SG EP 44
===
[00:00:00] Richard Ellis: B2B companies continue to pour billions into trade shows because they work. Trade shows remain one of the highest ROI channels in B2B with average returns approaching $21 for every dollar invested. Attendees overwhelmingly have buying authority and in-person interactions still accelerate trust and deal velocity, and yet most companies lose nearly 80% of the value they pay for.
[00:00:24] Richard Ellis: Not because booths are bad, not because events are outdated, but because planning is weak, capture is broken, and follow up collapses under real world conditions. The real problem is not the event, it's the gap between the conversation and what happens next. Welcome to some goodness where we engage seasoned business leaders and experts to share practical guidance to help today's go-to-market leaders, execute, lead, and win in a fast changing world.
[00:00:52] Richard Ellis: My guest today is David Howerton, CEO, and founder of Vido iq. David has spent his career watching what actually [00:01:00] happens in the field, not the CRM version, the real version, hallways, booths, client offices, hotel lobbies, great conversations followed by silent. Missing data and missed revenue. Today's conversation is about trade shows, not as events, but as processes.
[00:01:17] Richard Ellis: What breaks before, during, and after, and why? Field sellers are being asked to do desk work in environments that were never designed for. It. Well, David, welcome to the show.
[00:01:28] David Howerton: Thanks, Richard. It's great to be here. I'm looking forward to the conversation today.
[00:01:32] Richard Ellis: Well, so in light of trade shows it is, it is kind of an interesting thing.
[00:01:36] Richard Ellis: You know, in our opening stats and research, we find that many companies are really frustrated with the results. Sometimes they don't feel like they're getting value out of the trade shows yet. Trade shows continue to grow and still attract buyers and their big business. And so let's just start with that.
[00:01:52] Richard Ellis: What are some of your odd for, uh, excuse me. Let's just start with that. What are some of your observations on why they continue [00:02:00] to, to grow and attract buyers?
[00:02:02] David Howerton: Well, I think trade shows are a, a very meaningful part of your lead gen, demand gen process. Um, you know, people want to be in person, right? We've got AI kind of commoditizing the digital connections.
[00:02:18] David Howerton: So the human component of this. Becomes really important. You know, human connections are becoming more scarce and the concentration of things that happen in these environments is a great way to, you know, to continue to develop and finish out business you have in, in the bottom of your funnel.
[00:02:38] Richard Ellis: Yeah. And the, um, just this idea of human connection, I, uh, was recently talking to one of our clients.
[00:02:45] Richard Ellis: Post trade show. They went to a conference and we were helping them, trying to plan through what are some good, you know, intentional post trade show, uh, activities and action items, which we'll talk about today. Mm-hmm. But one of the things that [00:03:00] came up is they just mentioned that a lot of value they got was.
[00:03:03] Richard Ellis: You know, not only the face-to-face interactions with potential prospects, uh, but with current clients mm-hmm. Uh, that they don't meet with face-to-face. And then even colleagues and support resources that, you know, they're not all in a corporate office in headquarters anymore. They're spread out. And so there's just goodness, I think all around in, uh, you know, that kind of physical proximity.
[00:03:27] David Howerton: I, I completely agree. I think you touched on, you know, the colleague thing is a very interesting thread and I, I try to encourage people to remember your competitors, your partners, resellers. It's not just talking to people you're gonna sell to. It's the ecosystem that you're sitting within. And think about the richness of information that just the side conversations can yield.
[00:03:50] David Howerton: You're going to find out things that you didn't know. Before you got there. So taking advantage of not just I'm trying to sell, but I'm trying to network, I'm trying to learn, [00:04:00] and not just in the sense of going to an education session, you're actually getting a chance to catch up with your competitors to talk about what they're seeing, and that's vital information to take back to the organiz.
[00:04:14] Richard Ellis: Right. And, and as you pointed out, you know, not all of it is in session. A lot of it's just organic networking and in between sessions and all of that informal part of the process as well.
[00:04:25] David Howerton: Agreed. I, and I think we'll probably get into this where we think about the planning and getting into it, having, you know, who are we gonna talk to?
[00:04:32] David Howerton: I, I, I perceive there's a lens around what we do at the booth. And that's great. Yes, you're spending money on that booth. You're spending money to be there, but it's just as important to understand those additional conversations and how all of that concentrates back into competitive intelligence for your organization.
[00:04:57] Richard Ellis: Absolutely. Well, one of the things that we, uh, [00:05:00] I liken it to is the sales kickoffs and the revenue kickoffs. And, and that's the season we're in right now. And we like to kind of break things up into the, before the, during and the after. Mm-hmm. And talking with you ahead of this podcast, you, you think about it, uh, trade shows and conferences in the same way.
[00:05:17] Richard Ellis: So what if we broke it down into those three, three segments for the rest of our conversation?
[00:05:22] David Howerton: That sounds great. Absolutely.
[00:05:24] Richard Ellis: All right. Well, let's dive into before the show, before the conference, before the trade show, even before people get on the plane, you know, and head there, what are some of the things that they need to start thinking about, uh, more intentionally planning around, et cetera?
[00:05:39] David Howerton: I think off the top, I would encourage people to stop thinking about events and thinking about things as a, as a, a holistic program, you're spending money across more than one trade show. Or event, think about it as a, your channel, right? This motion [00:06:00] around what do we need to do when we get there? So I definitely have lived it in past organizations, and I definitely see it where people show up without knowing why they're there.
[00:06:12] David Howerton: Right, right. Could it just be because they're, they feel the need to do that? It's table stakes to be part of a show. And so that means that there's, they're lacking some kind of success criteria, ownership and game plan. So starting before you need to have that organized thought process about what we're doing to prepare so that when we get to the show, we're actually making quality use of that time.
[00:06:40] Richard Ellis: That's great. So kind of getting everybody rallied around a, a big, um, you know, vision and purpose for the show. What are we trying to accomplish out of this Right. As the first step? And then I, I would, I would imagine that. Different people and attendees play different roles. You got, you know, people [00:07:00] staffing the booths.
[00:07:01] Richard Ellis: You, you've got sales and marketing reps, probably networking and learning from others. Mm-hmm. And you've got all kinds of support and specialists and technical resources that you're probably sending as well. How do you think about, you know, just kind of that role choreography across the team to make sure that people are pointed in the right direction, they're aligned around a common purpose, uh mm-hmm.
[00:07:20] Richard Ellis: And then they know how their role and what their. Job, quote unquote, is at the trade show to, to fulfill, you know, that purpose.
[00:07:28] David Howerton: Mm-hmm. So the really effective organizations are targeting the accounts at a time, not just leads, but their customers. They're getting their meetings booked in advance. They know what they're gonna accomplish.
[00:07:43] David Howerton: They've prewired customers and, and prospects for what we wanna accomplish. That show, what do these conversations look like? And getting commitment from them ahead of time so that the actual meetings are booked well in advance.
[00:07:59] Richard Ellis: Got it.
[00:07:59] David Howerton: [00:08:00] You have multiple teams there. You're gonna have field marketing, you're gonna have sales, and you might even have other, depending on how large the show is, other, um, individuals from within the organization that are maybe warm bodies to help triaging triage conversations.
[00:08:15] David Howerton: Uh, maybe you've got hired staff there, so who's running point? When you get to that show. So all of that needs to be well known in advance. So it's not just, you know, do we have the meetings? Do we know who's coming in the show? Do they fit our ICP? Um, do we know if the, the competitive intel on those organizations that we're going to be talking to, great things for us to be using AI for?
[00:08:41] David Howerton: Of course. And then can your team that's going to be in the different. Areas of the, call it the conference ecosystem. Mm-hmm. Can they articulate who, who they're talking to and why they're talking to them to make this a win coming outta the show. [00:09:00]
[00:09:00] Richard Ellis: Got it. That's, that's great advice. And I wanna double click a little bit on just kind of this meeting planning.
[00:09:05] Richard Ellis: Um. I, I, I think it's fairly common for, you know, executives to book meetings in advance because there's always, hey, key customers that are, you know, important that they want to meet with while they're there. Target, you know, high priority prospects. You know, there might be at risk customers, so they kind of fill up their calendars, but what's your advice on how far down the org chart do you go in terms of proactive meeting scheduling?
[00:09:31] Richard Ellis: Uh, do you get down to the rep and encourage, you know, account managers and account executives to, to stack their calendars?
[00:09:38] David Howerton: Yeah, so I think the role is it's role dependent, right? If you are an AE and you're gonna be at the show, are you. They're, if it's not just purely brand awareness, which I'm, I know that there are shows for that, but my belief is that your AE should be meeting with folks and I, I get that.
[00:09:58] David Howerton: Serendipitous meetings are [00:10:00] fantastic and yes, you're gonna meet net new people there. I would question if the rep can't have meetings set up, are they the right. They're the right representative for the organization. You're likely to have a rep an a, uh, S-D-R-B-D-R that is managing the booth for scans.
[00:10:17] David Howerton: That's fine. That's a different role. And that role is probably to field and triage, um, information either back to the company afterwards or to an AE that's in attendance to help, um, further the conversation. But I'm a big believer in go ahead and plan it in advance. And if you aren't able to. Uh, get those meanings booked.
[00:10:39] David Howerton: Why? Is it because you don't have somebody to talk to is because those people have already booked meetings with your competitor? There's a lot of intel that you can gather from this planning component to understand why are we spending money here? Is this gonna generate ROI for us?
[00:10:56] Richard Ellis: That's a great point.
[00:10:57] Richard Ellis: Yeah. So we don't want to just make this a show [00:11:00] up and meet and greet casually and see who you can meet with. But, um, and you do have, as you mentioned, you know, those serendipitous, you know, meetings that come up and get scheduled. Absolutely. So maybe you don't book your whole, you know, a hundred percent of your day, but you do want, you know, meetings booked in advance with, with target prospects of customers.
[00:11:18] David Howerton: Yeah. Do you have the list? Do you know who's gonna be there and of that. If for that rep, are five of those groups in your territory can you book five 30 minute meetings? Five, 15 minute meetings? You're gonna have more than enough time to field new conversations, but the central point I'm trying to make is you should absolutely take advantage of the time you're in person because the value that in person wants probably somebody with buying authority.
[00:11:47] David Howerton: So we need to take advantage of that as much as humanly possible. If you're not, it's a big miss and now you're gonna have to try to catch up with them post event, which we all know is, um, is a challenge.
[00:11:59] Richard Ellis: Sure, [00:12:00] sure. One more pre-show, uh, kind of activity or, or element that comes to mind is just the alignment between marketing or maybe product marketing and sales.
[00:12:09] Richard Ellis: How, how do you see that playing out? Well, where you're really equipping. Sales with what they need to have the right conversations to move the needle while they're there.
[00:12:20] David Howerton: Yeah. Again, back to the program element. What are we doing at the show? Are we launching new things? Do we have talk tracks down? Do we understand what the central push is for that show, for those meetings?
[00:12:32] David Howerton: So there has to be coordination, um, amongst the different groups, marketing, field marketing, so people that are putting on the show, people that are showing up to actually. Prosecute business and then the marketing team that's helping frame the narrative for what's happening. I've been lucky to be involved with some really excellent companies that do that well in advance.
[00:12:54] David Howerton: They have planning sessions that are booked well, you know. A couple weeks before a [00:13:00] show and reinforcing exactly what's coming down from that top down strategy. Here's what we're doing at the show. It's different than the last one. We're all on the same page. Here's your collateral, your talking points break and, and let's show up ready to go.
[00:13:14] David Howerton: Love seeing that. When it happens.
[00:13:17] Richard Ellis: That's really good. Well, let's, let's transition into the show itself, right? That what actually happens on the floor during the event. You know, I think you, uh, mentioned to me that, you know, one of your points of view is that in, in real life conversations is, is a. Gold mine of data, you know, and, and you can view it as such, but tell me a little bit about, you know, what comes to mind in terms of just that, uh, that event itself.
[00:13:46] Richard Ellis: What are some things we need to talk about?
[00:13:49] David Howerton: Well, depending on the size of a, of a, of a trade show, right? You can have the smaller ones where the booth traffic or your table traffic is. [00:14:00] Um. Manageable right by one or two people.
[00:14:03] Richard Ellis: Sure.
[00:14:04] David Howerton: All the way up to a tent pole expos where it can be extremely chaotic. So the breakdown in my mind is of getting information captured happens here, right?
[00:14:16] David Howerton: What is, what is it that you're doing on the floor? To have a process to ingest information is great. If you have a badge scanner, it's great if you have notes, right? Anything is better than nothing. But the conditions of these hectic environments more often than not prevent people from remembering what they've talked about,
[00:14:42] Richard Ellis: right?
[00:14:42] David Howerton: Tie that in with the post-event stuff later. But we need to have a process to capture information as best we can, and the richness of those conversations is what is what matters. It's not just tapping off a few qualification. Answers That helps. That's fantastic too. But [00:15:00] things get written down on business cards.
[00:15:01] David Howerton: They get written down in random notepads, and those things stay in silos that are. Problematic for the organization. It's great that they exist, but the retrieval of that becomes a challenge. So also, remember, it's not just at the booth, we've talked about conversations happen everywhere. Mm-hmm. So it's being able to coordinate how that information is consolidated in a meaningful way, because we all have witnessed that post-event conversation where it's a surprise.
[00:15:34] David Howerton: It could be a great surprise or a bad surprise. Why didn't we know that?
[00:15:37] Richard Ellis: You know, that's, it brings up a great point. I, I think it's a provocative idea that, you know, it's really more about the conversations you have during the show, less about gathering names, whereas, mm-hmm. You know, you tend to see.
[00:15:52] Richard Ellis: Everybody over rotating on, you know, make sure you, you know, share your LinkedIn or you, you scan your QR code or you use the event app [00:16:00] to, you know, with everybody you meet so you can get their name and their contact info. Mm-hmm. But you'd lose the richness of why did I meet with them? What, what did they care about?
[00:16:08] Richard Ellis: Right. All of that good stuff that, uh, that went on that, you know, while you're gathering their name.
[00:16:14] David Howerton: Yes. You're preaching to the choir with that. That's, that's the, that's the gap. We're just getting. Name, a title, phone number, email, sometimes not even that. Um, or of course the organization and we'll, we'll tie it in to the post event cadence, but you are missing out on opportunity there.
[00:16:38] David Howerton: Right? And it's right. Also part, if we go back to that planning process, if you have done. Planning around the people you really need to talk to. Again, set aside the serendipitous conversations where you just have to react in real time. If you've prepped your team for those conversations, do they fit for our [00:17:00] products, do they not?
[00:17:01] David Howerton: It's gonna help you draw out and have a line of questioning. And again, not everybody has the skillset to do that in the moment, un understood. But we should be able to prepare people, particularly for those that don't have the skillset, to at least have some kind of guidance on the things that we might be able to ask to draw out further conversation, to capture that nuance that we're, we know we left.
[00:17:27] Richard Ellis: Well, and I think there's something to being intentional about. The way we normally capture that stuff may not play well in a conference.
[00:17:37] David Howerton: Mm-hmm.
[00:17:38] Richard Ellis: Environment or a trade show. Or when you're walking from booth to booth, you know, organically, like for me, for example, I, I type, right? Mm-hmm. So whether it's my iPad.
[00:17:47] Richard Ellis: Or my, um, my computer, I like to type to take notes, uh mm-hmm. Because I can type really fast. But obviously when I'm walking around from booth to booth, I'm not gonna open up my laptop or my, my iPad with a keyboard, you [00:18:00] know? So I have to really think about, okay, how do I get, you know, the intelligence here?
[00:18:04] Richard Ellis: Mm-hmm. Just gather down into some kind of structure, and I think what you're saying is. That needs to be part of the planning process and the ality with teams to recognize, hey, some of your favorite tools probably aren't gonna work here, so what's our, what's our different process, our different tool to make sure that we capture all that goodness.
[00:18:22] David Howerton: Yeah. Great. Right? You can't talk while you're shaking hands. Right. It just doesn't work that way. So I think the interesting dynamic that we see is we're on, um. We're on a, a virtual meeting environment. Here we are, by definition recording this. We are used to having the virtual meeting worlds kind of do the work for us, and sometimes we lean into those conversations because of sometimes we lean out because we're using it as a crutch that's not viable in real life.
[00:18:56] David Howerton: Yes, we have some advancements of meeting recorders. [00:19:00] I have strong opinions about that right now. I think they'll be more normalized in the future, but they might not drown out background noise. Mm. They might, they might overhear other things that are going on in a busy environment. So I think that a, uh, voice first sort of speech to text approach in the moment can help people step aside, gather their thoughts, and very quickly create.
[00:19:30] David Howerton: One or more updates. It doesn't have to be all at the same time. Remember, you can, you can and should be able to create updates at any time you want to. When the, when the thought strikes, not everything happens during the course of an interaction, right? Remember, we think further about we reflect and that helps us spin up thoughts.
[00:19:51] David Howerton: So we just need quick, easy ways to. When the moment strikes say, oh gosh, yes, that's right. I forgot to ask this person this [00:20:00] question. That might be the best way to do follow up with this.
[00:20:03] Richard Ellis: That's a great point. Yeah.
[00:20:04] David Howerton: Natural language interface, I think is gonna be a, a future state that will, will benefit all of us.
[00:20:10] Richard Ellis: The next big, big move. I, I like that a lot. And then you combine that with, you know, encouraging or instilling in our teams the discipline of kind of pausing between conversations.
[00:20:20] David Howerton: Mm-hmm.
[00:20:21] Richard Ellis: Capturing, you know, what you learned and the nuggets in that way versus wait until the end of the day and say, okay, now I'm gonna go summarize what I learned today and you're missing half of it.
[00:20:30] Richard Ellis: Right. Or about more. Right.
[00:20:32] David Howerton: Memory decay is, is real, right? Mm-hmm. And the more of the conversations that pile up, the more they run together, the more difficult it is to discern what, what, what did I actually talk to Richard about?
[00:20:44] Richard Ellis: Mm-hmm.
[00:20:45] David Howerton: I know it was important. That may come back to me. It may not. But you've missed the moment, right?
[00:20:50] David Howerton: So even if you scribble it down in the moment, having something that will allow you to think about. More than [00:21:00] just an analog task or very quick note that you can expand upon you. Just using voice would be a major win, in my opinion.
[00:21:11] Richard Ellis: That's excellent. Excellent. Well, let's, um, let's transition to post show, right?
[00:21:16] Richard Ellis: So the follow up I think is where the magic should happen and you should get the return on your investment and all of that good stuff, but that's where things break down. Mm-hmm. So what, what tends to break down?
[00:21:29] David Howerton: Lots. Um, but the, this, this handoff, right, this is kind of a gray area for some companies.
[00:21:35] David Howerton: There are plenty of companies that have the excellence here and do a, do a wonderful job, but I'm, I'm aware of even really large Fortune 500 companies where the handoff points create friction that delays, so value disappears. Um mm-hmm. If you can't. Have speed to follow up and you can't create the context we were talking about the [00:22:00] nuance.
[00:22:01] David Howerton: What happens is it winds up in the hands of a sales team without real reason for them to follow up. Or, or the compelling reasons why they should be taking this seriously. And we all know that there, you know, leads just, they, if they do get followed up on, they typically get followed up on in a very generalized way.
[00:22:22] David Howerton: I think that's a poor approach. So a canned response, a delay on that probably puts you at a disadvantage for competitor to be able to swoop in ahead of you. Um, so I think it comes down to that same type of rigor that we talked about pre-planning as to who has the ball, who's in charge of this, who's going to get this stuff triaged and prepped.
[00:22:48] David Howerton: Who are the other team members that need to be? Simultaneously reviewing this together. So there's a, there's a handshake that happens in a checkoff of like, okay, we've got our 200 [00:23:00] scans, conversations, everything comes into a central point. Um, field marketing is good, rev ops is good. Sales, marketing, everybody's good.
[00:23:07] David Howerton: Break now we can push that out.
[00:23:09] Richard Ellis: Right. Right. Well, and like you said early on, you know, you like to view these trade shows not as an event, but as a program. Mm-hmm. And any program has processes you follow Right. To, to execute the program. And so what is that post show process and who does what to eliminate?
[00:23:26] David Howerton: Mm-hmm.
[00:23:26] Richard Ellis: You know, just the time lag of follow up. And I think EE even, I think I read some stat that said 70 to 80% of leads were never followed up on after shows. I mean, that's, mm-hmm. That's a crime right After all of the work that goes into gathering those, you know, quote unquote warmer leads than otherwise, because they're face-to-face.
[00:23:48] Richard Ellis: They're at the show. They indicated some interest, man, what a shape, not follow up on the majority of them.
[00:23:55] David Howerton: So your program should evolve to actions [00:24:00] that are happening during the show. It doesn't have to be obnoxious and over the top, but most of the time it's very linear. We go to the show. We scan things, then we wait and we get a download of things.
[00:24:10] David Howerton: Then we triage those things, then we hand it off. Then it gets pushed up into the CRM, and then it gets floated into the team for follow up. Whether that's, you know, for outbound follow up or for act, you know, action from an account exec. I think in the future we need to think of those actions and loops, activity loops happening after an engagement happens.
[00:24:32] David Howerton: After an interaction, it may be as simple as. Not ICP, we're gonna put this into a, a drip campaign, you know? Done.
[00:24:39] Richard Ellis: Yeah.
[00:24:40] David Howerton: But it could be a client is considering moving away from us. Need to take action right now. Mobilize team, escalate fix tickets that are in the system that they're complaining about. I mean, we've all been in that scenario where we're hoping to push it, uh, upsell, cross-sell through, and we're met with this brick wall [00:25:00] of well.
[00:25:00] David Howerton: Guys we're, we're stuck because in this other area, you're underperforming or you're not meeting our expectations, so there's no way we're gonna move forward. Well, I didn't know that. What the heck, right? I believe we need to do a better job of activating the right processes, workflows, and follow ups.
[00:25:20] David Howerton: Relative to the signal that we're getting.
[00:25:23] Richard Ellis: Yeah. That's so important. Really good. Let me ask you one closing question here before we wrap up. And this may be, uh, a hard question or an unfair question, so just tell me if it is, but that is, you know, we've talked a lot about, uh, before, during, after. Lots of great practical tips if, if companies could do one thing differently going forward at trade shows.
[00:25:46] Richard Ellis: Could you come up with just like one big rock that they should all focus on? Or is there just too, too many opportunities for improvement?
[00:25:52] David Howerton: Lots of opportunities for improvement, but I think treat it as a program, treat it, treat this as a channel sales channel that it [00:26:00] is. The motions and, and have a holistic game plan that isn't just show up.
[00:26:06] Richard Ellis: Yeah.
[00:26:06] David Howerton: And scan patches.
[00:26:08] Richard Ellis: Love it. The title of our podcast series is Some Goodness 'cause we like to just spread and share goodness and always, uh, outside of business and outside of trade shows, what's something that's brought you a little goodness, either professionally or personally lately?
[00:26:22] David Howerton: Yeah, I think, uh, we've, here in Nashville, we've gone through a pretty difficult period of weather with ice storm that's crippled the community in a big way.
[00:26:32] David Howerton: And so I think it's been really encouraging as we've been kind of stuck in our homes. I, we were blocked in for trees down, things like that. But, um, seeing the neighbors connect with one another, seeing the line workers coming out to help out in this real, uh, I think combined effort of supporting line workers to help us get our electricity back on.
[00:26:56] David Howerton: Neighbors helping neighbors, um, love, love, love seeing that. It's [00:27:00] just, I mean, talk about goodness. It's, it's the way we should be. There's a lot of uh, you know, a lot of discontent out there. So it's a wonderful and talk about in person.
[00:27:10] Richard Ellis: Yes.
[00:27:10] David Howerton: Wonderful to see that collaboration and good things happening, even when it's really challenging to coordinate.
[00:27:16] Richard Ellis: Love it. That is good. Well, thanks for sharing that, and thanks for being with us on the show today.
[00:27:21] David Howerton: Hey, it's been a pleasure. I've loved the conversation. Richard. Thank you for having me, and, uh, look forward to continuing conversations in the future.
[00:27:29] Richard Ellis: Absolutely.
[00:27:32] Announcer: Some goodness is a creation of revenue innovations.
[00:27:36] Announcer: Visit us@revenueinnovations.com and subscribe to our newsletter.
