Revenue Generation Blog Archives – Page 6 of 82

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How to Prepare for a Successful Trade Show

July 11, 2019/0 Comments/in Event Lead Management, Revenue Generation Blog/by Lead Liaison

When preparing to exhibit at a trade show, it’s critical that you stay organized. The success of your trade show hinges on your team’s ability to execute each part of the process properly, and on schedule. No pressure, right?!

Take the stress out of preparing for your next trade show by keeping track of responsibilities in a simplified checklist. If you’re looking for a place to get started, you’re in the right place. We’ve compiled a comprehensive list of tasks to help you prepare for a successful trade show.

To download the checklist, which you can edit and personalize to your business needs, click here. This is a resource you’ll turn to time and time again. In addition to the checklist, we’ve also included a Sample Packing List (tab 2), as well as a Sample Itinerary (tab 3). These additional resources are best stored together, in our experience.

Below, we’ve outlined the tasks in a bullet-point list, so you can get a feel for what’s included in the downloadable checklist.

Research show information & request application materials for exhibitors – Be sure to note how much your desired booth space might cost, along with any other required fees such as carpet or power.
Review Event Manual to understand all event-specific details – Do this early so you can plan accordingly. Note any special events that your team will want to attend, and add that to your itinerary.
Research booth display vendors and artwork deadline(s) – If you plan on creating a new booth display, start looking into vendors to understand cost and deadline(s) for artwork.
Outline your budget – Outline the expected budget for this show. Include the cost of the booth space, booth display, booth attractions, lighting, rigging, electrical, Wi-Fi, carpet, T&E, lodging, and lead retrieval.
Evaluate promotional opportunities (like mailers sent from show organizer, for example) – Most trade show attendees create an agenda for who they’d like to visit. Make sure you’re on their list! Interacting with attendees ahead of the event is key, so educate yourself on the opportunities that the show organizer will provide for exhibitors. Mailers sent from the show organizer are a great example of interacting with registered attendees in a way that stands out from the rest of the email blasts. Find out what your options are, and the due dates for submission.
*Evaluate lead capture options – Most trade shows partner with a lead retrieval provider for exhibitor lead capture. Badge scanning is antiquated and cannot fully integrate with the technology you already have in place. Consider an event lead management solution, like GoExhibit!™, which integrates seamlessly with their in-house marketing automation, sales automation, and CRM solutions OR the 3rd party CRM software, marketing automation software, or other technology you already have in place.
*Request Developer’s Kit (or API) from Lead Retrieval Provider – This step will only be necessary if you plan to use an independent lead capture solution. The benefits of using an independent lead capture solution are extensive, but one is that it provides a consistent experience for your booth representatives across all of your events. You’ll simply need to facilitate a connection between your lead capture solution and the show-appointed lead retrieval provider per event.
Host a Team Meeting, #1 – Use this time to announce company attendance and discuss details such as who will attend, what your goals are for lead capture, and so on.
Register booth personnel – After your team decides on who will be in attendance, make sure to register them with the event organizers.
Submit Directory Listing -The show organizer should provide a deadline for when you’ll need to submit your information for the Directory. Don’t miss this key step, so registered attendees know that you’ll be there.
Outline your promotion strategy – How will you advertise your attendance and entice visitors to stop in? Try an omnichannel approach, which can include direct mail, email, social media, and more!
Plan booth design – Where will you set out business cards? How will traffic flow through your booth? Where will you display your product or solution?
Plan booth attractions – Everyone loves a good booth attraction. We recommend announcing your booth attraction in your promotional material to increase the hype around your booth.
*Outline your post-show workflow – Map out how you plan on communicating with Prospects post-show. We recommend an omnichannel approach. Sending a text message immediately upon lead capture can be very impactful, and will keep your brand top-of-mind. Email follow-ups a few days after the event has concluded (so that you miss the Out-of-Office window) with a picture of your team at your booth will remind your Prospect of their conversation with your team. A handwritten letter that includes a business card (or even a $5 Starbucks gift card!) sent a week or two later will really drive home your message and further solidify the relationship you team started at the event. *Pro Tip: Personalize your follow-up by merging any combination of data collected from your lead capture form. Include links to educational content based on the product or solution that they were most interested in.
Finalize attire – Do this early in the process so that you have time to order anything you’ll need customized (matching collared shirts with company logo, for example). And don’t forget to advise on required pants/shoes, too. You’d rather be over-prepared than run the risk of having a newbie show up in jeans and flip flops.
Host a Team Meeting, #2 – In this meeting, review your promotional campaign, post-show workflow, booth design, booth attractions, attire, and more. Make sure everyone is on the same page before creating all of the material.
Notify show management if using the show organizer-appointed contractor – If your trade show requires that you use a show organizer-appointed contractor of things like installation, make the proper arrangements early to avoid last-minute fees.
Analyze all existing exhibitors – Most show organizers will provide a list of other exhibitors. Of your direct competitors, who will be in attendance at this event? Stalk their Twitter to find images of their previous booths and make sure yours is up to par. Are there any companies in attendance that you could partner with for booth attractions or takeaways?
Create and execute your social media strategy – What’s great about social media is that you can go ahead and schedule all of your posts leading up to the event. This is a great task to get out of the way early. Make sure to include relevant event hashtags!
Order booth giveaways (t-shirts, pens, etc.) – Make sure you order these in plenty of time, and provide a cushion in case they don’t turn out as planned. If you have access to the event attendee list, go a step further and poll attendees ahead of time to see what they might like to receive most. Then, they’ll really be looking forward to visiting your booth!
Secure travel arrangements & lodging – If your event involves travel, make sure that everyone on your team has appropriate travel arrangements and lodging. Make sure to account for setup and breakdown of your booth. Rumour has it that Tuesdays are the best day to purchase airfare. Also, most trade shows offer a discounted rate with a local hotel. Check for that first!
Order Carpet – Carpet is required for most indoor trade shows. If you don’t need to match the carpet to your booth theme, consider using the same color as the event organizers are using in the walkways to encourage traffic flow into your booth.
Order Electrical – If required. Tip: Find out how much power your booth lighting will need, and order that at a minimum.
Order Wi-Fi – If needed. Tip: Bring your own hotspot to avoid costly fees.
*Create your lead capture form – If using a customizable solution like GoExhibit!™, you’ll want to create your lead capture form early and share with your team. Ensure that you are collecting everything you need from booth attendees. Create conditional questions based on interest, and include voice recording and voice-to-text functionality so that your sales team can record important data quickly and easily.
*Create the content for your post-show workflow – You already mapped out your post-show workflow. Now all you have to do is create the content and piece it together!
Prepare for technology needs (iPad, laptops, mobile devices for lead capture, etc.) – Make sure that each piece of required technology is on your Packing List, and don’t forget extra phone charges, charging blocks, extension cords, etc. (This checklist has a Sample Packing List included on tab 2!)
Plan exhibit setup/dismantle – Assign responsibility for showing up early to help with setup and assign team members to the breakdown process, as well. Make sure to give anyone setting up or breaking down enough cushion between travel to make it work without stress.
*Create an itinerary – Outline when your team should be where, so there’s no confusion. Include time frame for badge pickup, setup, exhibit hours, session hours, happy hours or client dinners, tear down hours, etc. If you are using an independent lead capture solution that supports documents, include your itinerary in the app so that your booth reps can easily access. (This checklist has a Sample Itinerary included on tab 3!)
Host a Team Meeting, #3 – In this meeting, review your packing list and itinerary. Send a follow-up email to each of your team members with the exact items they are responsible for bringing. Answer any last-minute questions.

Lead Liaison offers one of the most powerful and holistic event lead management solutions in the industry, GoExhibit!. Above, we’ve noted which line items GoExhibit! can support with an asterisk (*).

To see a demo of GoExhibit!, request one here!

PHOTO CREDIT: https://uk.edubirdie.com/

Lead Liaison Sales and Marketing Software Integrates with Slack

July 1, 2019/0 Comments/in Press Releases, Revenue Generation Blog, Sales and Marketing Tools/by Lead Liaison

Lead Liaison Dallas, Texas – “Great work, team! We just closed a NEW DEAL!”

Imagine your team receiving this instant notification the minute a new deal closes. Would this elicit feelings of excitement, motivation, and inspiration across the staff? Would it encourage a little friendly competition between salespeople? Would it trigger the appropriate team members to complete deal-related tasks?

That is the intent behind Lead Liaison’s newest integration with team communication and collaboration software provider, Slack. Slack’s IPO has been one of the highlights of the stock market in 2019. The timing of Lead Liaison’s integration couldn’t be any better. Lead Liaison’s software is used by marketing and sales teams worldwide to capture and manage trade show and event leads, automate marketing, and enable more efficient sales processes. The Slack integration enables the system to automatically post notifications for any number of reasons.

For example, whenever the sales team closes a big deal, Lead Liaison can post a notification to any Slack channel alerting everyone of the good news. Or, whenever a contract is about to expire, Lead Liaison can remind your contracts team via the contracts channel. What if a V.I.P. lead is captured at your company’s biggest tradeshow and you want to share the news with your business development team on the #bizdev Slack channel? Possibilities are endless. The Lead Liaison and Slack integration fosters greater communication across organizations.

“This is one of those enhancements that we were really looking forward to, ourselves,” says Jen Worsham, Director of Marketing at Lead Liaison. “Not only was it a priority for many of our clients, we also knew we would benefit from better communication. We use our own software, as you can probably imagine. Automating Slack notifications as a part of our processes enables better communication and ultimately increases productivity.”

To learn more about Lead Liaison’s Slack integration, contact the team here.

About Lead Liaison
Lead Liaison provides cloud-based sales and marketing automation solutions that help businesses accelerate revenue by attracting, converting, closing and retaining more prospects. Filling a void in the small pool of automation providers that focus on marketing-centric functionality, Lead Liaison gives equal focus to sales providing sophisticated visitor tracking and sales automation to boost sales effectiveness. Additionally, Lead Liaison is the global leader in event lead management, enabling companies to capture and manage leads from trade shows and events. Lead Liaison blends ease-of-use, a flexible architecture, deep external integration, marketing across social, web, mobile, email and offline channels and powerful functionality into a single platform, called Revenue Generation Software®. Lead Liaison is headquartered in Dallas, Texas. For more information, visit http://www.leadliaison.com or call 1-800-89-LEADS (895-3237). To access our Press Kit, visit www.leadliaison.com/press-kit.

Enhancement Round-Up Q2 2019

June 27, 2019/0 Comments/in Enhancement Roundup, Revenue Generation Blog/by Lead Liaison

We’ve been busy in Q2, adding more functionality to our already-powerful sales and marketing solutions. Read more below to learn about all of the enhancements we released in Q2 of 2019.

As always, please feel free to contact your Lead Liaison Representative with any questions about the enhancements below. Not yet a client? Schedule a demo here!

All Licenses

Inbound Webhooks – Lead Liaison’s Webhook Handler/Receiver allows users to receive incoming webhooks from 3rd party providers in a self-service model. Here are a few examples of how you could use a webhook:
- A Deal is updated in your CRM system which sends a webhook to Lead Liaison to trigger a nurture process.
- A task is created in your CRM which sends a webhook to Lead Liaison. Once the webhook is received an email is sent out.
- Trigger an automation when a Deal is moved from one stage to another in your CRM.

License: Lead Management Automation (LMA)™ – Marketing Automation

Integration with Chat Systems – Lead Liaison is now able to enrich anonymous Prospect Profiles with the contact information from 3rd party live chat systems. The chat transcript will also be saved into the Prospect’s timeline showing chat activity. Read the documentation here.

License: OneFocus™ CRM + Lead Management Automation (LMA)™ – Marketing Automation

Posting to Slack – We’ve added a Post to Slack fulfillment action and automation action. For example, when someone closes a deal and moves it to Closed/Won, the system will be able to send out a message to a Slack channel. Read the documentation here.

License: Lead Management Automation (LMA)™ – Marketing Automation and/or GoExhibit!™ – Event Lead Management

Dynamic Email Content – Insert dynamic content into a follow-up email based on answers given in your lead capture form. For example, during a trade show, Company XYZ collects all pertinent information within their lead capture form. One of the fields asks if the Prospect is interested in Product A, Product B, or Product C. Based on the answer provided, a follow-up email will contain information specifically related to the products they chose.

License: GoExhibit!™ – Event Lead Management

Voice-to-Text Transcription – GoExhibit!™ already supports Voice Recording. Now, users can have their notes automatically transcribed by Lead Liaison. Transcribed notes can flow with the submission record and into your CRM or marketing automation platform. You can map and save both audio and transcription to Lead Liaison, CRM, and marketing automation fields. There are two levels of audio transcription offered:
- Standard – Highly accurate transcription performed by computer software.
- Premium – 99.9% accurate transcription done by a human being. Transcriptions include timestamps and removal of filled pauses, such as “uh” and “uhm” in speech. Uses Purchase Credits.

Interested in the solutions you see here?

Request a Free Demo

If you are already a Lead Liaison customer, contact your Account Manager with any questions and we’ll be happy to assist.

The Anatomy of a Great Event Lead Capture Form

June 20, 2019/0 Comments/in Best Practices, Event Lead Management, Revenue Generation Blog/by Lead Liaison

When exhibiting at a trade show or other marketing event, your lead capture form drives success. That’s not to say that having an enticing booth and properly staffing it doesn’t matter, too. But without an effective and efficient event lead capture form, you’ll inevitably fall behind.

That’s why we wanted to provide an outline of a great event lead capture form. If you include these key components, you’ll be sure to set your team up for success (and sales) post-show. When someone visits your booth, your team should be focusing on making a connection, not killing the moment with a long list of questions. A complicated lead capture process can turn an interaction into an interrogation. So simplify your event lead capture form by narrowing it down to the suggestions below.

Download this Graphic

Quickly and Easily Collect Basic Lead Info

Based on the show you are exhibiting with, you should be able to integrate your event lead management solution with the show lead retrieval. In our research, we have found that nearly 80% of events will integrate with an event lead management solution.

If integrated, a great event lead capture form will include a badge scanning element that makes it easy to collect basic contact information without needing to hold up the flow of the conversation. Most event lead management solutions support barcodes, QR codes, and even near field communication (NFC) badges.

If the show doesn’t offer integration, simply include a Business Card Transcription element instead. Most event lead management solutions support transcription of the information on a business card. Lead Liaison’s GoExhibit!™ features transcription service with a 99.9% accuracy and near-immediate turnaround time.

Qualify Your Leads

Meet with your team to narrow down exactly what constitutes a qualified lead, and include that question (or those questions) immediately after your badge scanning element. You want the form to flow the same way the booth representative’s conversation would go. They’ll collect basic information, and then they’ll consider if the lead is qualified.

Not everyone who gives up their information represents a real business opportunity. In your preparation, consider what the top three most important characteristics are to identify qualified leads. Assessing whether a lead is worth pursuing allows you to easily progress your sales process in any post-show automations.

Using a temperature scale is a simple and effective way to gauge interest. “Hot” signifies that they are almost ready to buy. “Warm” means they need to be nurtured a bit before they’ll make a purchase (make sure you have an excellent post-show nurture campaign). “Cold” leads are not even worth your sales team’s time yet. They can still be nurtured, but your sales team can probably skip any aggressive post-show outreach.

If you wanted to get a little more detailed, you could further qualify your lead by asking:

How much buying authority or influence does this person have?
How soon is this person likely to make a purchasing decision?

Investigate Key Interests in Your Event Lead Capture Form

If your company is showcasing multiple solutions at your booth, your Key Interests field should contain a checklist of those solutions. If your company is showcasing a single solution, your Key Interests field should contain a checklist of various problems your solution can solve.

If your event lead capture solution supports conditional fields, you could design your form so that additional questions populate based on the prior selections. That way, your booth representatives won’t have to waste time scrolling through questions that are not relevant, but they are prompted with the appropriate questions when applicable.

For example, if your company offers Solution A, Solution B, and Solution C, your event lead capture form could populate a different follow-up question based on if they are interested in A, B, or C.The follow-up question could inquire about what particular problem the prospect needs to address with your solution. Of course, every answer will be slightly different, but you should be able to put any answer into a few different buckets. And since you’re using conditional fields, why not have an “Other” option that triggers a text field so your booth rep can fill it in?

Help Your Team with a Voice Notes Component

Voice notes can be one of the most useful components of your lead capture form. They allow booth representatives to focus on conversations instead of note-taking. The goal, remember, is to have an organic conversation so that you start building that positive relationship from the start. If the prospect feels like the purpose of the conversation is to check boxes, they’ll be less inclined to open up.

The opportunities that a voice notes component provides are endless. Voice notes can be used to record an answer to the single most important question on your lead capture form. If the prospect is comfortable, you could record the entire conversation so you don’t miss a thing.

When a booth rep concludes a conversation with a prospect, voice notes allow them to easily step aside and quickly rattle off all pertinent information within a minute, rather than writing them in a notebook or keying them into their lead capture form.

Some event lead management solutions even offer voice-to-text transcription, which makes the process even more efficient. Now, your booth reps have no excuse for not taking great notes!

Simplifying your form to include these items will not only make lead capture easier for your staff at the event, but it will also make it easier for the marketing team to follow up appropriately based on the answers collected. Some event lead management solutions even offer ways to deeply personalize follow-up based on the answers collected at the event. A handwritten letter sent a week after the event can reference their specific need. A follow-up email can contain a link to a detailed overview of the solution they were most interested in.

The possibilities are truly endless when using Lead Liaison’s event lead management solution, GoExhibit!™. If you are interested in learning more about our solution, click here.

These Tech Tips Will Boost Event Lead Capture Success!

June 18, 2019/0 Comments/in Event Lead Management, Lead Nurturing, Revenue Generation Blog/by Lead Liaison

Welcome to part two of our series on how you and your team can get the most out of your trade show experience, optimize lead capture and enjoy a high level of customer lifetime value from these leads.

In a previous article, we discussed some valuable ideas you can leverage to capture more leads at your next event. Today, we continue that conversation. Let’s discuss specifically how you can harness the power of technology to capture and collect as many leads as possible, engage with them right away (even while you are still at the event) and set the stage for converting them into eager prospects and buyers.

Rethinking Your Lead Capture Form

Put yourself in your booth visitor’s (your potential lead’s) shoes. Attending a big industry event can be an overwhelming experience for them! This sense of overwhelm felt by so many trade show attendees can cost your company lead capturing and nurturing opportunities.

So what can you do about this situation and turn it to your advantage?

What can you do that will make their experience more enjoyable and help you have a more meaningful engagement? What generates a massive impact that will help keep you and your brand in the forefront of their minds? Keep reading to find out…

When you are engaging in conversations with leads at your booth, don’t waste your time or theirs by asking the same dull, boring, unimaginative questions every other exhibitor is asking them. Aside from the basic information you can get from their badge scan, add targeted, relevant questions to your all-important lead capture form. Questions that will not only help you follow up more efficiently and effectively but will also help you keep your lead, the one you worked so hard to capture at the event, engaged.

Why is this important? The more engaged your lead feels during the buyer’s journey, the more of their very limited attention you will win and keep. The more likely they are to buy from you. So how can you keep them feeling engaged?

Remember what we talked about in our review of lead capture tips: every time you ask your leads and prospects to do something, they are asking themselves, “What’s in it for me?” You want to tell them what’s in it for them. So take the answers they give to the questions on your lead capture form to help you do this. Analyze the information they give you, and craft responses that show your leads how your product solves the problems they want solved.

Doesn’t it make sense that if, in response to their questions, you were equipped with answers they found to be highly relevant to their situation, that you could give powerful answers to the question, “What’s in it for me?”

Ask Better Questions. Enjoy Better Lead Capture Results!

On your lead capture form, ask questions that relate to the problem they have – the one that your product helps them solve. Include conditional questions that pop up based on their answers to the questions you previously asked.

Here’s an example of a conditional question: if you ask a lead what role they play in the company, and they say “I do the research for new technology”, you’ll select “Product Research” from your dropdown. With a little research, you’ll be able to create a list of potential job titles that you are likely to run into at the event. Selecting “Product Research” will then trigger a new, role-specific question: “What’s the first thing you look at when researching?”

Do you see how this approach can help you target your post-show marketing responses and deliver a win-win solution for both you and your leads?

As you are communicating with them post-engagement, use the answers they gave you to deliver content, in the format they prefer, that keeps them engaged and interested in what you have to say.

What’s the bottom line? You want to use your lead capture form not just to capture the lead’s contact information. You want to use it to help you make your post-show marketing process more personalized, persuasive and, ultimately, much more effective

Embrace Audio Notes

Like we discussed a moment ago, a trade show or industry event can be overwhelming. And given your primary goal of lead capture, you don’t want to ask your team to spend their vitally important booth time typing notes into their phone or writing them down on a notepad.

If your salespeople at the trade show are taking too much time scrambling to finalize their notes from previous conversations, they are likely losing valuable opportunities to engage with new booth visitors.

The perfect buyer may have just passed by your booth and been snatched up by a competitor!

Rather than burdening your team members with these highly inefficient methods which could easily cause valuable information to be lost, why not find a lead capture solution that gives them the option to record an audio note which can automatically be transcribed once the event is over?

Tailor Follow-Up to the Individual

Here’s the thing: your booth visitors have talked to a lot of exhibitors at the big event, including your competitors. Will they remember you after the show, or will you be promptly forgotten?

You must do something that will really help you stand out in the eyes of your new leads. Don’t merely employ a “default”, one-size-fits-all event follow-up strategy. Ask them how they prefer to be followed up with, and with what type of content. Use a lead capture form that contains a dropdown selection which allows you to select their preferred method of follow-up (phone call, email, or text).

Then, tailor your post-show communication to that specific prospect’s wishes. It will mean a lot to them. And it will leave a positive, lasting impression. The type of impression that just might help your company win another customer!

Obviously, if you are going to successfully carry these ideas out, it helps you to have the right marketing and sales automation platform. This is how our team at Lead Liaison can really assist you.

Our innovative, robust, cloud-based software combines fully-customizable lead capture forms, real-time lead tracking, lead qualification, lead distribution, database segmentation, lead nurturing, social media engagement and ROI reporting into a single platform.

We make some bold claims, but as our happy clients can attest, we can back them up. Want to find out more about how you might become the next Lead Liaison success story? Contact us today to arrange your complimentary demo of our event lead capture solution, GoExhibit!™.

Top Sales Prospecting Tips That Will Get You Hot Leads

June 6, 2019/0 Comments/in Revenue Generation Blog/by Lead Liaison

A successful sale is but the last piece of the puzzle that is the sales process. To achieve this crucial goal, you need to ensure that the various steps leading up to it are completed in an efficient and effective manner. Sales prospecting is key among these steps and this article will tell you how you can nail it.

Sales prospecting is, quite simply, the process of searching for potential customers in order to grow your business. It has been found that more than 40% of sales professionals feel that it’s the most challenging part of the sales process. However, when done in a systematic manner, it can lead to high-quality leads. According to a study conducted by Ascend2, 58% of marketing influencers prioritize improving the quality of leads over quantity.

Let’s now dive into the tips for effective sales prospecting!

Share High-Value Content

People tend to trust entities they are familiar with. This is the cornerstone of all content marketing. And it holds true for sales prospecting as well. And how do you get found? By offering content that solves customer pain points. The more value you are able to deliver through your content, the higher the chances that readers will get converted to customers. Blogs, e-books, white papers, and case studies are just a few of the options to get you started on the path of successful content marketing.

Having a prospecting tool like Lead Liaison’s Sales Enablement, which supports inserting trackable content, can be a game-changer. Not only can you include any relevant resources, you can also track engagement with that resource (clickthroughs). This information can be critical in timing your next touchpoint.

Host a Webinar

Webinars are a great tool to put to work the knowledge base your company has built up through experience. A webinar, too, uses the power of content to build trust with and signal authority to prospects. Social media platforms, such as Quora and LinkedIn, can be excellent resources to find out what information your prospects are looking for. Match their queries on social platforms to your capabilities as a knowledge hub, and, voila! You have found the theme for your next webinar! You can use webinars to engage new prospects and existing clients as well. Use a video conferencing platform like GoToMeeting or ClickMeeting to host your webinar.

Prioritize Your Prospects

Segregate your pool of prospects into different buckets by their likelihood of purchasing your product or service. This can ensure that you maximize your returns by dedicating more time to prospects who are more likely to become customers. You could do this manually or use lead management software which can automate the task for you.

Enable Live Chat on Your Website

The age of demanding millennials with access to AI and chatbots is upon us and respond to these market conditions, you must! Also, with businesses across the board offering the live chat option to customers, it only makes good business sense to respond to such a market scenario with a live chat option all your own. What’s more, the leads and queries that come in through this channel will both prove to be invaluable as you set out on your sales prospecting journey.

Here’s essentially how live chat works. When a visitor lands on your website, a prompt – which is customizable – will appear, inviting them to chat. If the user uses the chat box to then convey any information, your team member will be notified and can begin chatting with the visitor. Such inbound prospecting knocks not one, but quite a few steps, off of your sales process!

Build Your Social Brand

Brand building isn’t just for companies. Neither is content marketing. Activities such as the following can make for great sales prospecting tools.

Build your personal brand
Showcase your subject matter expertise on social platforms such as LinkedIn and Twitter, or other social media platforms that attract your prospects
Join industry-specific social media groups and post relevant content

Such focused social media activity will help you connect and even start conversations – in other words, network – with your prospects. Moreover, the human touch you’ll achieve for your company will go a long way where trust building is concerned.

Track Your Website Visitors

Your website could be drawing in regular visitors who then leave without a trace. That is to say, unless you set up website visitor tracking, visitor information gets captured only upon the completion of conversion activity, such as downloading gated content, or through the chat messages they leave, etc. To ensure you don’t lose out on this critical information, set up visitor tracking and alerts for key pages, like your pricing page. Once you have this information, you can easily dive into that data to find the companies and people who would be a good fit for your product or service.

To begin visitor tracking, explore Lead Liaison’s ProspectVision™. The tool will help you automate your lead search by telling you:

Who is visiting your site,
How they found you, and
What they’re interested in

What’s more, Lead Liaison’s ProspectVision™ will append Prospect Profiles with any available social data. You could use this information to send them a message via social media. When you do, it’s important to warm them up a bit by introducing yourself, describing what you do and why connecting with you would be mutually beneficial.

Focus on Solutions

Focus on providing solutions for your potential customers over trying to make a sale directly. The latter is a trope that has been overused to no end over the years. Your customers are, quite simply, tired of it. So, how does one go about this business of being a problem-solver for your prospects, you ask?

First things first, do your homework. Understand the prospect’s pain points and address them early in your communication with them. A thorough understanding of both your industry as well as your prospects can also prove to be invaluable. Finally, focus on ensuring that your prospect has a positive communication experience at every touchpoint with you.

Request for Referrals

Last but far from the least, don’t be shy to ask for referrals from existing customers. Now, how can you improve your chances of getting a referral? Customer delight is the surest route to a referral. And how is one to go about that, you ask? Simple – keep in touch.

The importance of maintaining relationships with your customers cannot be overemphasized. The value of your existing customers far exceeds the total value of their purchases. How you make them feel through the usage lifecycle of your product or service holds the power to impact your bottom line significantly.

Now, leverage this goodwill you have generated by going ahead and asking for those referrals.

Wrapping Up

The right prospecting techniques and processes can go a long way in ensuring you find your holy grail i.e., achieve your sales targets, and then some.

With these tried and tested techniques in hand, rest assured that you’re good to begin your sales prospecting journey.

While you go about implementing these sales prospecting tips, ensure that you customize the mix and frequency to suit the unique needs of your business.

Happy prospecting!

AUTHOR BIO
Koushik Marka is the founder and CEO of Studiotale, an explainer video production company. He is passionate about helping brands grow with video and has expertise in video marketing, 2D animation, and vector illustration. When he is not working, he loves playing video games and traveling.

Lead Capture Provider Lead Liaison Announces Attendance at HCEAConnect 2019

June 4, 2019/0 Comments/in Press Releases, Revenue Generation Blog/by Lead Liaison

Dallas, Texas – This week, lead capture provider Lead Liaison, announces their plans to exhibit at the Healthcare Convention & Exhibitors Association’s annual convention, HCEAConnect on August 17-20, 2019 in Miami, Florida.

The mission of HCEA is “to improve the effectiveness and promote the value of all conventions, meetings and exhibitions for the healthcare industry.” This perfectly aligns with Lead Liaison’s solutions, which assist companies in optimizing their event lead management processes at corporate events and conferences. Their event lead management solution, GoExhibit!™, allows industry and healthcare professionals to better connect, interact, and subsequently communicate with one another in an event setting.

GoExhibit!™ enables businesses to capture event leads on their mobile device using highly-customizable forms. GoExhibit!™ supports all methods of lead capture (i.e. barcode, NCF, business card transcription, etc.), and even features audio notes and voice-to-text capabilities so booth reps aren’t stuck typing or writing out their notes after a conversation.

GoExhibit!™ integrates with any marketing automation or CRM solution. However, if a business prefers to keep everything “under one roof,” it also integrates seamlessly with Lead Liaison’s in-house marketing automation and CRM solutions in a highly secure environment. All data in Lead Liaison is stored in a Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) and encrypted using AES-256 while data in transit is protected using SHA-256 with 2048-bit RSA encryption.

“We look forward to showing how GoExhibit!™ can increase the effectiveness of healthcare conventions and relevant trade shows. We believe HCEAConnect attendees are going to love our solution due to its ability to highly personalize event follow-up,” says Jen Worsham, Director of Marketing at Lead Liaison. “We understand that healthcare conventions are primarily attended by people looking to educate themselves. Our solution encourages exactly that: building relationships with personalized, educational follow-up. It is so much more than basic lead retrieval. It helps businesses take relationships beyond the booth.”

Lead Liaison plans to demonstrate how companies can take the conversation held at a conference and turn that into a lasting relationship by way of education. “Here’s a great example of our solution in action,” says Worsham. “A recent client of ours was exhibiting at a healthcare conference. The booth representative had a meaningful conversation with an attendee, and found they were most interested in learning about algorithm-driven technology to detect sepsis. This was a part of their conversation at the event. With GoExhibit!™, that company was able to note that specific area of interest and send a follow-up email which contained an eBook specifically related to algorithm-driven technology.”

HCEAConnect begins with a Launch Party on Saturday, August 17th. The convention runs through Tuesday, August 20th. The event is expected to bring in close to 300 healthcare professionals. To learn more or register for the event, click here. To schedule a personalized demonstration with a Lead Liaison representative at HCEAConnect, click here.

Four Trade Show Tips To Help You Succeed At Your Next Event

May 31, 2019/0 Comments/in Revenue Generation Blog/by Lead Liaison

There’s no doubt that a trade show or live event can be a great avenue for filling your marketing pipeline with eager, qualified leads. They can be. But will they?

Here’s the thing: whether they will be or not is largely up to you. You can’t leave it to chance and “hope for the best”. So what can you do to ensure you leave your next trade show, the one you will pour so much time, effort and financial resources into, with a bunch of quality leads? Let’s talk about it…

How Will You Stand Out From The Crowd?

Don’t wait until you are at the show to think this critically important topic through. In your quest to succeed at capturing as many eager, interested leads as possible, and turning as many of those as you can into satisfied buyers, be proactive. Prepare thoroughly before the big event starts.

Ask yourself how your company can stand out from other exhibitors at the event. Put yourself in the shoes of your booth’s visitors. Understand them very well. What are their problems, their fears, their frustrations, their aspirations? How can you help them? What problems do they have that you can solve?

Why would they want to stop at your booth? Why would they want to spend time there and engage with your people? What will you do to cause them to remember your brand and want to learn more about your products or services? How will you create buzz and get event attendees talking about you, both at the show and long after?

Assemble your team to brainstorm these questions and formulate powerful answers. Act accordingly as you design your booth, plan your agenda, write your show-related content, and so on.

Here’s a tip to help you stand out in a big way: focus your written messaging, your conversations and your approach on your potential and actual booth visitors. Don’t focus on you, your company and your products, even though they may be awesome. Rather, focus on the solution that you provide. Remember this acronym-WIIFM? It stands for “What’s In It For Me?”. And it is what your visitors are asking themselves when they are determining whether or not to engage with your people at your booth. So tell them what’s in it for them!

Mom Was Right

Yes, your mom was right. First impressions matter. A lot! This goes for the event experience you offer attendees. What impression does your booth staff give to visitors?

Before your big event, train your staff to observe the following rules of trade show booth etiquette:

Offer a genuine, sincere, friendly greeting. Make booth visitors feel welcome and important

Smile and maintain eye contact

Demonstrate open, confident, relaxed, non-threatening body language

Listen attentively. Don’t merely keep quiet until it’s your turn to speak, thinking only of what you want to say next. Actively listen to your visitors!

Please do not discount the importance of these tips to your event lead capture success. An unfavorable impression can turn booth visitors off and destroy their interest in buying from your company. But the right impression can have the opposite effect. It can help set the stage for event lead capture and lead management success.

This Barrier Could Cost You Trade Show Leads

You want to make your booth space itself as inviting as possible. Be aware of physical features in your booth that may act like physical or psychological barriers that keep potential visitors from wanting to engage with your team.

Here’s a common example: many booths have a table across the front of the space. This barrier can give an unpleasant “us-vs-them” impression that repels potential visitors, thus costing companies valuable leads.

Before the event, as you are planning the layout and design of your booth, carefully scan for such barriers. Eliminating them just might make your event lead capture results more fruitful.

Here’s a subtle tip that can help you naturally and effortlessly draw visitors inside your booth: if given the choice, choose to make your booth carpet the same color as the aisles in the exhibit hall. This will give the appearance of visual continuity between your booth and the aisle in front of it. Visitors will be more inclined to enter and engage with you.

Help trade show attendees have fun!

According to legendary marketing consultant and author, Dan Kennedy, “People buy more and buy more happily when in good humor”.

So make your booth a fun place! How? First of all, encourage your booth staff to have a fun time themselves. And then have a game. Or a contest. Or a valuable prize giveaway. Tie it all somehow to a prominent theme related to your company’s offering.

The prize putt is a tried and true example of a popular booth game. It’s something that requires little or no skill that even non-golfers can enjoy. Another idea is a roulette or game show-style prize wheel.

These are just two fun examples you might want to consider. The possibilities are endless.

The right decorations, fun games and contests, and a happy, lively attitude oozing from you and your team will go a long way toward giving people the experience they want. You’ll create more buzz, win more attention, attract more engagement, and capture more leads. Here’s a bonus: your leads are likely to remember how much fun they had with you. Could this help you make the sale? It just might!

Do you want to help ensure the lead capture success of your next event? Then you need the right lead capture software. When you leave the event with a lot of new, interested, eager leads, you will need a way to manage them as effectively and profitably as possible. So be sure you have a proven platform such as the cloud-based marketing and sales solutions Lead Liaison offers companies like yours.

We have created a truly user-friendly event lead management solution. We also have many resources to help you prepare for and enjoy the fruits of a very successful event. Want to find out more about what we can do for you? Contact us today!

After the Event: Post-Trade Show Questionnaire

May 17, 2019/0 Comments/in Event Lead Management, Revenue Generation Blog, Strategy/by Lead Liaison

The actions you take after exhibiting at a trade show are equally as, if not more, important than what you did to prepare for it. Following up with prospects in a meaningful way is the top priority. The amount of business you close from the event is likely the most telling sign of a successful trade show. But, that’s not the only way you can evaluate your participation. Another means of evaluation, which is often overlooked, is asking your team what they think about the event, your booth, and your methods. After all, they were the ones in the midst of it. They have first-hand experience about what worked, and what didn’t.

While you aren’t expected to make every change suggested, it’s very helpful to collect input from the team that was onsite or “in the trenches” as they might say. It doesn’t hurt to ask. And you never know! You might be surprised to find some easy changes you could make at your next event to make it even more successful.

This Post-Show Questionnaire is free to download and makes it easy to collect valuable information from your event staff post-show. Its easy-to-read format is perfect for winding down on the plane ride home. We’ve also included the questions below, and why they are important. Add this resource to your trade show process now!

Download the Questionnaire

Bonus Hack: If you are using a marketing automation solution with a form builder and landing page builder, consider creating a simple form/landing page to include these questions. That way, all you have to do at the end of each event is send them the link to your survey page. They can take it online and their answers will be recorded for future use.

What was the most useful part of our trade show lead capture form? (i.e. Which questions were most helpful?)

While you probably made it very clear to your team which fields were most important to complete, they undoubtedly gravitated to the ones they felt were most important mid-show. (They are salespeople, after all!) Let them tell you why, while it is still fresh in their head.

What was the least useful part of our trade show lead capture form? (i.e. Which questions were least helpful?)

Make sure you understand which questions become more of a distraction than a helpful prompt. Sometimes our desire to collect ALL THE INFORMATION overpowers our better judgment to keep things simple. Or perhaps you included some custom content in your lead form, like a video demonstration, that not a single booth rep used. Learn more about what you need to eliminate next time around.

Did visitors like our booth? Did it help with engagement, or distract?

Here’s where you can collect great feedback about your booth attractions, displays, banners, demo stations, kiosks, and more. There may be one overly-opinionated booth rep that absolutely hated the demo station, while several other mild-mannered booth reps actually appreciated the ability to show off your solution in real time. Instead of asking this in a group setting, a 1:1 survey helps eliminate the fear of speaking up and will give you a more accurate representation of opinions.

How do you feel about the location of our booth within the trade show exhibit hall?

Location is everything. Although your location probably depended more on your budget and the time you registered for the event, it’s still helpful to see what others think about the booth you chose. Did your team appreciate being closer to the bathrooms because of the additional foot traffic? Did they hate being towards the front due to the increase in uninterested attendees taking up space?

What would you add to our booth to better present ourselves to trade show attendees?

We’ll ask about specific booth attractions in the next question. For this one, your team should focus on what they recommend adding to your booth next time that adds value to their conversations. Perhaps a demonstration table would have been helpful, or a tall bistro table for better conversations.

Do you have any cool ideas for booth attractions next time?

As your team is winding down from an event, competing booths will be fresh on their minds. What did they see that they thought could be easily incorporated into your booth? The timing of this question is everything. Asking prior to the event might result in lukewarm input. Asking this immediately following the event will elicit feedback that is driven by recent experience. That’s invaluable.

Is there anything else that we should consider bringing to the show to make our team more successful (more power blocks, gum, pain reliever, duct tape, etc.)?

This question can help you build a Trade Show Survival Kit that your booth representatives will appreciate tremendously. It may also help you pair down the kit so that you are only providing things that you know your team will need/want.

Do you have any feedback about our post-show follow-up, as of now?

This question could be considered premature, but it’s worth asking anyway. If you’ve thoroughly covered your post-show workflow with your team, they will undoubtedly have changes or feedback they want to provide now based on their actual conversations. For example, if you included a follow-up text* sent within minutes of submitting your lead capture form, your team might determine that the text should actually come an hour or two later instead of immediately upon submission.

Which exhibitor had the best booth at the event and why?

This will help you set your goals even higher for next time. Plus, it will be interesting to see the variety of answers you collect since everyone will have their own unique opinion about it.

While you were at the show, did you hear of any other shows that you think we should consider attending? Why do you think we should attend?

Event attendees are always buzzing about other events “you have to attend!” Your team may learn of a trade show or conference that wasn’t even on your radar. Or, their feedback may further endorse your current trade show schedule.

Conclusion

Asking your team to complete this questionnaire is only half the battle. Show them that you read their feedback and that you care about their opinions. After collecting everyone’s answers and reading through everything, consider having a team meeting to review common concerns or to clarify anything that seems unclear. Let your team know that their feedback has been heard and that it matters. If this isn’t a key part of your process, you can count on getting fewer and fewer responses as time goes on.

*If you are interested in learning more about an event lead management solution that supports all of the capabilities mentioned above (like the post-show text message), contact us for a demo!

Event Lead Capture and Management That Integrates with Pipedrive

May 10, 2019/0 Comments/in News, Press Releases, Revenue Generation Blog/by Lead Liaison

Dallas, TX – Lead Liaison announced this week that they have enhanced their Pipedrive CRM integration capabilities. Pipedrive is the first platform developed from the salesperson’s point of view. Pipedrive’s goal is to make sales success inevitable – for individual sales people and teams.

Lead Liaison offers a suite of sales solutions including event lead capture, marketing automation, and sales automation. Companies using Pipedrive will benefit from this deeper level of integration, as it makes it easier than ever to streamline and automate key steps in the sales process.

“Lead Liaison’s integration with Pipedrive enables our users to make full use out of both solutions,” says Rob Wyse, Vice President of Public Relations at Pipedrive. “Our users can combine all the rich data that Lead Liaison collects, like website activity and social data, and enrich the Person profiles within Pipedrive. Having everything they need in one place is very important for sales teams, and marketers benefit from it because they can push critical engagement data to their sales team without having to lift a finger.”

Lead Liaison’s partnership with Pipedrive was first announced in September 2016. Before today’s announcement, only limited information could be mapped from Lead Liaison to the CRM, and there were no automation options.

Now, all standard and custom fields can flow from Lead Liaison into Pipedrive CRM resulting in a deeper integration. Salespeople can easily create new lead records in Pipedrive from a variety of areas within Lead Liaison’s platform, including custom fields created to match Pipedrive-specific criteria. Those using Lead Liaison’s marketing automation license will also benefit from additional, Pipedrive-specific, automation actions, “Create Person” and “Create Deal.”

Lead Liaison has gained traction in the event lead management space and a lot of the credit is due to their flexibility and integrations. “We recognize that a lot of the time, we work better together,” says Sam Darrell, VP Product Management at Lead Liaison. “At this point, there aren’t many sales and/or marketing solutions that we don’t integrate with.” Because the company planted their roots in automation, they offer a rare level of support for scaling event marketing efforts.

To learn more about the other enhancements Lead Liaison recently made to their Revenue Generation Software™, such as a new Sales Dashboard full of rich analytics, read their Enhancement Round-Up Q1 2019.

About Pipedrive
Founded in 2010, Pipedrive is the first CRM platform developed from the salesperson’s point of view. Today, Pipedrive is used by sales teams at over 85,000 companies worldwide. Honored as a leading innovative technology company, Pipedrive has offices in Tallinn, London, Lisbon, New York, Tartu, and Prague, and has raised $90 million in funding. Learn more at Pipedrive.com.