What is the best way to reach your audience and create a relationship with them?

 

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Trade shows are an excellent source of leads and a good opportunity to mix different direct marketing techniques. Trade shows let you use the persuasive power of personal selling at a lower cost than sales calls. To multiply the benefits of a trade show, you can use direct marketing before and after a show.

Boost attendance at your hospitality suite, or get more people to visit your booth, by doing a mailing to prospects before a trade show or conference.

Consider calling key prospects ahead of time to set up appointments for demos or on site meetings. Many shows give all visitors cards with bar codes or magnetic stripes that can be read with a scanner or similar device at each booth to get the data quickly.

 

Send people a coupon or other action device they need to bring to your booth or suite. Direct marketers have used specially encoded diskettes, prize numbers, and other incentives to get people to visit a booth and get involved in an activity. After a trade show, you may be able to obtain a list of everyone who attended, but your most important list will be the prospects you generated at your exhibit. The key to making a trade show successful is follow up. You may have several different levels of prospects, based on how close they are to buying

 

One way to get past the secretary is simply to call at a time when the prospect is likely to be in, but the secretary isn't. Many secretaries work standard office hours, while some hard-driving business executives and entrepreneurs put in longer hours. As a result, you can some-times reach your prospect directly by calling during off hours. The best times to try this are: early morning, 7:00 A.M. to 9:00 A.M., lunchtime noon to 2:oo P.M., or late afternoon/early evening 5:00 P.M. to 7:00 P.M.

 

What you'll find most often, though, is that the prospect's initial shock and reluctance quickly wears off, and most will happily chat with you a few minutes. 348 business to business direct marketing. And who are you with, Mr. Bishop? You would you tell him my company is Bill Bishop Associates, please? Again, if you just said, "My company is Bill Bishop Associates," the likely response would be, "And what is this in reference to?" or "Does he know you?" But when you say, "Would you tell him my company is Bill Bishop Associates, please?" the natural response is, "Yes, I'll tell him." Can you imagine the receptionist saying, "No, I won't tell him?"

 

Suppose you get that ultra-tough filter who bounces back with a third screening question. Here's an example receptionist: And what is this in reference to? You: Would you please tell him that I'm calling about [state the purpose of your call)? The beauty of answer/ask questions is you can't get a no answer from the filter. Consider how awkward a filter's responses would be. You would you please tell him I'm with Bill Bishop Associates?

 

Receptionist: No. filters generally won't answer the question negatively. Instead, they signify a yes by connecting you to the prospect. Will answer ask eliminate all secretarial screening? No. But it will reduce the number of screening questions and get you through in a certain percentage of cases where you wouldn't normally have been connected. Here's a frequent scenario: You: Mr. Prospect, please. Secretary: Mr. Prospect is in a meeting. Would you like to leave your name and number so I can ask him to call you back?

 

There are two ways to handle this. The first is to put the burden on the prospect's shoulders by leaving your name and number and saying what you need.

 

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