Trade Shows

Driving Attendance to Virtual Events: Achieving Growth in a Downturn Economy

Virtual Events are in, and everyone knows it, but getting people’s butts in seats, and staying engaged is a different matter.  Some say virtual events have engagement promise, but growth in this economy is elusive. Sruthi Kumar from Sendoso is here to tell us how to achieve growth in a downturn economy.

Why Should Sales People LOVE Tradeshows?

In business these days, it’s increasingly difficult to connect by phone, let alone face to face meetings, which is why Tradeshows are back in fashion with a vengeance.

Was that Show Worth It? How to Measure Revenue for Trade Show Investments

We know that trade shows are a must-have marketing campaign, but each has the cost of the show and the people (people are often 2X the cost of the show).  The good news is that trade show leads take fewer touches to close, but shows are often not measured by their revenue contribution.  In our interview with Victor Kippes, founder and CEO of Validar, he explains how to measure the revenue contribution and how to avoid cutting shows from the schedule because no one can answer, “Was that show worth it?”  The host is Jim Obermayer

How to Double Qualified Leads from Trade Shows

Everyone, yes everyone, knows that trade show leads close faster than any other type of lead (fewer steps in less time).  With the fixed cost of a trade show going in, the challenge is how an average company can get the maximum number of qualified leads. Double the number of qualified leads, (which reduces your lead cost in half) and you will increase sales by 100%. Sounds farfetched but not really; our guest George Rebhan of LeadValu will tell us how to do it.  The host is Jim Obermayer.
About our Guest  George Rebhan George is president and co-founder of LeadValu LLC, and an accomplished entrepreneur and product development expert with over 30 years of experience. He’s been part of the founding or executive management team for a number of start-up or early stage companies. George also played a key role in the acquisition planning/strategy and post-acquisition integration for those companies.

How To Double Your Qualified Leads At Your Next Trade Show

When asked what they want from marketing, sales reps usual ask for more qualified leads. In this program Matt Hill of the Hill Group tells us how to create double the qualified loads at trade shows. Hill ,who says his company has trained over 60,000 sales reps, says it doesn’t cost more to the create better leads, just reps that are willing to learn. The host this week is Jim Obermayer.Some of the points covered:How to attract more visitors to your booth.How to have more conversations with qualified visitors.How to politely disengage from conversations.Three things your booth staff should be doing.Three things your booth staff should stop doing.How to decide if a visitor is qualified or not.This is Matt Hill’s 26th year of providing exhibit staff training. He has trained over 60,000 exhibit staff personnel from around the world. Some of his clients include Microsoft, GE, Toshiba Medical Systems, Intel, Hewlett-Packard, Medtronic, Apple, and the U.S. Department of Commerce. Matt has published three books about working in a trade show environment.
He is a career salesperson with over 30 years of experience. He started as a factory rep for Playskool toys, then he was at Xerox selling engineering products and then with his own company, The Hill Group for the past 26 years. He holds a BA degree in psychology from California State University, Northridge. Company Bio: His company, The Hill Group, is focused in three areas: Training corporate personnel to work in their own trade show booth (Exhibit Staff Training Workshop); training presenters (Presenter Development Workshop); and helping managers work with their younger employees (Managing the Millennial Generation).------------------------------------This episode is generously sponsored by The Vanella GroupThe Vanella Group, Inc. is the only firm that delivers telebased lead generation programs exclusively for enterprise technology providers. They achieve results 5 times higher than industry standards for outbound lead generation based on the research published by implementing their unique Telesales 2.0 methodology. We are an award winning leader in this space and get results like no other firms.The Vanella Group supports firms from Fortune 500 companies to startups.To learn more, visit BuildPipeline.com or call 888-335-0340

Trade shows and conferences: are they throwing rose petals as you walk in the door?

Conferences and trade shows are part of every industry. Whether you and your company participate in them is part of your marketing plan. Once you have your plan and schedule - how are you going to prepare to make the most of the money you spend on attending, exhibiting, sponsoring or speaking at these events?  Do you have enough staff to get it covered; and not only COVERED but NAILED?Jim reminds us that planning for a conference needs to start months ahead of time. Communicating with attendees through inmail systems days before isn't good enough and will most likely be a waste of time.Jim Obermayer will interview SLMA Marketing Director, Susan Finch, on this very topic. You may not realize how much of a mediocre presence you have once you realize all that you can do before, during and AFTER the conference or trade show.This show had several ideas that to some, may be obvious, but making sure you do them can add to your successful conference experience before, during and after!-----------------------A bit about Susan Finch in her own words:Her mission: Create marketing solutions that give you power, renewed excitement, peace of mind, knowledge, and a plan while making you look great.I give you control of your marketing plan AND I translate geekspeak into plain English. I’ll create a customized marketing plan that includes video, strategic alliances, client advocacy and then you get to choose the parts you want to do, and get my assistance with the rest, including: branding, repurposing and creating your content, and developing training materials.Learn more about this specialty of hers here >Commercial  sponsors on SLMA Radio include: The Young Company, The Vanella Group and Vanilla Soft.

Why doesn't Exhibits Management care more about sales leads?

Host Jim Obermayer interviews Victor Kippes, CEO of Validar on the tough subject of the attitude of trade show managers about sales leads.  Do they really care?  Is their job just to show up and throw up (the exhibit of course) and then not care about the reason for the show?
About Victor Kippes
Victor Kippes is CEO of Validar Inc., a B2B lead management company that specializes in events. Much of Validar's value proposition is based upon Victor's experience as a receiver of leads. He has been in a sales role for over 20 years both as a direct contributor and as the leader of a large enterprise sales team. He is a recovering sales leader who understands very well the challenges marketing and sales leaders face specific to demand generation and lead management. If you are a marketing leader interested in understanding and articulating your true value, or a sales leader interested in improved conversions and pipeline growth, Validar and Victor are there for you.
About Validar
Validar provides B2B lead management solutions to large corporations and we specialize in events. If you are attending or producing an event / campaign with the primary purpose of driving new opportunities to your sales team, Validar can help.
Its solutions lower cost by driving relevant lead follow-up activity to sales and increase revenue by reducing lead decay from campaigns. They enable their customers to identify, categorize and track new opportunities, pipeline and actual revenue contribution from their marketing efforts.  Specialties: B2B lead management solutions for companies that attend or product events.
victork@validar.com
Phone:206.577.1123
Twitter:twitter.com/vkippes
Web: www.validar.com
Blog: http://www.dontaskdontsell.com
YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SBFEUnB1Bs0

Sept 6: Get rid of the business card fishbowl for small shows.

Major trade shows and events provide lead collection and qualification technology that enables exhibitors to quickly determine where and how to spend their lead follow-up dollars. However, the thousands of small businesses that rely on events without such technology still use fishbowls to collect business cards that make follow-up a nightmare.
Working together, Event Technologies and Calvert Creative have embarked on a mission to bring large event lead collection and follow-up to the small business owners who rely on small events and expos to market their products. Their first offerings were introduced at the American Chamber of Commerce Executives Conference held in August 2012 in Louisville, KY.
Event Technologies of Long Beach, CA is a full service provider of lead management solutions for trade show exhibitors utilizing Internet based products developed by TPC Inc. of Chapel Hill, NC.
Calvert Creative of Cary, NC helps companies develop leads and sales through online marketing, all while working within their budget and timeline. “It’s like having a whole marketing department–right in your office.”
Fred Tremblay, VP Development at Event Technologies and President of TPC Inc., along with Jeff Tippett, Director of Calvert Creative will discuss the problems with small business lead follow-up and their efforts to help solve them.

June 14: Victor Kippes, CEO of Validar

SLMA Radio host Jim Obermayer will ask Victor if the rumors of the demise in trade shows as a lead generation event is true?  Are trade shows as strong as always?  How can marketing manager make the most of their trade show investment? Victor Kippes is CEO of Validar Inc., a B2B lead management company that specializes in events.
Much of Validar’s value proposition is based upon Victor’s experience as a receiver of leads. He has been in a sales role for over 20 years both as a direct contributor and as the leader of a large enterprise sales team. He is a recovering sales leader who understands very well the challenges marketing and sales leaders face specific to demand generation and lead management. If you are a marketing leader interested in understanding and articulating your true value, or a sales leader interested in improved conversions and pipeline growth, Validar and Victor are there for you.
You can follow Victor on Twitter at @vkippes. About Validar Validar is a B2B Lead Management company that specializes in events.  It doesn’t matter whether your exhibiting at a tradeshow, or producing your own event or seminar series.  Since 2005, Validar Inc. has helped companies identify, qualify, and manage leads more efficiently and effectively. With our software and services, companies can capture highly qualified leads at the lowest cost and quantify the performance of their marketing efforts.
For any business, it is important to know where leads are in their buying cycle so they are treated appropriately and follow-up activity is not wasted. Our solution enables companies to segment their event attendee based upon both explicit and implicit participation. We enable attendees to control how they are treated post event through technology. victork@validar.com Phone:206.577.1123 Twitter:twitter.com/vkippes Web: www.validar.com Blog: http://www.dontaskdontsell.com/ YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SBFEUnB1Bs0

September 1 Show: From the Floor of Salesforce's Dreamforce Global Gathering

The executive director of the SLMA, James Obermayer will report from the expo floor. It will be noisy, it will be opinionated, it will be interesting to hear what attendees and exhibitors think of Salesforce’s Global Gathering.
Tune in LIVE at 5 on Thursday, September 1. You never know who we'll run into and what they might say.  After the show runs, we'll make a list of all of the people we interviewed. Hope you can join us.
Some of those interviewed will be:
Maria Pergolino, Director of Marketing, Marketo
Bryan Brown, Director of Product Strategy, Silverpop
Chris Frank, Director of Marketing, Treehouse
Jeff Chamberlin, Vice President of B2B Solutions Marketing, Aprimo
Tony Tissot, Senior Director of Marketing, eTrique
Brendon Cassidy, Vice President of EchoSign Sales, Adobe
Brad Peters, CEO, Birst
Ron Halverson, Director of Marketing, Pervasive
Thomas J. Mattson, Managing Director/Vice President DST Output, CFG