Offline Event Lead prospecting Guide | Generating leads from an offline event

As a business owner, salesperson, or business leader, you will get to visit offline meetups. Let be it be a small meetup or a large conference, you will have a lot to do here.

Problems:

1. Fail to be clear with the reason they are seeing the event
2. People connect on LinkedIn but forget why they connected (Solution: A message on connect and the reason why they are connecting)
3. or forget the reason they met
4. No recognization/connect from people on stage

People often visit these events with a goal in mind.

Example:

1. To Grow Business
2. To Catchup with Industry
3. To Know new Competitors
4. To Connect and Sell
5. To Just enjoy and have fun
6. To build strong relationships in the industry

This article is focused to build strong relationships, grow businesses and do much more than a common man visiting the booth.

We have mentioned a few tools in this which accelerates the overall process and saves hours in doing manual contact saving.

Let’s get started.

What do people generally do when they visit an offline visit?

1. Listen to talk
2. Talk to People
3. Save their contact details in the phone
4. Connect on Linkedin using the QR code

Here are the problems

1. Listen to talk (Good)
2. Talk to People (Good)
3. Save their contact details in the phone
   People often offer the phone to type prospect number or even worse, they ask and type which basically waste everyone’s time. This strategy also gives information to the people standing around you and makes you call opportunities less likely to happen. People get irritated when they get too many calls, which directly affects your business conversion opportunity.
   A better approach will be to take their card and write the action on the card using a pen. ie: “Demo SEO panel next week“
4. Connect on Linkedin using the QR code
   The new tach “QR code” has saved a lot of time but it has a caveat, that is, in 90% of cases “you never talk”. A simple reason for that is, “You forget why you met them”.
   To solve this, you should have a template message that includes a place where you connected, things you chatted about, and actions that you both should take(a meeting/call/lunch). (Example shared below)
5. Give credit/feedback tagging people that were on stage. They will give you the credit back and you may likely end up building a relationship with them. I personally use this strategy and it works quite often if the speaker is active on channels.

   

Benefits of Doing this 

1. You and your prospect easily connect to “You”, “Where you met”, “End goal”
2. Even after a few years, they remember you. This helps when they are associated with an existing competitor. They often come back once they exit the existing contract.

What can you do more to improve your overall experience in an Offline Event to grow your business?

This is for people who love to be organized and get more out of any event.

Things to do before the event: 

1. The goal of Attending this event
2. Decide the KPI of the event
3. Be ready with a template message
4. Prioritize beyond Competiton
5. Target community

Info You Need Event Name, Person Name, Location, Action.

Re: Hello “Rakesh, It was nice meeting you at Global Investor meet 2022. It was nice to know your business on the switch manufacturing company. TBH, this was new to me. Let’s do a casual meeting next week and know each other.”  Schedule a Meeting (Link the meeting)

Benefits: 

1. It reminds you and the person you met even after a few years (very important on LinkedIn as people forget)

Things to do Post meet: 

1. Classify Business Card in (Prospect, Relationship, Save, Ignore)
2. Prioritize with action
3. Save Contacts with labels that recall more info about the person (location you met, industry, next action point)
4. Write Opportunity on Business Card
5. Schedule Meetings
6. Followup
7. Talk Fun, Be Honest, and Build Relationships (Don’t just be Commercial Focused)
8. Be ready for the next one

At MixCommerce, We are thinking of building an app that scans multiple business cards at once. Do you think it will be useful for your business?

The idea is very simple, it takes time to save contacts and scan cards one by one. Using our tool, you will be able to save

1. Business card details
2. Recognize handwriting as action points

Wait! We aren’t really building this product right now! We are just doing initial research to see if there is a business need. Do you think we should have an app like this? Tell us here [Feature Request Form]