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Conferences are a planned, fast-paced set-up allowing people to interact and exchange information in a brief period of time. This face to face interaction is instrumental in closing deals and cementing business relationships. So, go out, try some hors d’oeuvres, grab a glass of drink, and make the best use of the opportunities you get to build your network.

Let’s see some of the networking opportunities we have in store this season:

1.  Forbes CMO Summit (Nov 1-3, Dana Point, CA)

With 120 top CMO’s and over 35 industries being represented, Forbes CMO Summit is a great place to explore the role of CMO’s in this universe highlighting the expertise they should bring, the levers they need to pull and the metrics that will lead to future success. The event is by invitation only and you can place a request to attend. The speakers include CMOs, VPs, senior leaders and CEOs of companies like Forbes, Lenovo, Accenture Interactive, Deloitte Digital, Taco Bell, Twitter, McKinsey & Company, and Vertebrae.

2.  ITSMA Marketing Vision Conference (Nov 5-7, Cambridge, MA)

This conference is a great place to learn about the latest and greatest in account-based marketing. The conference focuses exclusively on marketing excellence and leadership for B2B services and solutions in the connected economy. The speakers include ABM leaders, Senior VPs, CEOs, and CMOs from companies like Cognizant Consulting, ITMSA, Nutanix, and HP.

3. SiriusDecisions TechX (Nov 7-9, 2018, New Orleans, LA)

With over 500 attendees, the conference is a place to understand what’s new from leading b-to-b technology and services providers. It offers a chance to dive deeper into emerging trends in sales, marketing, and product performance. The speakers include VPs, Senior Research Directors, and other senior marketing leaders from companies such as SiriusDecisions, Verint Systems Inc., ACTIVE Network, and Booz Allen Hamilton.

4.  B2B Marketing Forum 2018 (Nov 13-16, San Francisco, CA)

MarketingProfs’ B2B marketing forum is a place where leaders and innovators gather to learn about the latest B2B marketing strategies and tactics along with content strategy and SEO techniques for B2B marketing. The speakers include authors, thought leaders, CMOs and other senior leaders from companies like Google, Duarte Inc., Dell, and IBM cybersecurity.

5.  Growth Marketing Conference (Dec 11-12, San Francisco, CA)

With industry-leading Fortune 500 executives, high-growth founders, and growth marketing pioneers and innovators, the conference offers over 50 sessions covering actionable, real-world growth strategies and tactics driving rapid, cost-effective and sustainable revenue and user growth. The speakers include VPs, Global Marketing Heads, CMOs, Directors, CEOs, and founders of companies like Spotify, Dropbox, Google, Adobe, Engagio, Slack and GameOn Technology.

6.  AI and Big Data for Marketing Summit (Dec 12-13, New York, NY)

The main themes of the summit include fueling personalized experiences using data and analytics, effective social and mobile marketing through advanced analytics, creating conversational UI experiences, and data-driven content marketing strategies. The speakers include Directors, VPs head of analytics, and other senior marketing leaders from companies FanDuel, PepsiCo, Industry Expert, The Lego Group, and Boxed.

So, choose an event that fits your needs, gear up and achieve your goals! Networking, if done right, can expand your contact database, mine new opportunities, challenge your old beliefs and thoughts, and lets you find people you need to realize your goals. And to make networking easier—and keep track of all your great contacts, download ScanBizCards. Happy Networking!!

Networking is at the heart of any successful sales endeavor. Real networking entails focusing on interactivity, building connections, and adding a splash of fun rather than simply meeting up new people and sharing your contact information.

Here’re some of the best practices to follow as we head into the event season:

1. Be specific about your role in the event – You sure are the marketing guy who’ll be there to get more leads under your belt but will you be there full-time? Will you also be clicking pictures for your website’s media section? Will you be required to take out time for networking local prospects besides the potential leads you intend to meet at the event? If so, has it all been planned in advance? Have your logistics been sorted?

A strategic SMART plan should be in place whenever you are going to attend an event. Pre-decide the role of each and every team member whether its handling social media, updating news section, posting pics round the clock and so on, and what precisely you intend to achieve in quantitative terms. Also, plan and create material you wish to distribute during the event. Finally, sort out the sessions you’ll be attending and decide how exactly you’ll use your spare time. Besides, stay updated with the latest in the industry.

2. Stay on top of things – Constantly monitor relevant breaking news related to your industry via tools like TweetDeck and remain prepared to weave your conversation around it during the event. It offers you a good jumping-off point. Use it to position yourself as an information resource. Authentic information on trending topics and breaking news may establish you as a thought leader in the long run.

Strategize how your team will use these trending topics and events for trend jacking purposes to make your brand visible and enhance your internet presence. Being well-versed with the current topics certainly helps, but for meaningful conversations, it’s equally important that you understand your prospect’s goals.

3. Understand what the prospects are looking for – You should clearly understand what success looks like to your client. Don’t show up in the event as a typical salesperson who attempts to scan badges, seek prospect’s attention by futile talk, throw business cards at them and concern them with things they appear least interested in.

A better approach is to figure out the event guest list beforehand, do some research on your prospects criterion for success and what they are hoping to get from this event. In addition to social media search and other sources, a good way is to connect with the prospects before the event, where possible, and create a plan of action. Once this is done, ask yourself what all you’ll need at the conference and pack your bags accordingly.

4. Decide what you need to pack for the event – To avoid last-minute hassles, it’s important to plan your luggage beforehand. Thinking beyond the professional attire, comfy shoes, reusable water bottle, notepad, and protein bars; you need to focus on other significant things that can make events less stressful and fun at the same time.

Yes, I am talking about gadgets, tools, and accessories! Of course, you’ll have your Smartphone with you to snap pictures of the speakers, attendees and the event hall to keep your online community updated and involved. What is far more important is to have tools that can help save your time and effort so you can spend most of the time meeting new people and networking. For this, you can equip your phone with these apps:

• ScanBizCards: A card reader that scans and exports your business cards to your CRM
• GroupMe: A group messaging service that even works over SMS.
• Bizzabo: A great tool to network with new people at the conferences
• CityHour: For spontaneous meetings with other professionals

Once you’re all set, it’s time to head for the event. Make sure you’re not late for the event and dress professionally.

5. Learn how to conduct yourself at the event – It’s difficult to predict everything that’s going to take place at the event but there are a few things you can certainly take care of. Begin by being your own self – be genuine and authentic. You may not like to drink but hold a drink anyway- you’re likely to meet more people near the bar during the breaks than anywhere else. Take notes where required, treat people as friends and offer genuine help. Ask sensible questions and be specific for what you’re looking for rather than simply acting as a card spammer and working the room.

Alongside, make sure you keep your off-site team aware of the recent activities, delays, last-minute changes in the schedule or venue, and other things happening at the event in real-time. Also, make sure you remain well-informed about any influencers actively involved in posting about the event and what your competition is posting online. Keep things moving at the right pace and when the event gets over; brace yourself for the all-important post-event activities.

6. Do not forget about the crucial post-event activities – Once the event is over, you should make notes of what happened during the event, what promises you made, sort out the business cards you scanned/collected, Google all your relevant contacts, figure out some jumping-off points and follow up with the relevant prospects accordingly. All this must happen within 48 hours of the event so that prospects are able to recognize you.

Nurture these connections slowly and gradually and finally meet up to take things further but before you ask for any favor, be ready to offer something useful to your prospects to make it a win-win deal. Additionally, as the event is over, scrutinize your team efforts, check the social media statistics, see how many new contacts/leads got added to your sales funnel, and calculate your networking ROI from the event. This will offer you an insight into ways you and your team can improve your performance in future and will assist you in choosing conferences that will get the most bang for your buck.

These tips can certainly help drive higher sales growth for your business. So, make sure you’ve planned well and are prepared to make the most from your next major networking event. Happy networking!!

Networking is at the heart of any successful sales endeavor but its repetitiveness often becomes overwhelming. However, leveraging the right tools at the right time can simplify the process and quickly complete most of the customary tasks, freeing up much-needed time and resources. This assists reps in refocusing their energies on the key tasks they are meant to execute.

Let’s check out some of the powerful networking apps for helping salespeople stay on top of their game.

ScanBizCards (iOS, Android)

Any networking professional can appreciate the efficacy of a robust card scanner app integrated with a superior character-recognition technology. ScanBizCards, equipped with state-of-the-art OCR technology, is a business card scanning and CRM export app that lets you create personal notes for each card, organize them in folders and send a quick intro email along with your picture and contact info to your network. ScanBizCards also scans all your connected email accounts to quickly add these contacts to your address book or export them to Salesforce CRM, making it a must-have app for salespeople.

MightyMeeting (iOS/Android)

MightyMeeting, as the name suggests, improves your sales meetings game by letting you share content, applications, annotations, and drawings via your device. The app runs on Smartphones, Tablets, Chromebooks, and PCs, storing everything safely in the cloud for immediate access anytime, anywhere. It’s a great app to share your latest company videos or your sales presentations with your potential prospects while networking. Quickly switch between presentations, jump to any slide in a presentation, and zoom into the slide’s tiny details. Using MightyMeeting, sales reps can engage in unlimited meetings with slide and whiteboard sharing for the Web, Android, and iOS.

The Salesforce App (iOS/Android)

The Salesforce app is highly customizable, cross-platform and plug-and-play without the need for any setup. Its included with every Salesforce license and is one of the top CRM apps for salespeople. It grants sales reps access to a real-time view of all their CRM data, existing customizations, and productivity tools from anywhere, anytime, as all customer data, software and services are secured in an online cloud environment. The prospect information can easily be accessed, edited or added onto Salesforce soon after a meeting or an event. Salesforce CRM helps businesses increase productivity and scalability at a reduced cost.

Shapr (iOS/Android)

For sales reps, meeting potential clients is a golden opportunity to showcase their company and hit a deal at the right moment, and Shapr can expedite this entire process. Shapr is a mobile networking app that offers a daily dose of inspiring, like-minded people to meet nearby in your area. Shapr uses tagged interests, location and professional experience to suggest 10 to 15 inspiring profiles each day. Reps can even swipe anonymously and only receive notification when the interest is mutual – no unsolicited requests to chat. Using the app, reps can get in touch with the right people in seconds and easily go from online to offline by setting up an in-person meeting. Reps, when paired, can also see the other party’s social media profiles, allowing interaction across multiple platforms. Hence, reps can streamline their networking efforts and grow their contacts using Shapr.

Calendly (Web)

It is an easy to use robust scheduling solution for the reps networking requirements that can help them save time and speed up sales. Sales reps can simply set their own availability preference, share the link with their prospects, clients etc. and allow them to pick a suitable time, which is then automatically added to the reps calendar. Calendly can be integrated with Outlook, Office 365, iCloud and Google calendars. The app checks all calendars for conflicts to avoid dual-booking, and automate tasks with apps like Salesforce, GoToMeeting, Zapier and more. So, with Calendly, sales reps can make scheduling a simple, quick task.

Route4Me  (iOS/Android)

Route4Me is a route planning and optimization app that works for businesses of almost all sizes. Reps can simply type, copy/paste, or upload their list of customers or addresses that they need to visit. Tap Plan Route, see the optimized route on their computer and get it on their mobile right away, and travel the route. Optimized routes can be created for hundreds or thousands of personnel using the app, and they can be tracked real-time from a single dashboard. Sales reps can thus save time, see more customers a day and make more money using Route4Me.

Sales reps can use the above apps to gain a competitive edge and stay on top of the things.

Lead Gen is a tricky process, and it’s easy to get overwhelmed by the number of online tactics claiming to get you qualified leads at your doorstep. Slogging into the market with a hope to make our account-based marketing strategy a success, and implementing every newfangled B2b tactic for years now, we know how valid these claims are!

So, rather than getting swayed by every new tactic that’s finding its way into the mainstream, begin by investigating the fundamentals and understanding the proven tactics that work wonderfully. Once that’s sorted, you may infuse the new experimental tactics that align well with these older ones to create a winning tactic.

Begin the process by being crystal clear on who exactly are your customers, and dive deeper to segment them on basis of gender, age, income, attitudes, and interests. And understand what’s been working for them till now.

Know What’s Working and Eliminate What’s Not

Dig deeper to unearth the point of origin of your customers. Is it referrals, is it e-mails, or is it networking? Once you know the ‘power areas’ and ‘no result zones’- focus on what’s working and, immediately revoke resources from the drenched areas.

Once this is done, you can get the leverage- with your recently released resources- to experiment with something new and innovative that’s in sync with the customer base you have targeted.

But let’s first focus on the power areas- The Proven Methods.

This includes few of the techniques that have passed the time-test, and have come out as a winner working hand-in-hand with the latest innovative strategies.

Email-Marketing: An Age-Old Successful Technique

It’s inexpensive, it’s quick, and you can easily execute an email campaign to create an interest in your products and services to the targeted audience. What’s important is that it should not be lengthy, and you should have a clear CTA (Call-to-Action).

Now there are clever ways to mine leads from email responses- even if it is an ‘out of office’ auto-response. Most of us view emails on our mobile devices– adding an email capture app to your smartphone can help you capture leads and contact data you probably let slip.

Be cautious not to approach people who have unsubscribed your posts, or have opted out.

Social Media Advertising

There are a few good ways to capture your target audience through social media. You can match your email lists with social media accounts and advertise to a custom audience using the demographic data info from the advert platforms.

You may also invite newsletter signups directly through the social media channel to get emails of the interested visitors. CTA is again relevant.

And don’t be shy- promote your company and add direct links to your landing pages. So, make the best possible use of social media by being active and present, especially when it comes to Linkedin!

Linkedin is a Hub For Leads

Create a robust company profile, join relevant groups, connect to a valuable target audience, and join conversations. You may directly ask the connections to book an appointment or offer a demo. Read our blog- Making the World Your Web: LinkedIn.

Additionally, you may also go for paid lead collection tools providing you good genuine leads. The results are great if you have done your homework well, and are vigilant enough to miss any opportunity that arises through this media.

Did I Mention Google Adwords?

Costly yet very effective tool to attract relevant traffic to your website pretty fast- only if you are a pro. Yes, you heard it right!

Google Ad Strategy has to be detailed and well planned to improve your lead gen efforts, and only a seasoned marketer who had his share of trials and errors can be the best bet. So, hire an expert and get the leads!

Take a Plunge into Content Marketing

It’s a high-scorer. On average, conversion rates are six times higher for companies and brands using content marketing in comparison to those who do not.

Besides, content marketing costs 62% less in comparison to the traditional marketing programs and generates approx three times the volume of leads.

Great! So, how do you go about it?

Content that contributes to qualified lead gen typically lives in three spaces: your website’s landing pages, blogs, and social media channels. Optimize these channels to hold your audience, and include long-tailed keywords in your content for a better likelihood of conversion.

Additionally, host webinars, publish research reports, and post videos!

And Finally- Network, Network, and Network!

Networking is a powerful tool. Tradeshows and Events offer some high-quality leads. Speaking at events, offering demos, attending local association meetups, and sponsoring programs, all lead to in-person connections and exchange of valuable contact info. Read our Tips from Top Influencers on Absolutely Crushing it at Networking.

But to get the most from your networking endeavors, it is vital to feed the contact info right into your device the moment you get it- for timely follow-up.

And ScanBizCards app helps you with that. You can instantly feed business card info from a physical card straight into your address book through its OCR feature.

In a nutshell, whatever method you choose, keep your strategist hat on. Begin with the basics, strategize and apply proven tactics that work for your customers, and free-up resources from the dysfunctional methods. Infuse emerging trends with the proven methods to get the best-qualified leads.

So, get yourselves armed with the above weapons, and invade the lead-gen space!

The world is becoming more and more digitized, but 10 million business cards are still printed each year. However, 88% of those are tossed away within a week. Does this mean that it’s time to go paperless? The answer is a resounding no.

Statistics reveal a company’s sales increase 2.5% for every 2,000 business cards handed out, even if a majority of them are thrown away. This is because business cards display the face of the company and are considered a mark of professionalism. People are expected to carry their physical business cards in all networking events to represent their company.

Business cards must be professional, appealing, unique, and memorable. A single glance should clearly reveal to someone what your business is all about.

1. Business Card Designing Strategy: Make sure you plan your card structure well. Card quality, brand colors, and logo all play a key role in how people perceive your card. And the most important part is the information it carries.

Your website and your contact email/phone number are your calls to action (CTA), so make sure they are in large font, clearly visible and on the front side of your card. Your name, as well as your company’s name and logo, should also be there, but don’t clutter things up. Make sure your design is simple, clean and balanced.

On the back side, you may add a map of your office location, or be innovative and add a few product images or anything that will add value, such as your company’s mission or tagline. For designing these cards, you can simply use a few good apps available in the market.

2. Business Card Designing Apps: Business Card Maker & Creator is a simple-to-use app that can help you create printable or digital business cards quickly. Some other good apps include Business Card Maker, Kai cards, and Desygner.

These DIY business card apps allow you to personalize your cards to your liking, upload logo, use your brand colors wisely, and choose contemporary fonts. And if any of this information were to ever change, you can edit the cards quickly and easily. Once you have your own customized business cards in place, get them printed and ready for your next business meet or event, where you will also be required to manage all the business cards you will collect from other attendees. Business card reader apps can be helpful here.

3. Business Card Reader Apps: ScanBizCards (iOS, Android) is a powerful and versatile business card reader app that can digitize business cards in no time. It allows you to save your business card contacts with a personal note, send intro emails to your contacts, capture leads easily from emails signatures using email signature capture and export contacts to your CRM. ScanBizCards is a comprehensive networking tool.

A good business card scanner app will ensure that all your significant contacts are kept safe and accessible. Most card reader apps allow you to scan multiple cards at once, and then automatically sync contact information on the card to your address book or contact manager. They will save you from the chaos of hoarding loads of business cards only to be lost or kept somewhere and forgotten.

Now that you are ready with your tools and your customized business card stack to tackle the business card mayhem head-on, it’s time to understand card exchange etiquettes.

4. Business Card Exchange Etiquettes: When networking, the first rule when introduced to a new person is to go for a firm handshake, strike up a conversation, ask open-ended questions and if the person appears interested in your product, politely present your card and ask for theirs.

Keep your cards handy. Digging through all your pockets looks unprofessional, and be sure to carry enough cards. You should also refrain from using your card scanner app for every card; use it for those you really intend to remain in touch with. Moreover, use the app when parting ways, not during the conversation.

Once the event is over, you should then follow-up with your prospects within 48 hours to take things further while the event memories are still fresh and alive. And if you are a ScanBizCards user, you can instantly connect with your new contacts via a quick intro email and a picture to keep in touch and take things forward.

The above tips can help you manage your business cards effortlessly and make events a breeze. With these tips, you can leverage the real strength of business cards as a marketing tool and maximize your business card ROI.