by Steve O’Keefe, InGo COO
After I published my recent article, “Who sells your event?,” I received calls from a few of InGo’s most successful customers. The theme was, “Nice article Steve, but you missed the most important part of the story.” Not a little taken back, I asked what they meant. “You focused strictly on audience building and ignored the exhibitor aspect of the event.”
Turns out, one of the reasons these are our most successful customers is that they’ve trained their sales team to send all prospective exhibitors to “Who’s In” when they’re making the decision on whether to exhibit or not.
- One of them said that he had expanded space sales by $500K over the last 3 years by doing this!!!
- Another said that he had 15 exhibitors on the fence because they were not sure his show had the type of buyers their company was looking for. He sent them all to “Who’s In” and viola! $150K of more exhibitor space sold.
Talk about missing the point. After having been humbled by my customers knowing more about InGo than me , I am back to share the rest of the story. The customers all agreed on three points:
- Real – Exhibitors have become wary of sanitized attendee list circulated in the traditional booth sales process. It seems like some bad actors have been known to fib a bit in supplying this list. InGo’s “Who’s In” is real people really attending.
- Personal – One Oil and Gas industry customer dedicates a page on the event website to “Who’s In” and it calls it “Who’s Coming.” His sales process encourages each prospect to go to that page. Time after time, these prospects select the Linkedin filter option and call right back saying, “Wow, you’ve got this customer, and this customer from my network coming. Sign me up.”
- Most Valuable – A fashion customer told me that when he walked the show floor this year asking exhibitors about their experience, many of them said, “It’s been a great show. I checked “Who’s In” up until the day of the show and had many of my important meetings schedule ahead of time.”
Who sells your event to your exhibitors? Same answer. Your attendees do. Advocate Marketing best practice has a new #1 – Make “Who’s In” part of your exhibitor sales process.
To learn more about how to increase value for your exhibitors, click here.
