Next week the largest annual trade show of embedded hardware and software will be held in Nuremberg. Component manufacturers and distributors, software tools and OS vendors, design houses and more, from all over the world, will be exhibiting at Embedded World.
The show is massive and demands a hefty percentage of any marketing budget. For the corporations especially, the position and the size of the stand are important, walls of compelling images and messages must be created, trees of collateral printed and handed out, products displayed, competitions run, mini seminar sessions presented and just in case, scantily clad or painted models hired, all to attract visitors and keep them on the stands long enough to see if they are a genuine prospect.
That all sounds expensive, but then there are the people needed to man the stands and CEOs and Directors to attend pre-arranged meetings with top customers and strategic partners. And all flown in and put in hotels for three or four nights. There are also the hours of preparation leading up to the event.
A trade show like Embedded World is undoubtedly an important event to show the latest products but also to hold many important meetings over the course of three days that would normally take far longer and much more travelling to achieve. The return from these meetings should be easy to measure.
But the return in general for the stand, the preparation, the people on stand duty, the cost of keeping them there and the cost to the business of their absence is much harder to measure and many companies don’t even bother. Larger companies will argue that they have to be there because their competitors are, but all companies, no matter their size, should aim to get the biggest possible return for the cost and effort and impact on the business that attending these shows has.
Here are 10 top tips for getting the most out of your trade show…
- Have a coherent overall strategy – Plan in advance what you and your teams need to achieve and how you will achieve it. Go through the strategic planning process so you set the right goals, means for achieving them and the systems for monitoring and reviewing the results.
- Have a strong marketing strategy – Match your value propositions to your ideal prospects and promote the forthcoming event to them. Don’t simply do a scattergun approach and tell the world you’re going to be at the event. Know who you want visiting your stand and create targeted messages to attract them.
- Have compelling messages – Scantily clad models are all very well but visitors need to know why they should visit your stand. Some visitors will know that they’re interested in your processor or operating system and make a bee-line for you but others won’t. They won’t necessarily know what the best solution is for them and your messages could make the difference between a design win and losing an opportunity to a competitor.
- Identify your ideal prospects – This links to tip 2; to set the right messages you need to know exactly who you want to attract and speak to. Who are these prospects, what are they likely to be interested in and what can you show that will get them to your stand and keep them there long enough to know if there is an opportunity?
- Prepare for stand duty – Make sure those on “stand duty” know who they ideally want to attract and what they are going to discuss. Make sure they are comfortable in initiating these conversations and getting to a result as soon as possible without seeming to rush or pressure the visitor. For large companies it is worth having a front-line of people who can ask enough questions to filter those visitors with a potential opportunity and a need versus those just data gathering. Still take their details to follow up but don’t waste the time of your managers and engineers on the stand.
- Have an effective system – As well-as getting the basic visitor information and the key points from conversations make sure you have an effective central system that you can use over the weeks and months to follow-up and measure the return from each visitor and from the show as a whole.
- Review the results at the end of each day – Having set daily goals, make sure the results of the day are collated. Were targets for the number of visitors, number of prospects, opportunities identified, deals closed and so on met? If targets are being missed discuss with the relevant members of the team what could be improved the next day. Have a team meeting where each person on stand duty presents who the top visitors they spoke to were and what their follow-up actions are. Make sure that this information is centrally collated so business cards and forms aren’t lost or conversations forgotten. Waiting until you’re all back in the office is a bit late and a missed opportunity to get the most from the show.
- Get feedback – get your visitors to give you feedback. You don’t want them filling in reams but need to understand why they came to the stand (for example; was it a pre-show message that resonated, they already knew they were going to come or they just stumbled upon you), if found what they were looking, if their questions were answered and what if anything would have made the experience a better one. (Are we back to the models?)
- Trade show review – Review the show overall against important metrics. Did you hit your goals? What worked well and what didn’t? Did you get the foot fall you were after? Was the location right? Were your value propositions understood? What attracted visitors? What put them off? Did you have enough people? Did you attract enough ideal prospects? How many were converted to design wins? What could you have done better? What did the press say about you? And so.
- Have a long term view – You’ll have a number of visitors who on the surface aren’t a prospect with potential business. But after the show, do check out the companies they work for, the applications they develop and markets they play in. They visited your stand for a reason and might well be a potential prospect that needs nurturing over a longer period.
Get the most out of the trade shows you exhibit at. Always have a strategy in place well in advance, set goals, get your messages right for ideal prospects, monitor progress, review findings and get the best return you can.
If you need help preparing a strategy that gives you the best return for your trade show exhibit then give contact me to discuss how I can help.
Image courtesy of ibtimes.com
In my last post I talked about the importance of connecting the dots of your strategy plan from your vision to your tactics, understanding the impact on your business of setting out to achieve your goals and the need to align the different areas of your business in order to do just that.
I used the example of entering a new market sector and converting new prospects and highlighted some of the areas involved in doing this such as sales, marketing, engineering and HR.
These are functional parts of a company and aligning goals, objectives and tactics to them is not straight forward simply because they are separate vertical sections.
To connect these dots, rather than try and align by functional departments or groups, align the goal, and work involved in achieving it, by horizontal processes.
Using the above example you may split the goal into the process of entering a new market and the process of converting a prospect. Break the processes down into logical steps and you will see how they involve a number of vertical functions.
The process, for a technology company, of entering a new market will involve market research (marketing), client profiling (sales), possibly new product features (engineering), new targeted marketing strategy, messages and collateral (marketing), possibly sales training (HR/marketing/engineering), PR (marketing), new account management (sales), relationship building (sales/directors), new contracts, pricing, services-level agreements, customers (administration), technical support (engineering) and of course a budget (finance).
That’s one process and around six separate functional sections of the company.
So you see, connecting the dots from a goal to the tactics and the tasks involved, is easier to do when broken down into steps within a process. The various functions or departments involved can then plan their role and align with each other to achieve an efficient execution of this process.
Define all the processes in your business and align the roles of the relevant functions to each. Assign someone to be in charge of the processes so that they can work with each function involved to ensure the processes are aligned and run as smoothly as possible to achieve the company goals.
Assuming your annual cycle began last week then ideally your ship has left the harbour it was docked at for the Christmas break and has now set off on its new 2012 course.
Your company is in the new Deliver phase of your strategic planning cycle and you and your teams are implementing the tactics that were set to achieve the objectives and milestones which were created to achieve the goals which were established at the end of last year to drive the company to where it needs to be at the end of 2012.
Not only have you made sure that everything is connected from your purpose through your vision and mission, and your goals and objectives to your tactics, but you have aligned everything to make sure they have the best chance of being achieved and producing the best return possible.
For example, one of your objectives may be to convert a specific number of new prospects in a particular market sector. Your sales tactics will include visiting these new prospects to convert.
Sales will struggle to do this if the right prospects haven’t been identified and the right messages and solutions put together by marketing. So, marketing are working on the tasks to identify these prospects, understand their needs and match the best solution to meet them.
Marketing will also need to create the compelling marketing messages which will attract these prospects. That way there will be a higher probability that their sales colleagues will be able to make the visit, address any questions and objections and eventually convert the prospect to a buyer.
Peter Drucker once said something like, “The purpose of marketing is to make sales superfluous.” Marketing should at least aim to present sales with a warm, receptive customer and ideally one that craves what you are selling.
For sales to have the best possible chance to achieve their objective they may need training if the solution or benefits are new. This should be an objective of say HR and have been scheduled in advance to minimise disruption.
And we haven’t touched on engineering or support being aligned to provide and support this new solution.
Every new idea, every new goal, new objective will disrupt the status quo and so everything that needs to be done needs to be planned and the stages connected both hierarchically, between objectives and tactics, but also across the tactics themselves. If they aren’t then actions will be less effective or be lost, milestones missed and time and money wasted getting the business back on course.
Even if you run a business of one, the principles are the same.
We haven’t looked at the systems and processes that are involved and the impact on them in achieving this objective so I’ll cover this next time.
Have you connected the dots from your vision to your tactics so that everything is aligned to hit your milestones and achieve your targets?
Regardless of when the fiscal year starts, many businesses see January as the start of a new year and hence a new cycle for the business.
Having said that many business owners struggle to step back from their business and plan the year ahead as they drive towards the year end. They make the decision to “do their plan” in the first week of January but find that they’re straight back into the business and the plan is either looked at when there is spare time or not at all.
But without stepping back and creating a new plan your business will meander through the next annual cycle and hopefully grow. At the best of times this is not a good idea…in this economic climate, this is simply crazy. You cannot purposefully get to a particular point/destination/goal without a plan.
If you’re not convinced you need a strategy plan, or don’t give it the priority it deserves, or don’t know how to create one then download my 4-page guide. If you do then here’s a quick checklist to make sure you’ve covered the key areas.
1. Review and learn
How did the last 12 months go? What worked and what didn’t? Did you spend more than you anticipated? Did you lose some opportunities or customers? Did you support your customers well? Have you grown market share? Did you meet your goals? What happened that you weren’t expecting? What worked really well?
Do a thorough review of how the year went and make sure you have answers to all the many questions you should ask. This assessment will help you set some of the goals for the year ahead so that your company is stronger and more effective.
2. Work on your findings
From the assessment identify any weak and vulnerable areas and identify where you differentiated from your competitors as these are strengths that you need to exploit. Once you have these listed create plans to strengthen weak areas, exploit strengths and mitigating plans for all risks to your business.
3. Check your core purpose
Review your company’s purpose, vision and mission. From the year that’s gone are they still sound and valid? A year is a long time in business and it’s worth checking that you’re still on course to reach your long term aims and that these aims haven’t changed.
Things can change and events may occur which can impact the core of the company’s reason for being and what it is striving to achieve.
4. What to do
Create a balanced set of hierarchical goals; a set of goals that drive the business forward and make it stronger and more effective. Too often goals are simply an extension of what was achieved the previous year; revenue + x%, profit + y% and so on.
Be creative and set one or two visionary goals that will take the business to another level, 4 or 5 vital goals that will achieve the growth you need in the next 12 months, 6 or 7 important goals that will support the other goals and make sure they are achievable and some routine goals which will improve aspects of your business but which won’t have a detrimental effect on results if not achieved.
5. How to do it
Plan how you intend to achieve these goals. Work with those responsible for implementing the objectives and tactics and create a plan with measurable milestones and responsibilities. If you own your own business, with no people, do this anyway…you need to step out of your business and set targets.
6. Making it work
Make sure everyone in your company and other key stakeholders like your bank, investors and strategic partners understands and embraces the plan. Even share it with key customers assuming it demonstrates how your plan helps their business. Create a one-page summary of your strategy plan, print it onto large paper and put it where people can see it and see how their role contributes to it.
7. Staying on course
Establish a system and timetable for monitoring and reviewing progress. All companies stray off course if progress isn’t regularly monitored and reviewed. Set early milestones to check you’ve headed in the right direction during Q1.
Whether you agree with today’s strike action or not isn’t it disappointing that the discussions don’t appear to have progressed or be any closer to being resolved. You may feel frustrated that all you get are sound bites from both sides blaming the other and a desire to bang their heads together.
It would be good to know who are involved in the actual negotiations and how the meetings are being handled or whether they’ve brought in independent mediators to help move the discussions forward.
Whatever, the reason for today’s strikes, the failure to reach a resolution is a failure of leadership from both sides. For negotiation to reach successful conclusions certain leadership skills and attributes must be present. Here are 10 top tips for negotiating successfully.
What do you think is necessary to ensure mutually beneficial resolutions are achieved?
What is the purpose of your business? Why does it exist? How does it benefit others?
When I ask I‘m usually met with a blank faces followed by explanations of what their business does.
As a noun it is the reason for which something exists. As a verb it is an object or result towards which one strives.
Even if the purpose of your business appears obvious it’s worth spending some time to define it. Why? Because no matter how your company evolves over the years it’s the one constant that will never change. It will be there to remind you why you began this journey and where you’re heading.
You can view your purpose as the soul of your company or as a light that guides you and keeps you on the course you originally set out on.
A clearly defined purpose will keep you and your people focused. It will essentially bring everyone together for a common purpose.
When people understand better why the company they work for exists, they feel a part of that core purpose and know better how they contribute to that purpose and to the company’s success. So many good things come out of this.
From your core purpose, your vision, mission and values are formed and from them your goals and objectives. When the dots are connected in this way a company is more productive, more effective and more likely to stand-out in its crowd and enjoy long-term success.
image:matmantra.wordpress.com
To eliminate the uncertainty that is all around us, ensure you have a successful 2012 and drive your business to where you want it to be, you must establish the kind of system that will be presented at the Eliminate Uncertainty for 2012 half-day workshop on the 26th October, 9:30am to 1pm, at the Holiday Inn, Aylesbury.
Learn how to:
• Identify & build on your strengths and reduce risks and threats to your business;
• Make your customers want to work with you above all others;
• Set and achieve the right goals and drive your business to where you want it to be;
• Establish systems and processes that will reduce cost and increase productivity.
This will be a very interactive workshop where we will also aim to address your particular concerns and so space is limited, so REGISTER NOW and with a money-back guarantee on the £30 fee, you have nothing to lose and everything to gain.
As a bonus for attending you will also receive a free copy of my eBook Strategic Planning for Success (normally £19.97), plus my Strategic Planning Health Check tool (normally £97) and Strategic Planner for Small Businesses tool (normally £87) will be available for half-price.
Watch this video and register your place on this Anchorage Consulting workshop at 9:30am on Wed 26th October.
What others have said about this workshop:
“Came away feeling calmer, confident and in control of my company’s future.” Simon Hall—Ecostyle Ltd
“This reminded me that future business is planned rather than accidental.” Paul Culleton – Culleton & Culleton
REGISTER NOW and I look forward to see you there.
…do your customers?
Do your customers fully understand the benefit of what you offer? Do they? Really?
Have you ever been in a situation where someone is explaining something to you and you’re just not seeing it…that light bulb just isn’t going on? (If this has never happened to you, check out quantum physics.) People are stimulated through different mediums. I’m not great at understanding a concept that is aurally described to me (ask my accountant) but do pretty well if it’s written down.
You may see things clearly but others need it presented in a different way in order to join the dots and for that light bulb to burn brightly.
I’ve been looking at my messages and have been refining and testing them and have now created a new process which breaks the 4 strategic planning phases into 7 steps. The positive feedback I’ve had from those I’ve shown shows that this paints a much clearer picture of why strategic planning is vital and how to get it right. This process will become central to the help I give from now on.
When was the last time you looked at your messages and considered if there may be a better way to communicate them to customers and prospects? Have you lost opportunities or possibly not captured as much customer value as you may have done because the prospect or customer didn’t fully appreciate all you could do for them?
If you’re in Q4 of your annual cycle you should be assessing where you are now (step 1) and identifying your strengths and weaknesses before forming new ideas and goals to make your next year more successful than this one. As part of this exercise, take a long hard look at your messages and make sure your customers and prospects really do understand why they should engage with you and why their business will be better for doing so.
What’s worse, making the wrong decision or making no decision?
Every day we instinctively make decisions. If we didn’t, then we and those around us would grind to a halt. If we couldn’t decide what to eat we would go hungry. If we couldn’t decide what to wear we wouldn’t get dressed. If we sat in our car not able to decide which way to turn at a junction we would never reach our destination (and you would inevitably create a jam and become pretty unpopular).
If you make a wrong decision you may get stomach ache, get questioned about your dress sense or make a wrong turn and need to turn around. Nothing drastic but its clear that making the wrong decision is preferable to making no decision at all. And yes, these are trivial examples in order to make a point.
As subjects become more important and decisions more difficult the question of which is worse – no decision or the wrong decision? – becomes more prevalent. Making the wrong decisions, be they personal, business, political, can have dire consequences. But would making no decision be better?
Take politics…right now it appears that the European political leaders don’t know what to do about the Euro crisis and those countries that cannot pay their debts. They appear to procrastinate whilst the situation gets worse but one thing is certain, if they do nothing then this house of cards will collapse all around them and who knows where this will leave Europe and the rest of the world. Doing something has to be better than doing nothing.
When in 2008 Alistair Darling sat on the decision to suspend stamp duty the sales of houses plummeted and the already stricken property market arguably worsened as everyone waited for him to make a decision.
We can all think of many examples (including I’m sure in our own lives) of situations made far worse when no decision was made over the wrong decision. A wrong decision may be damaging but at least it is a decision that you can learn from and would more likely be better than making no decision at all.
In your business you have to make decisions. If you don’t, situations will deteriorate and your people and partners will lose confidence in you. If you make what turns out to be the wrong decision but can demonstrate good reasons for making it then your business may hurt for a while, but you will learn from the experience, your people and partners will in the main understand and appreciate a decision had to be made and you can always do something to rectify it. Strong leaders are those who can admit they made a mistake. Strong leaders are not those who cannot make a decision for fear of making the wrong one.
Today, in your business, are there decisions you need to make that you’ve been putting off? If so, then take time out, weigh up the pros and cons, talk to others if you need to and make a decision.
Whether it turns out to be right or wrong you’ll feel better for making it than you will if you sit on it.
What tough decisions have you had to make recently?
Image:sodahead.com
Yesterday I did something new in my business…I created a video. Now this may not sound particularly exciting but, from a personal perspective, when you do something you’ve not done before, and it goes well, the feeling is tremendous.
It’s like when you were a kid and you rode your bike for the first time without stabilsers, or your first kiss or passing your driving test or your first trip on a plane. These things are done every day by thousands but it doesn’t take away the buzz you feel when it happens to you.
I can’t say that this gave me the same buzz as riding my bike or my first kiss, but it still left me with a smile on my face for the rest of the day and a feeling that I’ve achieved something that I was very uncomfortable with. I feel far more confident and will now do more and get better at them….watch this space. (And thank you to Dexter Moscow, who, apart from having the best name ever, gave me invaluable guidance.)
When was the last time you and your team did something different in your business? If you use the same tactics and initiatives for finding prospects, engaging with customers and marketing your products and services then why not get together or take yourself away be creative and come up with something new.
Don’t change your strategy plan without a good reason but there is more than one way to achieve an objective, so get creative. Do something a bit different, try it, test it and, who knows, it might return better results than your old method.
Have you done something different recently? Share them and inspire others.
Image:tomleininger.net
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