In the trade show business, it’s all about measuring ROI, which is critical to any program. But what about your Pre-ROI?
We all love to make a sale at the show or the few days after, but in many industries that just isn’t possible. The ROI comes later, often many months later.
So, knowing if the customers who visited your trade show exhibit left with a positive impression of your company after visiting your booth at the show is important. You can find out within days if success is likely to come in the form of positive ROI, or if you are dead on arrival…..the phone won’t ring, the website won’t be clicked.
Skyline® has been providing branding materials and services to the trade show industry, as well as doing trade shows ourselves for over 35 years. We have learned that you need to survey your customer right after the show to find out your “Pre-ROI”.
Consider asking your attendees questions such as:
- Did you feel that you were treated well or excellent by staffers while at our exhibit?
- Did you feel you were valued, and that staffers listened to your questions?
- What were your feelings about (your company) before they came to the show? How about after your exhibit visit?
- What is the likelihood of working with (your company) in the future, due to the exhibit staff experience?
At the last EXHIBITORLive show this last March in Las Vegas, over half of the Skyline attendees surveyed said they were more likely to work with Skyline® after the exhibit visit than before. Now that’s a good reason to exhibit at your favorite Trade Show! And even better news, 60% were not yet Skyline® Clients.
Skyline® aims for 100% satisfaction and we found from the survey that 4% left with a feeling that staffers did not listen to their questions like they expected, so we have room for improvement and will work on that in the next booth staff training cycle. In fact, we choose our next exhibit staffers based on the Pre-ROI scores that they generate. It’s not the quantity of leads gathered, it’s the quality of relationships built and measured.
There are always opportunities to learn and improve, and how will you know what to improve upon if you don’t ask? At the very least, reaching out to your customer shows them that their opinion matters- no matter if a sale was made or not. It has been said that “People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel,” which is of most importance in the industry of face-to- face trade shows.
