After all the hard work, brainstorming, and funding, your company is finally going to attend a marketing event.
And of course, the end goal is to capture qualified leads and eventually turn them into paying customers.
Then there’s another important metric — ROI.
Once you wrap up your event, return on investment is the only metric that matters the most.
This means you have to work on mitigating your expenditure and maximizing revenue.
And this can only be achieved if your sales team is adept at using a variety of sales productivity apps to meet targets and have a solid lead generation follow-up strategy in place.
There’s one problem, however. Many sales professionals find it hard to make use of new technology to spruce up their results.
That’s why it’s important to give more opportunities to your teams to make sure that they make the most of the marketing events they attend. Moving away from ineffective lead generation methods like renting event badge scanners, manually capturing data on paper lead generation forms, etc. and empowering your sales teams with more advanced tools like business card scanning apps goes a long way in maximizing events’ ROI.
Here’s how you can do it.
1. Educate your sales team about the benefits of new technology
For the most part, sales representatives capture leads at marketing events and then pass them on to their marketing and sales team.
Naturally, the use of new technology and top-notch tools like ScanBizCards, a business card reading app that automatically scans and captures more B2B leads at events, is going to help your team solidify their lead generation efforts.
While the sales reps may get a bit skeptical by the transition from using current methods to more tech-savvy methods, if you articulate the benefits and educate them about the new technology, they will realize how the benefits far outweigh anything else.
For one, the use of manual ways to capture leads at events leads to unwarranted delays, Helvetica Neue, and other deviations, which ultimately result in lost opportunities.
If you could encourage your sales reps to use the new technology and teach them its importance, you’ll not only make things easier for yourself but for your sales reps as well. You just need to find a viable way to make them aware of it.
2.Deploy sales analytics tools
When you are working hard towards meeting your lead generation goals, it is important to analyze whether you are on the right track or not.
Therefore, it’s excessively important to encourage your sales team to keep track of all the metrics using advanced sales analytics tools like Google Analytics, etc.
These tools give your team insight into how well your strategies are faring. You can see what is working out and what is not — and find out why.
Sales analytics also reveal how newly captured leads are interacting with your brand.
3. Provide regular sales training
I know what you are thinking…
“Of course, we have trained our sales reps and taught how to go about the whole lead generation process.”
If you are thinking along the same lines, then you are certainly overlooking the main keyword here, i.e., “regular training”.
This means, training your sales team once or twice after you purchase modern technology and lead capture solutions are not nearly enough. You have to regularly provide assistance and training
to your sales team to make sure that both of you are on the same page and the results align with the goals set by the management.
Always keep them updated with the new developments and updates, especially right before they are required to attend a new event.
4.Incentivize the lead capture process
Offering viable incentives to your sales reps for achieving a great feat goes a long way in motivating them to do better for the next event as well as for the next step in the lead generation funnel.
You can either encourage some healthy competition in your team by offering a bonus to the sales rep who captures the most qualified leads, or offer a collective incentive to the whole team if they meet or surpass the goals set for them.
Both approaches can help you a great deal in encouraging your sales reps to make use of new tools and strategies to augment their results
5. Set clear goals but don’t be restrictive
Having unclear goals and an ineffective sales process can drastically impinge on your sales productivity and efficiency.
That’s why a documented lead capture process and clear goals can assist your sales reps when it comes to generating better results.
Clearly, point out all the pain points of your leads and how your sales reps can tackle them in the event. Teach your reps to pitch the product in such a way that they succeed in touching the nerve of the leads and offer them the solutions they have been looking for.
However, you have to be cautious of one thing. While you create a model for the goals that are to be achieved along with the sales process, don’t be stringent and restrictive. Recognize the fact that every sale and client has a different thought process. So, make sure your sales team knows that they can step out of the box whenever necessary.
Summing-up
Managing a sales team is not easy.
But with great training and new tools in place, you can achieve a lot more in a decidedly lesser number of days.
When all is said and done, your sales team is the backbone of your organization, which is why you have to rely on them to make use of all the new tools. And once they realize that using new technology and documented sales processes work in their favor as well, they would have no qualms about working the way you want them to.
Also, don’t forget to motivate and reward the sales reps who achieve great results at events, trade shows, and organization in general.
How are you encouraging your sales team to capture the most qualified leads at B2B events? Let us know in the comment section below!