Meet and greet isn't enough
for exhibitors seeking leads
Merely piling up the business cards
won't bring in clients, consultant
says; it's about quality face time.
By
Jessica Marquez
 etting face time is the name of the
game for any exhibitor at any conference.
But at an event like this one, where there are
more than 800 exhibitors and 12,000 attendees,
getting the attention of the right people is crucial.
Unfortunately, most exhibitors do not have
any metrics in place to measure the effectiveness
of their booth staff or determine the return
on investment, said Jefferson Davis, president
of Competitive Edge, a Charlotte, North Carolina,
consulting firm that
specializes in helping exhibitors
make the most of
trade shows.
The easiest thing to do is
count leads at closing time,
and most companies do
that, Davis said. "But most
companies do not determine
the cost per lead, and
they definitely do not measure
the cost per lead from
show to show to determine
which ones are delivering
the most value," he said in
an interview.
In a presentation Sunday
titled Inside the Numbers,
Davis described to about 60
exhibitor managers attending
the steps they should
take to measure the value of
a conference.
First, he recommends that companies figure
out their costs for exhibiting at a show and decide
whether they are reasonable. Companies
need to dissect those costs and benchmark
them, Davis said.
The average exhibitor allocates 24 percent of
the total sales and marketing budget toward exhibitions,
Davis said in his presentation, citing a
2000 study conducted by the Center for Exhibition
Industry Research. "If you are way below
that number or way above it, you should think
about it."
After examining external cost benchmarks,
exhibitors then should create internal benchmarks
to figure out what their expenses have run
from show to show. Identifying the attendees to
target is crucial to making a conference valuable,
Davis said. Most conference producers will
provide data on the titles of attendees who are
coming to their shows. Some will even provide
names and e-mail addresses, he said. Exhibitors
must figure out the profile of their target audience
and which attendees fit that profile. "And
then they need to get into preshow marketing
mode and touch those people and get on their
agendas," Davis said in the interview.
Too often companies just assume that any
business cards they get qualify as leads, but exhibitors
need to understand that generating leads
is about quality, not quantity, Davis said. "A
client told me that his company got 5,000 leads
at a recent conference," Davis said in his presentation.
"Those were people who swiped their
cards at the booth. I told him, ‘Those aren't leads,
those are contestants.'"
It's important for exhibitors
to make the most
of their time with visitors to
their booths. "The average
interaction is 7.3 minutes,
according to industry research,"
Davis said.
Davis advises exhibitors
to define a lead as a situation
in which the exhibitor
was able to understand the
attendee's business problems
and ascertain that
there is an actual business
opportunity. Furthermore,
everything about the interaction
should be documented
so that when the exhibitor
follows up, they can
refer to the conversation.
To determine return on
investment of a show, exhibitors
should look at both
hard dollars—the actual cash brought in—as
well as soft dollars. Davis defines soft dollars as
savings that result from exhibiting at a show.
For example, if the cost of a field sales call is
$322 and the cost per interaction at a conference
is $122, the company has cut the cost of
the interaction by $200, Davis said in the interview.
"If you interacted with 350 people, that's
$700,000 in soft dollars," he said.
Davis said that companies should aim for a
return on investment that is $3 to $5 back for
every $1 spent over a measurable period of
time. The timeline depends on a number of factors,
including the typical length of the company's
sales cycle and the frequency of the show.
"Companies need to exhibit by objectives instead
of exhibiting by hope, which is what eight
out of 10 exhibitors do," Davis said.
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Creating a ‘third culture' for
growing Hispanic workforce
Employers are urged to capitalize on
the best of American business ethos
and workers' cultural background.
By
Todd Raphael
 erizon Wireless announced last week
that it will hire 200 bilingual employees in
the Washington, D.C., area because so many of
its customers now speak Spanish.
It's not surprising: After increasing
in number by 142 percent
since 1980, Hispanics are
now the largest minority in the
United States, according to the
U.S. Census Bureau.
In a Saturday/Sunday session
at SHRM's annual conference,
Cendant Mobility senior trainer
Diane Mullen and Adriana
Medina-Lopez-Portillo, an independent
corporate trainer,
discussed how to best work
with Hispanic employees.
Mullen says that a colleague of
hers has coined the term "third
culture" to describe what effective
companies are doing.
They're not ignoring the Hispanic
heritage. At the same
time, they're encouraging employees
to learn English and
making sure they understand
the idiosyncrasies of American
business. "Capitalize on the
best of both cultures," she says.
Many desires of Hispanic
employees are the same as for
all employees, says Janet Nicolai,
who is taking over the HR
director's job at the New Jersey
Compensation Rating & Inspection
Bureau in Newark,
where many supervisors are
Hispanic. "I can honestly say
that I have not noticed any difference
in managing Hispanic
employees," Nicolai says. Nevertheless,
Mullen describes
some of what drives this growing
demographic:
Saving face: Hispanics, she
says, tend to take slightly more
personally what Americans
consider just a business conversation.
"Everything for Hispanics
is intertwined, she says.
"Everything is a reflection of who you are." Saying
"You're doing that wrong," can insult an employee's
sense of dignity. A more constructive
phrase, she says, is "How about we take a new
approach and take Manuel's way of writing the
report?"
Religion and family: Work/life balance—important
to all employees—can be more so to
Hispanics. "Money is still a motivator, but an
environment where they really have a work/life
balance is very appealing to them because family
is so important. Family is pretty much where
their world begins and ends," Mullen says.
"They tend to not only live with their parents
until they got married, but they also live with
their extended family. Everyone takes the responsibility
of raising children."
For businesses, this means employees are likely
to mourn the loss of a cousin's cousin, and to
take leave for a cousin's funeral. Hispanics may
network extensively through their family connections.
Nepotism is more accepted than in American
culture. When a company is holding a dinner
and it's too expensive to allow family
members, Mullen suggests holding a potluck.
Sense of time: "For Hispanics, time is relative,"
Mullen says. "There's a different sense of
urgency." A manager wants a
task done by a certain date, and
the employee may not deliver.
But that employee, far from being
lazy or unmotivated, is
merely thinking, "I'm working
on it. I'm working on it hard,
but I haven't finished it. Do you
want to give me a product that
isn't 100 percent or do you
want it now?"
Risk avoidance: Americans
tend to focus on the future, investing
in real estate with longterm
goals or career planning
for a job that may be a decade
off. For many Hispanic employees,
however, "it's in the here
and now," Mullen says. One
session participant said she has
trouble getting Hispanic employees
to invest in the company's
401(k) plan. She was able
to persuade an employee to buy
into the company's life insurance
once she explained how
important it was to the employee's
family.
Personalisimo: Americans
often wait to see how reliable a
co-worker or vendor is, and
then become interested in a
personal relationship. When
first meeting someone, an
American manager might
think, "All I want to know is,
‘Can I get the product by this
afternoon?' " Mullen says. A
Hispanic employee, on the other
hand, may appreciate someone
who takes the time to get to
know them, who cares about
the employee's friends and
family and later asks about
the product. "Relationships,"
Mullen says, "are money in the
bank. It's not what you do, but
who you are."
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