After an over a two-year hiatus, in-person tradeshows are making a comeback. While many still offer virtual options, nothing can beat the energy of an in-person event. If you and your team can do so safely, you can start filling your calendar with these events and begin honing your sales appointment setting strategies.
Why Tradeshows Are Ideal for Sales Appointment Setting
Trade shows are social events. Those attending are not only looking to learn more about the topics of the event, but they also want to meet customers and prospects and better understand their competition.
Typically, there are defined time slots available during a tradeshow to meet with your team. These slots could be during breakfast, lunch, dinner, or drinks, depending on the event schedule. Your goal is to schedule specific meeting times with your team to review potential prospects or projects that may come out of the event. As a social experience, there are multiple opportunities for you and your team to connect in person with potential leads.
Pre-Event Prep: Leveraging Tech for Outreach
Your sales appointment setting strategy starts long before you attend the event. Using marketing automation and your CRM, your team should craft multiple email touches personalized for your different outreach segments. Our team sends messaging beginning about three weeks out, sending emails at a defined cadence to keep our prospects engaged leading up to the tradeshow.
Email #1
- Sent three weeks before the event
- Targets accounts, prospects, and industries of interest
- Lets them know our team will be attending the event
- Shares an overview of who we are and what we do
- Expresses interest in connecting with them while at the event
Email #2
- Sent to those who did not open the initial email
- Re-iterates we will be at the event and, depending on the group, expressing interest again to meet or inviting them to schedule a time or come by our booth
- Provides the option to schedule specific meeting times with our team attendees
Email #3
- Sent the day of the event
- Reminds all prospects of our booth location
- Reiterates our interest in scheduling time to connect while attending or reminds of the scheduled meeting day and time
Pairing Email and Phone Outreach for Improved Engagement
Not all prospects have the same preferred way to connect. Our team uses email and phone outreach to ensure we don’t miss anyone. The more ways we can offer to connect, the better.
Leading up to the tradeshow event, we typically follow the below cadence to engage prospects.
Follow-up phone call after each email
- Focus on the event, be engaging and social
- Confirm their attendance
- Ask about event plans: what speakers do they want to see? Which booths do they plan to stop by?
- Ask a question that will likely get a positive response as that makes it more likely you’ll get a “yes” to your next question
- Avoid pitching – the goal is to make an introduction and schedule a meeting
Each outreach aims to set up a pre-determined time to meet with the prospect and their team. Often there is a “slow” day at the event, so that’s a good one to target as they’ll have a more open schedule. The more meetings you can schedule ahead, the better you can match your team members with the right prospects and prepare crucial discovery questions.
Post-Show Follow-Up: Marketing Automation
After each event, we again leverage marketing automation to send a series of two emails. The first is a recap of the tradeshow, customized for those who attended and those who didn’t. In this recap, we highlight stand-out speakers and awards and share photos of our team at the event.
After our first send, an automated follow-up is sent to those who didn’t open the message. We also separate messages sent to those who connected at the event and those we didn’t connect with for whatever reason.
Marketing automation is highly valuable here as it allows us to craft personalized messaging and schedule it to send based on each prospect’s interaction with previous messaging. Since it’s connected with our CRM, information can quickly flow between both to keep our prospect data up-to-date by the minute.
Bring the NuGrowth Touch to Your Sales Appointment Setting
Tradeshow outreach is just one of the sales appointment setting methods we employ as part of our overall client development strategy. Our clients get a fully-equipped sales team, top-notch sales tech stack, and data-driven outreach messaging and strategy, all with one team.
Let us work with you to increase your sales appointment setting and build your pipeline. Get in touch with our team at 614-388-5811 or fill out a simple contact form today.
As Director of Sales Support & Development for NuGrowth Solutions, Brian McCann manages and leads the day-to-day sales training of NuGrowth Solution’s sales engagements and team members. Brian joined NuGrowth in 2013 as a sales rep and has earned multiple PEA monthly awards before being promoted to sales coach in 2015, Sales Manager in 2018 and his current role in February 2020. Brian focuses on training and mentoring NuGrowth’s greatest asset, our team members, promoting a culture that cultivates growth and drives innovation on behalf of the clients we serve.