Trade Show attendance and performance are up is yours?

According to Red Bank, NJ-based Exhibit Surveys Inc., the exhibition industry saw meaningful upticks in 2012, which is a welcome change considering the statistical stagnation experienced in 2011, when the industry held steady but failed to demonstrate any noticeable growth. Each year, the exhibit- and event-research firm polls attendees from more than 30 U.S. trade shows to determine the effectiveness of exhibit marketing and identify industry benchmarks. The company's 2012 Trade Show Trends report includes valuable information about exhibit performance, show-floor traffic, and attendees – their buying power, purchase plans, and attendance habits. The survey determined that 84 percent of trade show attendees have the power to recommend, specify, and/or make final purchasing decisions. Perhaps more importantly, 49 percent came to 2012 shows with real purchasing intent. While those statistics represent just 3- and 2-percent increases respectively, they compare favorably to long-term industry averages, meaning we may have finally returned to some semblance of business as usual. In fact, 2012's all-show average for Net Buying Influence tied the 10-year high not seen since 2006. So the question is how do you get these people to stop and visit YOU? Do you target or just set up your booth and "Show up and Throw up"? Come on gang you are better than that. Put some pre-show planning into it. Who are the best "buyer" "influencers" in your space that could potentially be attending this show? Invite them. Don't wait for the roster to show up and then do something. Mail to them, email them a promotion but they have to stop by. Make the booth fun, or else if they think they know who you are why would they show up? Most recently one of our clients, Lycored, ran a promotion with a custom cornhole contest and the winner got tickets to the Superbowl. Okay yes, was it a nice sized investment on their part. Let us look at the results, and what happened.

Here is an image of the game that people got a chance to play, which we produced the game. Then for showing up you received a promotional football.

No big shakes either. But because of the nature of the promotion our client had John Elway stop by their booth and play cornhole. Yes, the John Elway whose team is in the Superbowl. Talk about great PR, and we have the video link to show you. But we must create excitement in our booths, if we want to make an impact and attract the right people. So when you are getting ready to put together a trade show booth, or a pre-show promotion just give us a call and we will drive the non "trick or treaters to your booth"




So here is John Elway himself stopping by my clients boot to play our custom designed Cornhole game.  The point is make your booth memorable, and we can help.

Thanks for reading.

Derek

Incentives they work, are you using them?

Many of you are in postitions of sales for your company, and in most cases in a leadership role. Whether you are a branch manager in charge of a sales team, or the president or the CEO of a company. So you are not directly on the firing lines, but look at the macro ways to motivate your teams to dig deeper and bring in that extra revenue. Sales people are a competitive bunch, they are aggressive and that is why they have chosen the profession of selling, and as a leader you want to channel that energy and maximize it to reach your revenue goals and objectives. How can you do that? INCENTIVES!

Take these cards for examples these are a great way to have some fun with your sales team. Each time somebody achieves a sales objective they get one of the cool cards, they scratch them off and win great prizes. Or you can introduce a points based program similar to an American Express Membership Rewards. Where points accumulate over time for each new account, each new sales, revenue etc.

These points are then redeemed for great prizes from jewelry to stereo equipment and much more. Some may say "WHAT ABOUT CASH?" Isn't cash king? Cash satisfies basic needs which does not motivate behavior. Cash is the currency of compensation and pricing. Use cash and it becomes part of an individual’s compensation package or a customer’s pricing program. Invariably, if you offer a cash incentive to any audience, internal or external, it becomes a benchmark against which future compensation and pricing issues get measured, leading to a condition known as “program addiction.” Because cash quickly gets mingled with other compensation or expenses (in the case of customer cash expenses) Major Oil Company Study Summary Non-cash outperformed cash by 46% Non-cash: 37% increase in product mix ROI Cash: -20% Every $1 invested = an $0.80 return Non-cash: +31% Every $1 invested = a $1.31 return Thank you for reading our blog Derek Miller 609 807 8856

New Account Sales- How to get your salespeople that first appointment faster!

You want your sales people to earn a boat load of cash right? Ever heard the expression you can get everything in life you want if you will just help enough OTHER people get what they want? Well it is true. You have a great product, and/or service that fills your prospects needs, and either saves them money or helps them make money. Once they use the product they will thank you for a long time, right? What is the hardest part of sales for most sales people? Is it qualifying? Is it closing? No generally speaking it the fact that we don't have enough clients in our sales pipeline. If your sales people had more prospects in their sales funnel, then more activity yields more results. Let us take it one step further. That really hard part is getting that first appointment with the decision maker. Let us say you want to target "C level" people for your product or service. How are you going to get Mr. Joe Decisionmaker to want to take your phone call. After all he gets bombarded daily, and Joe's administrative assistant screens all the calls anyways. You've got an idea you will ask for an email right - Wrong spamming ol Joe won't work, through the spam filter and the 300 email he receives daily. Okay so you will send a letter with a catalog right? Well, that will find its rightful place in the round file. With a catalog or a flyer, your just lumped yourself in as an order taker. Well that bring us to the way you can DIFFERENTIATE YOURSELF, and get that valuable first appointment. It is using a dimensional mail piece.

Well here is an example. This piece we designed and mailed on behalf of one of our clients. It is a custom designed box, with brand messaging on the inside. In addition we have a "sound button" that when you press it says "Wow, that is a great idea". The reasoning is that it is a good idea to use my client for your needs. Secondly when the sale team calls the prospects up, they simply say Mr. Decisionmaker, my name is Zach and I sent you the awesome "Great Idea" button and then proceed to make an appointment. This does a few things: The screener probably will not screen the mail on this package they have no idea what it is. Secondly if they do, it reinforces to them, who you are, and they will be certain to give the item to their boss. Lastly when you call, you don't have to worry about Mr. Decisionmaker making to correlation between you, and who you are and what company you are with. They will always remember the "Great Idea" button you sent. It does not have to be the great idea button, enclosed you will find some more examples.

These are from Pilot services. Twice a year they send out over 1000 prospect mailer to potential clients. This helps to reinforce their brand and their messaging to their prospects. It makes it so much easier to secure an appointment when you do fun things like this for your prospects. You put a smile on their face and they will open their hearts minds and wallets to you and your company. If you implement this into your company's business development program you will certainly have a lot of happy folks there thanking you!

Thank you for reading. As always give us a shout with any questions or a free consultation about how we can help you!

Uptick in Corporate Gift Giving

Part of the old adage that “it’s better to give” is making a comeback in the corporate gift giving market as results from Incentive’s 2013 Corporate Gift IQ Survey reveal that corporations are increasing their gift giving and their average spend on corporate/incentive gifts. This uptick is likely a direct result of an economy that is slowly yet steadily improving in many industries. According to the survey, more than three quarters (77.4%) of the respondents said corporate and business gifts are part of their incentive programs this year, an increase of 13.9 percent over last year (63.5%). What is also important to note is that the average total spend on corporate gifts also shows signs of increasing this year. The percentage of respondents who said they spend less than $50 per person on corporate gifts decreased from 57.6 percent in 2012 to 45.1 percent in 2013, while the number of respondents spending $50 to $299 rose to 49.9 percent in 2013 from 34.5 percent in 2012. And, not only has the value of gifts risen, the giving of business gifts on more occasions has also increased over the past two years, with a percentage almost twice as much in 2013 (10%) compared to 2012 (5.6 %). At the same time, the number not sending corporate gifts at all in that time period dropped to 4.7 percent in 2013 from 9.5 percent in 2012. Promotional events and employee recognition programs contributed, in large part, to that, as 52.3 percent said they gave gifts at promotional events, compared to 40.7 percent in 2012. Employee recognition gifts rose to 51.5 percent of respondents this year, up from 38.3 percent in 2012. Survey results indicate that gift cards lead the pack as the gift of choice for more than half of those polled, coming in at 66.6 percent, up from 63.9 percent in 2012. Several integral results are charted below.

If corporate gift giving is in your budget this year, and you would like to thank and reward employees, clients, suppliers then give us a call at 609 807 8856 and we can match a great corporate gift program to fit your budget.

Get your B2B mail read, so when your sales people call they will know who is calling!

“I don’t know who you are. I don’t know your company. I don’t know your company’s products. I don’t know what your company stands for. I don’t know your company’s customers. I don’t know your company’s reputation. Now – what was it you wanted to sell me?” How can you gain more face time with “C level” executives who are not existing clients? Our new account acquisition program achieves anywhere from a 20% to 40% appointment rate success. We specialize in helping salespeople win new accounts. Our team has over 200 years of experience in this specialty. We also see increase proposal rate and increase win rates. Attached are a couple example of the result we have produced for our clients Many of our clients do not have budges for this activity. But they have Advertising budget that can be switch to this better investment. That is why we suggest to Invest where your dollars can produce big impact! With less sales people on the street, dimensional direct mail can help fill in the gaps. It’s a proven fact that 3-D mailings break through the clutter and generate higher response rates—up to 20-40%. If well-designed, a dimensional direct mail program can be a cost-effective, measurable way to maintain contact and/or prospect for new business during challenging economic times—a proven way to get mail opened, read and remembered, paving the way for personal follow-up! Case Study: A local bank wanted to secure appointments with local business for commercial accounts and lending opportunities. A dimensional piece was designed with a custom printed box, a custom printed sand pail and a 1lb bag of local salt water taffy with a personalized postcard. The piece was then sent to 250 identified prospects. Over 100 appointments were secured based upon this mailing

Objective Educate 500 key decision makers the value of applying a NEW 3M Product versus competitive brands product Strategy DDM Campaign with an investment of $150 per contact Results This was the second in a series of three programs and was repeated for three years based on sales growth, sales rep feedback and new accounts won.

Objective Gain 1-2 New Retail Accounts valued at $500,000 to several million per win Strategy DDM Campaign to multiple Contacts with each Retailer and investment of $200 per contact Results 5 New Accounts were Won If you would like a free consultation on how this can work for your business, just shoot us an email @ proprintersonline@verizon.net or give us a ring at 609 807 8856

Direct Mail is alive and kicking do you use it?

Local media ad space advising firm BIA/Kelsey’s most recent local market ad forecast report, Media Ad View Plus, has several findings of note. The study, which gives a market-by-market view of the local media pie, reveals: The total local media market is calculated to be $132.5 billion. Looking across all verticals, direct mail accounts for 27% of all local market spend ($35.8 billion). ​Direct mail dominates ad spend by local retail advertising, garnering over 43% of total retail advertising in 2012. Despite ongoing declines in circulation, in 2012 newspapers generated $22.5 billion for a 17.1% share of total advertising spend, second only to direct mail. Six vertical categories each generated more than $1 billion from online advertising in 2012 — technology, retail, automotive, leisure/recreational, financial/insurance and restaurants. BIA/Kelsey calculates that these six categories accounted for close to 80% of total online advertising. Print Yellow Pages still dominates the local general services category (basically anyone who shows up at your house in a van). In 2012, general services advertisers spent $3.8 billion on print Yellow Pages, representing nearly a quarter of total spend in that category. Retail, financial/insurance, restaurants, automotive and technology combine to represent roughly three quarters of local radio advertising revenue. - See more at: http://printinthemix.com/Fastfacts/Show/763#sthash%2EaJwCjzvd%2Edpuf

Orkin I loved this example, because it not only was incredibly affordable, but contained brand imaging in the most unusual way, from bugs stuck to the ad. As passer’s by saw the ad develop over a span of days, the logo eventually appeared. This marketing piece got people talking, sharing, and remembering the pest company.

3M I had seen this example before, but what I really liked is that they literally put “Their money where their mouth is.” If someone actually broke the glass, they were out a considerable sum, so their own faith in their product shined bright and clear.

Frontline As a dog lover, this one cracked me up, and showed how an ad can actually do more with negative space than it could have if including all of the elements. The ad was placed along the floor of a shopping mall, and when viewed from above, the people walking on the ad actually appear to be the fleas. For a product as un-sexy as flea control, this marketing device hit a home run

Land Rover Love this one. Land Rover in Dubai came up with an ingenious idea for the "rugged" drivers of their vehicle. So just in case the driver and passenger get marooned in the desert, the company sent 5000 survival guides to existing customers and to be distributed in sports shops. The book came complete with reflective backing for an SOS, a metal coil for cooking, and made the pages and ink edible (with roughly the nutrition of a cheeseburger. This great idea was such a hit, they produced 70,000 more to be included in a car magazine distribution.

Lance Burton, Vegas Magician How on earth can you have your message resonate in Las Vegas? You could spend a ton of money and get a billboard on the strip, or you could spend a couple hundred dollars and do what Lance Burton did. See below. (Hat tip to my friend Rodrigo Padilla for reminding me of this one)

I hope you enjoyed this. Derek