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MOBILE LEAD CAPTURE | ANYTIME, ANYWHERE
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WH Y M A RK E T I N G S HO U L D N E V E R MAN BOOTHS A LO N E
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C LI E N T S P OTLIGHT LI Q U I D F LO O RS B E LGI UM
Z U A N T. C O M
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WHY S ALES P EOPLE S HO U LD LOVE TRADES HOWS
WHY MARKETING SHOULD NEVER MAN BOOTHS ALONE Conventional thinking says it’s marketing’s job to generate leads… so why have salespeople in the booth at a trade show? Here’s why. Today, with digital media, social media, and Web meetings, prospects and customers can hide behind the Internet. The days of face-to-face meetings and power lunches are mostly gone. This makes trade shows a prime place where salespeople can press the flesh, see their customers, and talk with prospects for the first time. When marketers alone are stationed at your trade-show booth, salespeople lose an opportunity for potentially valuable engagements. This is made worse by the fact that some marketers show little interest in doing the work of engaging with attendees or qualifying them as prospects. Here’s an example. Recently, we were invited by one of our clients, Cummins Diesel, to attend the Southampton Boat Show to salivate over their fabulous power boats and classic yachts. As an admirer of the brand and having worked with Sunseeker in the past, I thought this would be a fun and interesting experience. In the morning, my first stop was to Sunseeker’s reception desk on the dock, where I asked for a mini-tour. However, even though no one else was present, we were advised by the marketing woman that it was too busy and to “go sling our hook” (a nautical term!). As it happened, I didn’t have a few million dollars in my back pocket at that particular moment, but she didn’t know that – nor did she make any attempt to find out. She simply turned us away. 2
Along the next dock was an unfamiliar brand, Prestige Yachts, a competitor to Sunseeker. This time, without hesitation, a reception crew member asked if I would like to have a tour, and asked if I’d like a salesperson to show me around or if I preferred to explore solo. The reception team at Prestige was clearly in marketing, but was also there to generate leads for the sales team. Contrast this to Sunseeker, whose team was there to flaunt their wares and entertain existing customers. Takeaway: Only employ marketing personnel at events if they are going to team up with sales and facilitate the buying process – not work against it. Unfortunately, marketing often spends more time worrying about what’s going to be written on the T-shirt than creating an intelligent event strategy. And, if there is an event strategy, salespeople are rarely involved in creating it. Instead, salespeople are required to attend a trade show because marketing needs someone to man the booth. But this approach can be a waste of time for salespeople, who end up having to talk with a lot of unqualified prospects.It’s time salespeople begin to see the real value in being at a trade show. They should say: “Hey, marketing, I want to invite these hot prospects and customers to this event so I can engage with them.” Ensure your booth is designed to both entertain and encourage meaningful discussions. Both sales and marketing need to agree on a strategy before they invest in trade shows.
With that in mind, here are four reasons it makes sense to exhibit at an event: #1: Grow the brand. You want to get your company name out there to boost awareness.
CLIENT SPOTLIGHT: LIQUID FLOORS BELGIUM
Zuant clients come in all shapes and sizes, but these guys certainly know how to work with designers to make their product really deliver.
#2: Collect leads. If it’s collecting leads, you need a really efficient lead scanning process so you can scan people and do some early qualification. Ensure no one walks past the booth who is not scanned. #3: Have qualified sales conversations. It’s true that many people walking around trade shows are doing research and kicking tires. While some people want to spend money, it’s usually a waste of time for highly paid salespeople to stand in a booth trying to pick those people out. When salespeople attend a trade show, they don’t want to stand around giving out swag and capturing unqualified leads. They want to speak with folks who have genuine need and budget. Marketing should help connect salespeople only to potential buyers. Lead generation software scans the badge or business card, and a history comes up. Pre-set questions can guide the salesperson through a conversation and suggest appropriate collateral to give the attendee. It’s a mini sales meeting in the booth. #4: Pre-planned meetings with prospects. Your priority is not collecting leads, it’s connecting with customers and prospects who are attending the show. The trade show becomes the catalyst for setting up meetings. The trade show and booth become secondary. I see this scenario often at Dreamforce, with big consultants such as Accenture, Deloitte, and PWC. If you walk into their booth to collect swag, they politely ask you to leave. Their booths are very clearly set up for pre-planned meeting spaces.
Private Swimming & Sauna Complex in Wetteren This project shows that a resin floor fits perfectly in bathroom environments. The builder decided to use the polyurethane resin floor for his private pool and sauna for sustainability and maintenance free reasons. Obviously he chose a tight liquid mellow resin floor to give a warm and soft sense when walking over the surface, which is also slip resistant.
Trade shows and other events serve as a bookmark in a series of planned activities that could start six or nine months beforehand and may continue six to nine months after all the leads have been followed up. It’s the gathering in the middle that brings people together. The days of sales and marketing teams working in isolation are over. They must be working hand in glove months before a show, during the show, and months after the show. During the event, marketing and sales must assume their defined roles to enhance the buyer experience and optimize sales performance.
Kortrijk Town Hall Because the original epoxy resin in the town hall was subjected to a lot of wear, the town council of Kortrijk decided to choose Liquid Floors and tackle the floor in a way that provides both a practical and fabulously modern interior. 3
WHY SA L E S PE O PL E SH OU L D L OV E T R A D E S H OW S Despite the explosion of MarTech and SalesTech tools on the market today, the exhibition industry remains largely stuck in the Stone Age. Compare advancements in exhibitor technologies to those in marketing automation, being introduced at alarming rates. Is this stark difference in innovation because event organizers already employ a successful formula and have no incentive to change? In today’s global, highly digital world, meeting face-toface with prospects and customers is becoming harder and more expensive. This reality is creating a major resurgence in tradeshows. Smart exhibition organizers understand the more high quality leads their exhibitors capture during the event, the more likely they will return in following years. An effective mobile lead capture system is paramount to driving sales revenue at tradeshows. Light pens and barcode scanners have been the norm since I started attending events four decades ago! Back then they were innovative, but today scanning a badge to obtain limited contact details which takes days to receive, is beyond archaic. The desire to deliver better ROI to exhibitors via lead capture drives Zuant’s product development. Over the years our clients consistently report two challenges: 1. Need to use a different lead capture system at each show, thus adding complexity and re-training for show workers at each show. 4
2. Huge cost of renting multiple scanners, thousands of dollars for something pretty basic. Solving these issues, we created a ‘Swiss Army Knife’ product, which accommodates all badge systems at shows around the world. This enables our clients to scan QR codes, other 2-D and 1D barcodes, and NFC cards. Zuant is the core system used to prequalify leads, present videos and literature, email prospects and ensure the data can be quality checked and integrated with downstream CRM and marketing automation systems. Not rocket science, but a major step forward. As we discover more effective ways to capture leads we continue to evaluate and adopt newer and better ways of doing this. Here are several innovative technologies on the horizon: Although barcode badge scanning is the norm, from an exhibitors’ perspective, NFC (Near Field Communication) is one of today’s best products. Presumably due to cost, it seems restricted to IT and Telco shows such as Barcelona’s Mobile World Congress. NFC will become more commonplace when Apple opens up the NFC scanning option with the iOS 11 release this Fall, allowing exhibitors to use both Apple and Android devices for NFC scanning. iBeacon is another Apple developed technology first introduced in 2013. iBeacon is also available on other platforms like Android.
F I N D U S AT: PAC K EX P O
25 - 27th September 2017 Las Vegas, NV, USA www.packexpolasvegas.com PACK EXPO Las Vegas is North America’s biggest packaging event of the year. You’ll have nearly 900,000 square feet to cover, an area larger than 15 football fields, where you’ll find:
HOW TO :
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Packaging machinery in action, just-released technologies, materials and containers.
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Solutions for 40+ vertical markets from 2,000+ suppliers.
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Pavilions dedicated to containers and materials, confectionery and reusable packaging.
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Free educational sessions at the Innovation Stage and Reusable Packaging Learning Center, where you can stop by at any time (no registration required)
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Networking lounges for Baking & Snack, Beverage and Confectionery industry professionals.
T URN A SA FA R I PAGE I N TO A PDF If you ever come across an article or webpage that has a lot of great information you want to save, you can. Turn a webpage into a PDF by using the Safari web browser with iOS 11 on iPhone. Once you’ve saved the webpage as a PDF, you can edit or mark up the document. Then you can export it to your favorite viewing application such as Kindle or Adobe Acrobat Reader, or even send it to someone else. Here’s how to turn a Safari webpage into a PDF with iOS 11 on iPhone or iPad. 1. Open Safari and find the webpage you want to save as a PDF.
PACK EXPO Las Vegas takes place in the Central Hall and South Hall of the Las Vegas Convention Center .With your badge, you also gain access to co-located Healthcare Packaging EXPO which takes place in the North Hall.
2. Tap the Share icon in the bottom center of the screen. 3. Scroll through your options until you see Markup as PDF. 4. A PDF version of the webpage will pop up. You can tap the marker icon in the upper right corner to edit it and mark up the PDF. 5. Once you’re done, tap the Share icon in the lower left corner. Here you can either share it with someone via messages and mail. Or you can copy it to your favorite reading application. 6. You can even choose to print the PDF or save it to the new Files app. That’s all there is to it! This new iOS 11 feature is fantastic for easily saving information you want to have access to on your iOS devices.
TOP APP: EXPENSIFY
Another app to use OCR (Optical Character Recognition). is Expensify. We continue to wonder how the app can capture some of the most screwed up receipts dragged out of back pockets, but it certainly does. What we do love is the elimination of the old hand written expense forms which were the bane of our lives!
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+44 1344 350 250 I N F O @ Z U A N T. C O M
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