It's because tradeshow leads have developed a particularly bad reputation among sales teams. As evidence, look no further than the notorious fish bowl or the many companies that hold drawings of some sort to entice attendees to their booth. Lots of Wii systems or iPods are up for grabs and even some cash prizes. When I walk the show floor and I'm approached to have my card scanned for the respective company's drawing, I don't want to waste their time, so I always say:

"I am not a prospect for your company."

The person working the booth nearly always gives the standard reply:

"Oh, that's OK; you don't have to be a prospect to be in the drawing!"

Then my not-a-prospect information is added to the list of "leads" from the show and passed along to sales, and any subsequent follow-up is a waste of good selling time. Consequently, sales people easily become discouraged with all prospects generated from the trade show, even though there may be some gems in there. Sound familiar?

What happened to quality over quantity?

Also compelling is the fact that most people walking around the floor of your last trade show are not training decision makers. Instead, mostly lower level people and vendors are coming to your booth. Sure, there are a few gems out there, but the odds are against you.

For years, marketing managers have been deluded into thinking that their objective was simply to grab business cards and names. But focusing on quantity over quality is, in fact, the kiss of death for a tradeshow program seeking to increase sales:

Sales people have no desire to waste time following up a list that they perceive (rightly so) to be dominated by people that are not the decision maker for training.

Look at the valuable marketing dollars you spent to exhibit at your most recent trade show.  Determine what you paid per “prospect.” It’s simple math:

Investment per contact from the trade show =

    Dollar amount spent on exhibiting

            Divided by number of contacts

                    = Investment you made to obtain each contact

Example:
Exhibiting Cost ($10,000) ÷ Number of contacts (500) = Cost per contact ($20)

This investment goes even higher if you weed out all those fish bowl and drawing participants!     Did you pay $20 per “prospect”…or more?

Anyone that truly understands quality versus quantity will realize that it is critical to find less expensive, more effective way to obtain confirmed training decision maker contact information. You might also be asking yourself, what's the bottom line here - is it branding, seeing and being seen, or going to the show just because we've always done it?

Or – are you prospecting to give your sales team solid leads…to increase sales?

If the overriding goal is to provide sales with sales leads, then prospecting to a target audience that consists of 100% confirmed decision makers for corporate training can be much more cost effective if you're working with a company that:

We are that company.

In business since 1999, Mentor Tech Group (MTG) has meticulously-maintained Market Intelligence for the corporate learning market to be used for email campaigns, cold calling or direct mail campaigns. We talk to everyone on our 21,000 contact/6,000 company database every four months.

Does talking to our training leaders every four months make a difference?

We're on top of the turmoil on Corporate America.

When you work with MTG's Market Intelligence, you are working with reliable training director information (and now we have talent management too) that you can use all year long over and over again because outdated information is replaced with new information every four months at no additional charge.* Your sales team is more productive, your marketing dollar is better spent and bottom line, your company will be enjoy higher sales volume.

Isn't that what you want?

*For lists with a minimum size of 1000 contacts

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