Trade Shows are a predominant source of leads for companies in a number of segments. While I know that trade shows don’t deliver high quality leads to companies in some verticals, there are other verticals like healthcare, telecommunications and biotech where trade shows are invaluable in generating qualified leads and opportunities. 

The most valuable outcome of a trade show, other than a on-the-spot-sale or opportunity (which is rare), is the list of attendees. A natural thing to do for most marketers is to take the list and upload it to their CRM system. But that is probably the worst thing one could do with that list, as doing this leads to trade show lists getting lost  once uploaded to CRM, become tough to measure for what they delivered in terms of opportunities and sales and most importantly are tough to monetize if the data is not complete or qualified. 

Here are 3 simple things that everyone can do right after the trade show to maximize the value and ROI: 

• Cleanse the list fully and ensure that the data is both, complete and accurate. The best way to do this is to use internal marketing operations team or an outsourced lead generation or data cleansing vendor to ensure that all name, company, URL, address and phone number data is accurate. The next thing to do is to verify all the email addresses of the contacts by doing a simple email campaign thanking them for their time at the show and may be add a plug or two. The main objective of this to test and ensure that the email address is correct. However, if you do not have email addresses for the contacts as the trade show administrators don’t provide those, then it is a MUST to acquire and append emails to all contacts using publicly available information leveraging a good email append or email verification service. All this ensure that you have lead data that is complete, accurate and actionable. 
• Next, qualify the list to ensure that you are not going after accounts and contacts who are just not the right prospects for your company. This process may be quick for some of you and not-so-quick for others, but essential for everyone. An automated way to segment and qualify is by checking for data that helps you qualify like location, number of employees, revenues, contact titles/roles, and such other high level data elements. For a more deeper qualification, its best to use an outsourced lead qualification service provider who can call and research the target account to qualify against your parameters. For example, if your solution works only with the SAP ERP system, then accounts who do not have SAP are simply a waste of time for your team. The net result of this is a qualified list of target accounts with complete, accurate contact information that is ready for the sales team to call on. 
• Lastly, before you upload the list to the CRM system, make sure how you want to allocate the list across the sales reps and add any parameters that are required for this to the list. This is critical to ensure that you can make the sales reps accountable to call, qualify and report on the status and quality of the lead for you to generate a trade show ROI report. This last step is as important as the first two and almost critical for your ROI calculations. 

All this will definitely take more time than simply pushing the list as is to your CRM system but it will pay for itself with a happy sales team that values your leads, a happy boss who can clearly understand your trade show ROI sheet and overall a scalable process that puts you in complete control to drive leads from trade shows to revenue. 

One last point. In a recent conversation with one of our prospects, I heard an interesting point. He said trade shows drive 80% of their leads and one policy they follow is to only attend trade shows that give them a full attendee list WITH email addresses. If a show doesn’t give them a list with email addresses, then they just pass!