Enter Your Leads - Your ROI Depends on It!
If your company is asking what your trade show ROI is (and if they haven't been already - they will be!), you need to have a system in place for lead tracking. Most companies have some type of sales database in place - ACT, Goldmine and Sales Voodoo are a few of the more widely used programs that provide many great ways to track leads. If you don't have a system like this in place, get one! Manual tracking can be inaccurate to say the least, and is only as good as its keeper. Keepers may come and go, but a computer-based sales lead database program should be around for a long time to come.

For all of your show leads, try to get these into your system as soon as possible, and tag them with the show name and date. This will make it easier to run a report later showing how many sales came as a result of the show. If your sales team doesn't do this data entry, assign an administrative assistant to help get it done - your ROI simply can't be tracked without it!

Lead Tracking Tips

Keep It Clean
Be sure to change addresses, phone numbers and points of contact in your database when you become aware of the change. Your marketing communication efforts cannot be effective with outdated data - not to mention you might as well be throwing the money you spent on the effort right into the trash! Help this process along by sending out at least two first-class, return-address requested mailings each year. They are a bit more expensive, but using the ones that you get back to clean up your database will make it worthwhile.

More Data = More Sales
By entering in extra information into your database, your marketing team can more accurately target communications to your prospects. For instance, if your database is properly tagged with attendees of the XYZ Show, a marketing piece specific to that show's audience can be sent. These efforts have been shown to have a much higher return than broad, mass marketing efforts that can be hit or miss.

Add a Personal Touch
In addition to the normal business information that is housed in a computer-based lead system, there are also fields for notes and other more casual bits of information such as birthdays, anniversaries, family members' names, etc. The closer you become with a prospect, the more likely you are to have a customer for life. Use the notes fields in your database wisely - capture personal items, notes about buying habits, budget timeframes, shows they attend, and any other information that may come in handy in the future.

Database Tips
When choosing a sales database, have the sales and marketing teams evaluate the different options. Both teams will have critical needs for the program and for slicing and dicing its data. Finding one program that meets all of those needs will prevent you from having to migrate your data to another system later.

If your sales and marketing teams are located around the country or around the world, choose a program that offers an on-line option. Asking people to "sync-up" while on the road can be difficult at best - particularly when they are dealing with hotel dial-up connections. To ensure that your database program is used to its fullest potential, make it readily and easily available to all its users.