Over the last year I’ve heard several stories about lost sales opportunities. Many occurred as a direct result of post-trade show oversights that could have been avoided. It happens too often. Join me by shaking your head as you read the story below. Then, vow to follow the strategies provided so you can clean up on trade show sales opportunities!

A company I know sent 3 people to a trade show in January ’09. All 3 people flew, stayed 3 nights, went to nice meals and entertained prospective clients. They uncovered several high volume prospect opportunities, one of which included a large potential program with Disney (you do the math). Upon their return to the office they were faced with the typical backlog of work, urgent client requests and calls which needed to be returned…yesterday. Digging out from under took priority over follow up. You can guess what happened. The first follow up…a group of letters (snail mail)… went out in April (3 months later). The second follow up, a group of phone calls occurred in July. The conversation with the Disney decision maker went like this:

Decision Maker: Oh, I do remember you. Too bad we didn’t connect sooner. We decided to move forward with the program. We chose a vendor and are finalizing the contract now. We plan to roll out within the next 6 weeks.
Salesperson (also now known as Sad Person): There are many benefits we provide, we would still appreciate the opportunity to come in and talk with you. Can we set a time for that?
Decision Maker: I’m sorry but as I said we are finalizing the contract now. I’ll call you if something changes.

You may think following up is obvious. You may think this story is a fluke. But the reality is this occurs commonly enough that I had a hard time choosing which story like this to include in this blog post. Future posts will explain how this can be avoided.