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October 2008
10 Most Common Booth Sales Mistakes
Improve your success by closing these holes in your sales calls
By Stephen Pia, COACH MEdia
In this economy, with the changing nature of how your customers view event marketing, it’s more important than ever to be at the top of your sales game. Whether you’re a rookie or a seasoned event sales professional, there are certain mistakes we all make in our day-to-day sales efforts. See if any of these common errors have crept into your repertoire and are impacting your ability to succeed.
#1: Not managing the call
One of the most important lessons you can learn about communicating is that, “He or she who manages the communication, manages the outcome.” Don’t translate this to mean you need to do all of the talking — or that you should let your client take control of the discussion.
When you talk too much on the call, you won’t extract the information you need to help justify your event’s value proposition or negotiate objections that come up later. But when you let your client control the discussion, you’re forced into talking about your event — rates, dates and space — prior to probing and positioning your value proposition as it relates to their business goals and needs.
Instead, implement the most underutilized communication technique there is — an agenda or discussion overview. Think about the meeting outcome you want to achieve, and craft points that ensure you’ll follow the right path to reach that outcome. Make sure you ask for confirmation on the agenda — it confirms that you and the prospect have the same goals for the meeting.
#2: Not scheduling meetings
Most exhibit salespeople sell via phone or e-mail, not face-to-face. You may not know what your day looks like until you view the ticklers you set two weeks ago. You might be being led by “numbers-game” managers who track the number of calls you make and the e-mails you send.
This “spray-and-pray” approach to sales and sales management doesn’t tend to yield the best results. Your prospects and customers aren’t sitting by the phone or waiting by the computer for you to contact them. When you reach out without a scheduled appointment, they’re either not going to be available or they’ll be busy doing three other things. The call won’t be as productive as it could have been if they’d carved out the time to talk with you.
Instead of using e-mail and voice mail messages to make your numbers, use them as tools to secure scheduled appointments. For each prospect, craft a script that provides a brief explanation of why your audience is interested in what they have to offer. Then suggest two potential dates and times for a meeting — for example, Tuesday or Thursday at 1:30 p.m. When a meeting time and date have been established, send an Outlook invite to confirm. Once you’re on the call, do yourself a favor: Don’t hang up the phone without setting your next meeting. It’ll be much harder to secure a date and time later, so do it while you have a captive audience.
As a general rule, the salesperson with the highest number of scheduled meetings is usually the No. 1 salesperson in the organization. Therefore, your number of scheduled meetings should be your personal driver and what you should be held accountable to by management.
#3: Not expanding beyond the marketing department
Your events and related marketing opportunities benefit so many more groups than just the company’s marketing department. Yet you might spend 100 percent of your time selling to marketing and exhibit managers or their agencies. What about sales, product development, research and other teams that benefit from a company’s participation in your events?
Selling only to the marketing department means you can close a sale only if your event meets a company’s marketing objectives. But we know there are other reasons for a company to participate, and the only way to sell these is to include other groups in the decision-making process. Otherwise, you’re limiting the amount of money a company might spend on your event, and hurting your ability to retain the business over time.
Build a list of “reference contacts” by determining which departments will benefit from your events in addition to marketing. Find the key players in each group and build a relationship with these people so they will support your efforts to convince a marketer that your event meets their needs. You can accomplish much of this through informal meetings at trade shows, conferences or through e-mail. If they’ll join you when you meet with the marketing contact, that’s even better.
#4: Not representing your audience
Who is your customer? If you answered “exhibitors,” or “sponsors” you’ve got a short-term mindset. Your No. 1 customer is your attendee. The only reason exhibitors participate in your events is because of the audience you attract. Your job, therefore, is to represent your audience and be their voice.
Talk to attendees and find out why they attend your event, what other companies or exhibitors they’d like to see and what companies impressed or disappointed them at the last event. Leverage this information in your sales presentation with both current customers and new prospects to demonstrate why they should participate.
#5: Not asking the right questions
Are you still spending 45 minutes extolling the virtues of your event, only to end the call shaking your head because the prospect didn’t buy into the program? If so, you’re failing in three key areas: demonstrate you care/build trust; extract information you need to help you present/negotiate; and uncover fears, uncertainties and doubts.
But starting the call by asking your prospect questions about his or her marketing goals isn’t the answer either. You’re starting too low on the horizon because marketing goals are only a by-product of a client’s product and customer initiatives. Marketing questions are tactical. Product and customer questions are strategic.
Take a step back and start wider by asking questions about the prospect’s company, its products, its strategy to bring the products to market, its customers and competitors. The answers to these questions will help you connect your client/prospect to your audience. Then you can ask the typical marketing questions — goals, challenges, decision-making criteria, etc. — that will help you determine what program to present.
#6: Not knowing your value proposition
When people ask you what you sell, what’s your typical response — events, marketing programs or integrated media? Technically, all these answers are correct. But with this mentality, you’re selling to your customers. Wouldn’t you rather help them buy? A small difference in wording, but it can make a huge difference in your sales communication strategy.
Your value proposition is that you can help exhibitors and sponsors get more exposure for their products in the marketplace and get them more exposure to current and prospective customers. Nothing is more important to a company than these two things. So instead of selling events or integrated programs, sell the opportunity to connect with the audience during all phases of their buying cycles.
#7: Not knowing how to make an integrated sale
Event salespeople often make two critical missteps when trying to sell integrated programs. First, they approach current exhibitors with additional opportunities as add-ons versus an integrated program. Second, they approach prospects with a program that shows a primary opportunity — exhibit space — and secondary opportunities — sponsorship, Web presence, etc.
This approach immediately devalues some of the pieces and doesn’t allow you to position your audience in a way that makes an integrated program an obvious buy. Instead of focusing on the pieces, focus on your audience and how they buy. Get your prospect to explain what tools and resources their customers use to make decisions. Then, take the client on a journey of your attendee to demonstrate how they use your various tools. This will help them understand how they can reach customers at each phase of the process, and will correspond to the different components of your integrated event program.
#8: Not managing expectations
Hopefully, as an industry, we’ve moved beyond suggesting to exhibitors that they measure success by the number of leads they capture on-site. Failing to manage the expectations about what your event will deliver will lead to dissatisfied customers who don’t return. This is even more important with an integrated program, in which they’re typically investing more than a client who buys just exhibit space.
Talk to your client about how they’ll measure the success of the program, and what metrics they’ll use. Teach them how a combination of measurable results — including getting on buyers, consideration lists and meeting with customers and prospects on-site and post-event — is a more comprehensive way to evaluate these programs.
#9: Not ending sales calls with a clear purpose
Does this scenario sound familiar? You try for six months to get a meeting with a prospect you know is a great fit for your show. The meeting goes well and you get positive feedback at the end from the prospect. You follow up for the next two months and can’t even get a return call. What went wrong?
Often, event salespeople are afraid of rejection — or objections — so rather than attempt a close, or confirm next steps, they’re content to end the call with the knowledge that it was a positive one. But it’s not productive if you can’t move the prospect to “client” after that meeting ends.
Start to adopt a philosophy of closing for “something” instead of always trying to close the sale. At the very least, close on the date and time of your next appointment.
Also, be disciplined about next steps and action items at the end of your meetings. Don’t just agree to send a proposal — ask what the client would like to see in the proposal and on what date and time they’ll be available to discuss it. This discipline and precision will help with forecasting and time and territory management.
#10: Not handling objections
Unfortunately, objections tend to bring out the worst in salespeople. We immediately feel we have to attack and defend — our event, our program, our audience. We begin rattling off statistics and research points instead of determining the source of the objection and if there are other, real objections, hidden behind the lazy objections we tend to receive.
While you certainly don’t look forward to objections, it’s important that you face them head-on. If you don’t, you’ll be stuck in the vortex of unanswered calls and e-mails. Embrace the objections. Remember, they’re not objecting to you, they’re objecting to what they believe your audience — their customers and prospects — to be. Demonstrate that you understand their concerns. Make sure you know exactly what they’re saying and that there are no other concerns before moving forward. Then you’ll be prepared to gather additional information and present a solution point that will help you move forward.
Stephen Pia is the founder of COACH MEdia, a sales training, coaching and consulting firm serving the media industry since 1999. He works with event sales teams and individuals to strengthen their sales skills, develop an effective sales process and enhance their communication and negotiation skills in support of integrated selling. Prior to founding COACH MEdia, Pia spent 16 years in event sales as a sales professional and sales leader, including 10 years at Ziff-Davis Media.
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