People often ask me are business exhibitions worthwhile. It’s a bit of a loaded question as I’m rather biased having spent the last 25 years in exhibitions.

Business Exhibitions are great but….

Obviously I am programmed to say yes “Business exhibitions are great”. However, sometimes this is not the issue at hand. I believe that businesses need to ask “Am I doing the exhibition for the right reason?”.

Don’t just book a stand at a show and assume it’s “just going to work”. If you do this then I would honestly say you should spend your hard earned money on something else. Business exhibitions are like everything else you do in your business and need planning.

Remember to chase up your leads after the exhibition

Interestingly, about 70-80% of leads from a show are not chased up or chased up properly. This is similar to taking an inbound call and not calling them back. It is bad for business so try to make your business exhibition work for you. I am passionate about the business exhibition industry. It can be frustrating to see companies spend money on shows and get no results!

About 83% of leads not followed up within 7 days of a show are dead! Ironically and you may not want to hear it, that’s not because the show didn’t work(because the companies got actual leads…) it’s because these companies never followed up…

Over the next couple of weeks I am going to post some little things you can do or things to simply consider about exhibiting that hopefully will help you and if you have any comments I would love to hear them(good or bad!)

67% of all attendees represent a new prospect and potential customer for exhibiting companies

It takes an average of 4.5 sales calls to close a sale without an exhibition lead, and only 3.5 sales calls to close a sale with a lead from a business exhibition.

99% of exhibitors find unique value delivered by Business-to-Business exhibitions which is not provided by other marketing channels

So maybe don’t dismiss all exhibitions as a waste of time because the industry and demand for exhibitions continues to grow and so too does the opportunity to gain real business from them if you do them right. I will leave you with a little image of what a good business exhibition looks like….and if you have any comments just get in touch…we love to chat…particularly over coffee!