As Sales teams, we use a million and one methods to get leads and even more for closing deals. For some businesses it’s purely digital marketing approach, for others, it’s cold calling. We’ve found that events work well for us.
Events present two brilliant sales opportunities that digital just does not have: firstly, you get to meet the real humans you’re selling to and you can build rapport with them immediately – an actual connection. Secondly, you can ask them legitimate qualification questions in the context of a real-life demonstration allowing you to get all that you need to take the sale from prospect to won.
Honestly, of all the methods we try, there’s nothing better than getting in front of someone, face-to-face, to demonstrate the power of SalesSeek and show them how it can improve their business workflows and revenue.
The problem is in all the excitement of asking these questions and giving an incredible demo or sales pitch, you forget to write down those key details about the prospect. They walk away giving you nothing but a business card and you stand there feeling smug that you’ve just delivered the best pitch you’ve ever given. Only, it all falls apart when you return to the office to start processing your leads; you can’t remember a single person, who spoke to who, let alone details about their business. We’ve done it ourselves. We’ve probably some lost big deals because of it. We all have.
So here’s the trick; we created our Event Lead Form.
Download at bottom of the post ⬇👇
It seems very obvious, but by creating an easy to complete, standardised form, your sales team can quickly jot down any important details or discussion notes, on paper, which can easily be added to your SalesSeek CRM when you get back to the office.
Why a paper card and not some electronic form?
Again, for us the answer is simple, it’s all about time, speed and accuracy – it’s such a human way to record interactions. And nothing beats pen and paper for that. We’ve tried using electronic forms in the past but found we often were not in a position to properly write our notes so conversations were missing.
If you’ve ever demoed at an event you will know how quick you’re moving on to the next person and therefore how fallible our memories can be. The object is to get all that info out of your head and onto paper as quickly as possible so we don’t forget the key details.
What to include?
What’s important for you will probably be different for your sales team. For example, besides the obvious contact details, our sales team need to know the following to progress a lead:
- How big is the prospect’s team?
- Do they have any existing CRM software systems?
- How hot is the lead based on the conversation?
- Who had the conversation with the prospect?
- Any crucial notes about their business requirements or sales process that will help the sale.
- What are the follow-up actions?
We created this A6 card so we can quickly staple business cards or if they did not provide a card, we can write down the person’s details for search and adding on LinkedIn. All in all, the process takes about 1 minute after a demo to give you all the info you need. We find it completely invaluable post-event back in the office and it makes your team, that much more professional.
To pay it forward we’re sharing our template for FREE so you can print and create your own for your next events. We had our forms professional printed on recycled paper, which cost around £25 for 1000. Top tip, make sure you get these printed on paper which you can write on with any pen. We’ve also created an A4 version with 4 copies, which means you can print them on your office printer too.
If you find this useful, please share it with your sales buddies and let us know how you get on at your next events.
Download your FREE template here ⬇
Check out our other sales resources here or read up on our latest sales insights here.
