Are Trade Show Sales Leads Worth It?
I recently heard Lars Nilsson, vice president of field operation for the security firm ArcSight, describe his experience with generating sales leads at a trade show. Based on my notes, he said:
We spent $100,000 to have a booth at a big security trade show. We ended up with 132 leads from the booth. Of those leads, most turned out to be other vendors, people looking for a job, our current customers, and prospects who were already in our sales cycle. Only 22 of those booth leads turned out to actual new leads that were worth taking to the next stage in the sales cycle.Now, I don't know about you, but $4500 per lead seems a bit pricey, even for a big-ticket product like security services. Nilsson's complaints echo what I've heard numerous times from tech vendors, which is that trade show don't usually result in a many good leads.
Back in the early 1990s, I worked for a company that spent several million dollars every year to go to Comdex -- and got absolutely nothing out of it. No leads at all. And we were far from unique in this, which is perhaps why Comdex is no longer in existence.
NOTE
: An easy-to-follow system for selling B2B -- including an entire chapter on demonstrating products -- is provided in my new book How to Say It: Business to Business Selling available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or Indiebound.
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