One of the things that I know we’re all guilty of is jumping the gun on evaluating the effectiveness of a particular meeting. Most of the time, we base the effectiveness on the amount of on-site sales we achieved. That is a very fair and very important metric; but this TRICK OF THE TRADE is here to remind you that patience is a virtue.
Sometimes we tend to forget that a normal sales cycle applies to tradeshow leads too. This cycle involves all the activities it takes to move a prospect from a lead to a close. Think about how long that usually takes. There are a lot of different experts that provide different time frames of sales cycles. I usually see the trend to be between 90 and 120 days.
So first, ask yourself if you’re giving enough time to determine whether the leads that came from a meeting are converting; next ask yourself if you’ve put together a strong post-show process to better ensure that your leads close within that time frame.
Ultimately, be careful to determine whether a show was 100% good or 100% bad until you’ve taken enough time to evaluate all the fruits of your labor!
-SARAH