again that the right people are there, that you're investing your time and money in the right place so that you're in front of your ideal audience. So actually it's an interesting point you bring up. I'm sure you've had this happen If you had last year's list and you reach out to them, email blast or or however you reach out to them from a marketing perspective. Have you ever gotten a response that says thanks for the email? I'm not going to be there next year, but let's still talk.

Speaker 3: 7:12

Have you ever had one of those emails Absolutely All the time hey, no, sorry, we're going to miss you. This came up but hey, yeah, no, based on what you said, let's get together, let's have a conversation, let's talk a couple weeks after the event. So you need to think about as you do this kind of outreach. If somebody hasn't worked with you before, they can't possibly give you any less business than zero. So as long as you're professional in your outreach, good things will happen and good things will come. But I promise, if you don't make any outreach, there's approximately a 0% chance that you're going to do any work with someone. That's right. So we want to do that first, once we have a sense of who's going to be there between you and I and you've known me for a while I am not the luckiest person in the world.

Speaker 3: 8:08

You and I both just had a client, a joint client who went to a trade show that there were over 100,000 people there. I had another client that went to a much smaller, much more custom trade show where there are about 300 of his target kind of clients that are there. I am never lucky enough to just bump into the right person at the right company the right contact level, who then has the time to talk to me at the point in time when I bump into them. That's right. So what I have my clients do is reach out before they go to the show. Reach out to your clients, see which of your clients are going to be there and who you can catch up with, or which of your strategic partners are going to be there who you can catch up with.

Speaker 3: 8:55

When you reach out to people that you already have a relationship with, ask them who else they know that's going to be there. Can you leverage your relationships with people you already know to find out from them who they know who's going to be there, who they may be able to introduce you to? If I can't get that warm connection in, I'm going to reach out to folks. Hey, saw you were at this show last year. Don't know if you're coming this year? You know I'd love to get together.

Speaker 3: 9:24

This is why I think it may be a good idea for us to talk. Can we schedule a time for either me to meet you at your booth or for you to stop by our booth? Or maybe do we want to meet up one morning at the conference sponsored breakfast, but reach out beforehand. That one show that we just talked about, where I had the joint client, they had 20 meetings set up before they ever got on the plane to head out to the show. I promise you, if you get 5, 10, 15, 20 meetings set up and your competition hasn't done that homework, you are going to do way better at the show than they are.

Speaker 1: 10:05

That's right. By doing that preparation and you know the thing to add to that, depending on in that particular client's case think about the amount of people who are at the show. Right, that's the first point. Second, think about the investment that people have made to be in the show so they might make determinations about your level of importance. The fact that you have made to be in the show so they might make determinations about your level of importance, the fact that you could afford to be at the show. That's something that we take into consideration from a marketing perspective of there's a gateway to getting my business and if you're in a position that you can afford to be in this show and I think in that particular case was out of the country that you can afford to be at the show you must be of a certain standard for me to talk to. It gives you instant credibility, Instant credibility, and I think that that part of things is incredibly important when you're talking from a marketing perspective, to be able to have the right show, because it's a lot about appearance, it's a lot about the presentation, especially if you set it up ahead of time. So now there's an expectation, One of the things that we suggested with our client is we put out marketing flyers or we put out this is what we did last year at the show. Come this year, Wait to see what's coming Right. So now there's a step up of oh, what did they do last year? That was pretty cool. I bet they step it up this year to draw attraction to you. So, in addition to setting up the meetings, in addition to giving them a little presentation of what's coming, all of that stuff prior leads to more engagement, which I'm a big fan of, as you know. It leads to more engagement that allows people to take an interest in what you're offering.

Speaker 1: 11:43

Last point here for the pre years and years ago, when I first started in the business, a company that I worked with that did trade shows said that we hand out mints at the trade show and I said, okay, Everybody has Jotskis. He goes no, no, no. What we had on the mints was something about the messaging they put with every mint that they put on the card. It said look for a fresh approach, Look for a fresh idea. And I thought, wow, that's interesting. That's kind of what got me going in terms of loving the marketing idea because of the messaging behind it. So think about something that simple. Now things have clearly progressed since I started the business. But if you think about it from the don't, don't make the old joke. I know where you're going with this, Right. If you think about where things have progressed now from a technology perspective, you can do so much prepping before the show that if you're not taking advantage of it, you're really just throwing money out of the window.

Speaker 3: 12:39

Absolutely the next piece, along with preparing for the show know who from your team is going to the show and make sure that they have the right tools to be successful. So the worst thing that can happen is you've got four different people at your booth going back to what we talked about last time and they have four different elevator pitches and there's no consistency in that message. So make sure that everybody's got their elevator pitch down. Everybody has their roll down. The non-technical people might be the ones who are kind of standing in front of the booth pulling people in, asking one or two questions and then, if somebody is qualified and really interested, then they hand them over to the more technical person. But each person who's going to be at your booth should have a specific role. Their role should be defined and they should be well-prepared to be able to execute and have all of the tools that they need. Along those lines and, craig, you're going to get into this what collateral do you need to have? Does everybody at your booth have a business card? You know if it's a really big show. Does the show provide guns to scan people's badges in? Do you have enough of those scanners? Based on the anticipated level of traffic that you expect to have. You shouldn't just have one or two people at the booth who are going to stay at the booth the entire time and we'll get into this more next time but who's staying at the booth? Who's going and walking the show to talk to the people, who aren't just stopping by the booth? Again, doing that preparation beforehand, knowing who the sponsors are, knowing who's exhibiting which booth, do you want to make sure that you're proactive in terms of stopping by who on your team is stopping by those booths, so that you make sure, especially if it's a really big show, that you don't have all four people from your company going and showing up at the same other company's booth, but that you're spreading out and, based on strategic reasons, who's going to target which other companies and how are they going to do that? So all of these things are things that you can do in preparation before you actually get to the show and, quite frankly, doing this is going to give you a good idea of how successful you will be once you attend that show.

Speaker 3: 15:04

So, craig, from a marketing perspective I'm sorry, by the way, from a sales perspective one other thing before you ever show up at the show have a goal how many new contacts do you want to make? How many qualified opportunities do you want coming out of that? How are you tracking those things? And, ultimately, how much closed business do you want to see coming out of that show? What do you want that ROI to be, dollar for dollar, out of every dollar you're spending? How much do you want to see in terms of return on investment? Or, if you're new to the industry, new to the audience, and you're doing this primarily for marketing and branding purposes, what's going to let you know that it was a successful show and how are you going to track that after the fact? So, craig, from a marketing perspective, what should people be doing for their show?

Speaker 1: 15:58

So it piggybacks to everything that you just referenced there. A lot of times, if you know what the end goal is in marketing, we like to go from the end goal and work backwards. So at the end of the day, collateral is important. I've seen people who just have tchotchkes and I'm telling you right now there are people who walk the shows just to pick up tchotchkes, no interest in anything that's going on there. It's just like oh, that's a cool toy.

Speaker 3: 16:26

Let me have that. You want to really love those grandparents who are just looking for free toys and free things to give to their grandkids and just fill up their bag with as much free stuff as they can grab, or they pack that bag to take home to their kid because they've been gone for a while.

Speaker 1: 16:35

Right, All been there. So a lot of times, what we try to do in terms of what collateral you should have is really based on what you do for your industry. Remember, if you go back to our elevator pitch, this is not where you're going to make a sale, Like you mentioned, I think, in our other episode. If there's 100,000 people at the show, I find it hard to believe you're going to talk to 100,000 people. So you want to make sure that the content that you have to deliver in the show is going to have what's called a pass factor. I receive it and I'm going to pass it to a colleague of mine who can take action on it.

Speaker 1: 17:09

So a lot of times we've done interactive things from back in the day when CDs and DVDs were popular, where they could pop this thing in and you got another view from them. The display around the booth, that's your branding. That's like your storefront. You want to make sure that your brand is represented appropriately because a lot of times, if you're like me, you'll remember a brand before you'll remember a name. And a lot of times if I'm walking and something impressive sticks out, I'm going to go. Ah, that's yeah, I remember that company Before.

Speaker 3: 17:38

I go.

Speaker 1: 17:38

ah, I remember that guy that was standing at the booth with a bag in his hand, right. So the branding stuff is very important. Also, prior to the show, you want to make sure that your booth is engaging and taking action. Qr codes are very big now, so making sure that you send them on the QR code to a landing page to make sure that that landing page is going to convert them. Thus again back to the elevator pitch has to be simple, concise and something that's direct to the point so that they're not guessing to figure out what you do.

Speaker 1: 18:08

All of that stuff, operating cohesively, will allow your experience prior to getting to the show, will allow that experience, or you can test that experience, I should say, prior to the show, to see what kind of feedback it has. It's important not to show up with a show and come from the hip and try to sell or try to do stuff from the hip on the show. It's too much of an investment. It's too much time spent to hope it works. We don't believe in hope. We believe in actual actions that will drive results. Didn't you teach me that one?

Speaker 3: 18:38

Absolutely, and Craig. In terms of impression, what can happen if a company doesn't do a lot of preparation? They get to the show and their table skirt is all creased and folded up. They don't have any backdrop behind them, they've just got a couple of plain white papers and a couple of pieces of candy to hand out. What can happen to a company that's not set up the right way and maybe doesn't leave the best first impression?

Speaker 1: 19:03

You just said it. It's a horrible first impression and I think that, ultimately, what happens is that's a brand that sticks with you forever. Oh, you're the company that didn't quite have the legible paper or you didn't have enough business cards. When you're coming to a show, you didn't have enough business cards. Those types of impressions we're all human, right no-transcript.

Speaker 3: 19:54

That impression based on the look and feel.

Speaker 1: 19:57

Yeah, we also suggest telling some sort of story, right, so your brand should tell a story that also operates with their journey and their pain journey. That would make you stand out more. Every business has a pain that they solve they should. If they don't, you need to go to Evan and figure that process out. But everybody has a pain that they're trying to solve. Whether it be tchotchkes, whether it be the next pen, whether it be the next car, whatever it might be, there's a pain that needs to be solved and your branding and your collateral should answer that problem or take them along a journey to answering that problem. That way you're more engaging with them.

Speaker 1: 20:35

And all that stuff is repeating. That stuff is done in prep. That is not done at the show. You cannot be at the show. They walk up, by some grace of God. They walk up to you and they go. You're interesting. Do you fix my problem and you go in your own way? Not really. Yeah, right, that's horrible. That's horrible. And even if you're not the best product out there, you could win conversations just by your look, brand, field, talk, more clarity, which we found out from our last guest. More clarity will absolutely solve a lot more problems only because they understand you Not everything has to be pretty to win.

Speaker 3: 21:14

And just want to remind everybody of two rules of business. In terms of that first impression, people like to do business with people that they like, and people like to do business with people like themselves. So if you present yourself as approachable, as a comfortable brand, as somebody who's easy to engage with, they're going to be a lot more likely to want to work with you, even if your product or service may not be the most cutting edge.

Speaker 1: 21:40

Yeah, just to give you an example of just try to put real world to behind this. We had a client who was in the printing industry, who was literally told me when he said it was going to the trade show. I said so tell me about what your plan is right. The magical question what's your plan to do with the trade show? He goes, well, what I did in the past. There's that famous start of that line. What I did in the past was I had a table, I had some brochures and I usually hand out a thousand dollars to the winner of a raffle. And I said what does any of that have to do with printing? I said what does any of that have to do with printing? I'm confused. Maybe I'm, maybe I'm missing something. He goes well, that's what I've always done. And I said well, we're trying to do things different. That's why you're with us, right? So I said let's give a suggestion. Let's go contact the company, find out how many people are on that list, how many guns can you get? The same thing that you started the show with.

Speaker 1: 22:34

That was a hard task for him, but at the end, you know, because we'll get into future episodes, I'll use this as an example in future episodes. What happened is that he was overwhelmed by the number of people based on having the gun, because he didn't want to pay for the gun. He had an overwhelming number of people because they just scan, scan, scan, scan, scan and he made sure that they were the right people to talk to that. He was just overwhelmed for the year with leads. Think about that. He went from just handing out money to having leads that would last them the year. That's crazy, isn't it?

Speaker 3: 23:10

Yeah, but he had to do something different and we know that people like don't don't like doing things different. So for some of you, yeah, one of my favorite sayings the definition of insanity doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result If you've been working shows a certain way and you're not getting good qualified leads and the kinds of opportunities you want, we may need to look at doing something a little bit different.

Speaker 1: 23:34

Absolutely Well, I know one thing one of the things we told them in terms of that thousand dollars is that let's break that thousand dollars over several businesses, not just one payout for one person.000. Is that let's break that $1,000 over several businesses, not just one payout for one person. I said let's change that and use it as a strategy, even though he wanted to give it away because he found that somehow those cash prizes works in his space. That's fine.

Speaker 3: 23:56

Please tell me he was strategic enough to at least pick the best prospect to win that $1,000 and not just really made it a random draw.

Speaker 1: 24:05

Yeah, he did.

Speaker 3: 24:08

For those of you listening, craig is shaking his head.

Speaker 1: 24:11

no, Exactly, exactly right, and even that process can be broken down. There's a lot of strategies you can do. That doesn't cost you any different. It's just a matter of being a little more clear. It's a matter of exposing your brand a little bit. So that minimum one of the things you should be doing pre-show to Evan's point, to Evan's point is you should be having a minimum outcome that comes from your planning, a minimum. What is the worst case scenario that we get out of this, so that you would know you at least win by the end of the show. That's the approach that we take in a lot of cases.

Speaker 3: 24:43

So, craig, another question for you what, if anything, should people be doing through social media, through marketing before the show, to kind of get their name out to people in terms of what they're doing or where they may be?

Speaker 1: 24:57

So that's a great question. What I would suggest if you have a big following, they should absolutely know you're going to be at the show. You should do on social media a pre-show getting ready you should be doing during the show. This is what's happening. Here's the events we're attending People reacting to your product, if it's a product, and then post-show, the same type of logic, but pre-show if you don't have a big following, then technically putting up the content doesn't really help you.

Speaker 1: 25:23

But what I would suggest is start running ads about you being at the show. Start running ads about the show and that you're going to be there to your target audience, so that you at least show up a little bit on the board. Doesn't have to be a big investment, but it's enough of an investment that might lead them to your landing page, which leads to a meeting at the show, as you referenced before. And all of that stuff comes into trying to generate some level of traffic. So you're not just standing in the booth watching people go by you the whole day, right? I've seen so many people at shows who were on their phone just flipping through Hi, how are you Waiting for somebody to magically show up at their booth? Doesn't happen.

Speaker 3: 26:03

You mean people don't say, hey, I've got all this money I want to spend with you. How can I do that? That's not the typical thing that happens on the show.

Speaker 1: 26:13

I haven't been to a show that does that. Maybe you have. You've been to more shows than I have, but I don't think that's logical in any way.

Speaker 3: 26:20

So in our next episode we will share with you what you should be doing while you're at the show to actually engage with the right people and have good opportunities to follow up with after the show.

Speaker 1: 26:32

So why don't we give them some takeaways, evan, like we asked, of our guests? You can give some and I can give some, but give me some takeaways of what they should be doing. Pre-show that you guys hopefully listen to the playbook and you understand what you should be starting, because we're coming up to trade show season. We're coming up, so here's the first tip.

Speaker 3: 26:50

So some of the most basics of basics in terms of pre-show for sales See who was at the show last year, who's planning to be at the show this year, so that you can make sure that you're at the right show with the right audience. Second, make sure that you are proactively reaching out to people who you expect to be at the show and, depending on how long the show is, your goal should be to be able to set up anywhere from five to 20 meetings while you're at the show, before you ever leave to go out to the show. And then, third, make sure that everybody who is going to be at your booth is prepared. They know what their roles are, they've got their elevator pitch down and they are ready to hit the ground running when they get to the show. So, craig, from a marketing perspective, what are some things that people should be doing before the show?

Speaker 1: 27:42

So before the show, you should have an idea of the type of people that you're talking to and how to market to them. You can be in a position that your collateral that's one, two, your collateral is all cohesive. I've seen people who put together PDFs in-house and I've seen people who put together, with the same show, pdfs from a professional base. They are two different worlds and they look different. So you need to make sure it's all cohesive. Two, three, excuse me, what are you doing that's engaging enough on the outside, looking in, that attracts them in the door? Video presentations, some sort of presentation at the booth, something that attracts Quick story.

Speaker 1: 28:26

I was at a huge show for video games and you'll be amazed at the level of booth that they have there in terms of the video game world. I mean, I saw a real live dragon poster that actually breathed fire. Like are you kidding me? Like I saw that from a distance. It drew me. Like what is that? Just like you do at a carnival or just as you would do as an amusement park. Right, not everybody can go to that level, but you have to have something that's going to draw them to you. That's important. A hook. A hook to draw you from a visual perspective. So that's my three tips Prior to the show.

Speaker 1: 29:01

What is that? And it takes a lot of time, a lot of thought on message with the elevator pitch, to simplify it and have some sort of story that they can remember when they walk away. In his case he thought if I got $8,000, it'd be a story. But that's not really the story. Right, you have to say how you sit. Maybe in that example you say look how much money I'm going to save you, that I can give it back to you by using my printing services.

Speaker 3: 29:23

Yep.

Speaker 1: 29:24

There's an idea.

Speaker 3: 29:26

So Craig, how can people find us?

Speaker 1: 29:31

So we are everywhere. We are international. We are every podcast system that you want to be on. We're on YouTube and we're starting to grow in terms of our followers there. We're on LinkedIn. If you haven't followed the Sales and Marketing Playbook Unleashed on LinkedIn or on any of those platforms, I suggest you do it now, because we're going to leave you behind if you're not with us. We're only giving the playbook to the people who want it. If you don't want it, okay, you'll find us eventually. So find us, like us, comment on us, contact Evan and I directly. We're all here to help you. We want to give you the information that's going to really make your business grow. Evan, you want to tease them with a little bit. People that we have come on the show again or do we so?

Speaker 3: 30:13

again coming up on the show, we'll have part two and part three of this series. We're also going to be having folks come in to talk about culture within your organization and the importance of culture. Craig, your three favorite words data, data, data. We're going to be having a marketing person come in to specifically talk about how you can quantify what kind of ROI you're getting from your digital marketing. We're going to have some folks come in talking to you about how to more effectively scale up your business. So a lot of exciting things coming up this spring.

Speaker 1: 30:47

Awesome. So everyone, stay tuned, stay happy, stay growing, stay with us. I'm Evan. No, he's Evan, and we'll talk to you next. He's at my place.

Speaker 2: 31:01

And we'll talk to you next time. Thank you for joining us on this exhilarating journey through the world of sales and marketing. Remember, the playbook is in your hands and the possibilities are limitless. Keep exploring, experimenting and innovating, and watch as your business reaches unprecedented levels of success. Don't forget to subscribe to the Sales and marketing playbook unleashed on all major podcast platforms, and follow us on YouTube, Facebook and LinkedIn for even more exclusive content. Until next time, keep hustling and keep winning.