Whether you’re exhibiting at a tradeshow or producing your own proprietary events, getting your CRM system prepared pre-event is critical if you desire to track the revenue impact to your companies sales pipeline. This quick post will provide tips to consider with your CRM system to measure ROI for both event types. Team Validar specializes in bringing you the most accurate results from your events, but first, let’s prepare your CRM and get some stress off your shoulders.
1. Tradeshows
Tracking lead preferences can be difficult at tradeshows given the high volume of traffic and brief nature of most discussions. It’s important though that you capture where your attendee falls in the buying cycle by capturing their follow-up preference. [caption id="attachment_1248" align="alignleft" width="720"]{{image}} Categorized leads[/caption] This can be done by simply asking a pick one question to every lead captured; How would you prefer we follow up (image above)? Prior to importing this data into your CRM system setup member status values that align with the lead category and then import. If done right, your CRM system will allow sales to skim the hot leads off the top for follow up. [caption id="attachment_1249" align="aligncenter" width="982"]{{image}} Skim the sales-ready leads[/caption]
2. Proprietary events
Whether your event has a single session or multiple tracks, it’s important that you create a repository (Campaign) within your CRM System for each session or product demonstration that is intended to generate demand. Track attendance at your event for each of these experiences and add these attendees within your CRM system to this repository. This attendance is no different than that person visiting your website to learn more about a specific product or service. You can even take this one step further by including a unique member status value within each campaign for folks that request followup within an evaluation. Setting up and populating your CRM system in this fashion will provide tremendous value to your sales team in their followup and speed up the sales cycle by extending the conversation beyond the impact of your event content. This is a topic that is very near and dear to Validar. Call us if you’re interested in learning more about how other amazingly smart event marketers are deploying our products and services in this fashion.
