Case Study — Ibertech Gets 300 Qualified Leads in Two Days

by Paul DiModica

Some years ago, I was walking the floor of the National Restaurant Association Show (NRA) in Chicago on one of the lower floors of the convention. I was looking for a technology company to buy in the hospitality market space.

As I walked through rows and rows of vendors, I came upon a company called Ibertech-Aloha Systems who was sharing a booth with a hardware manufacture. In the booth were two engineers from a military airplane manufacturer who had developed the first restaurant computer system that was a Windows-based touch screen point of sale system. Over the next couple of months I tried to buy them but they were not interested. Instead, they hired me to develop their strategy, marketing and sales and their national expansion plans. Ultimately they offered me 5% equity in their firm and made me their VP of Sales to implement my recommendations.

Having a great technical product and one customer (like they did) will only take you so far. So, at the next big industry tradeshow, we decided to launch bigger than we really were. So, we rented a 20 X 20 foot both in the middle of our global 1000 competitors like NCR, Micros and IBM and brought in family and friends to fill the booth with “employees”.

To increase our tradeshow success, we deployed Value Forward strategies and techniques that included handing out sales objection white papers to every booth attendee, and stress balls that said “DOS IS DEAD” with a ghost buster symbol over it and our company name on it (at that time our competitors were only selling Microsoft DOS-based systems). We left the message stress balls in the show break rooms, snack bars, restaurants and in our competitor’s booths and ended up handing out thousands at the show.

Using our sales objection white papers as talking points along with other prospecting techniques, we created a stampede of traffic between our booth and our competitors across the ten foot aisle as prospects were forced to see our value three dimensionally through our marketing methods. Our methods challenged our larger more established and better funded revenue stealers to be perplexed and undecided on how to respond because all they wanted to do was tell their booth prospects about their brand name and current market share penetration.

As the trade show continued on, we started to create lots of PR because of our marketing methods and walked out of the show with over 300 leads from C level executives of restaurants chains U.S. wide.

After that tradeshow, Ibertech-Aloha grew year over year in revenue until they were sold to a public company called Radiant Systems for $30 million.

So why did this tradeshow approach work?

Most companies just go to tradeshows year after year with no pre-show planning, specific messaging, competitive positioning, or marketing strategies other than just having sales reps stand in the booth and hopefully look refreshed.

• Don’t go to tradeshows because you went last year. 
• Don’t go to tradeshows because you have no other lead generation methods that work. 
• Don’t go to tradeshows because your competitors go. 
• Don’t go to tradeshows because your sales team says you have to.

Tradeshows cost too much money. Costs are going up, attendance by qualified prospects is down and in a down economy, tradeshows can be your greatest opportunity to increase your revenue or . . . just another alcohol and binge party event for your sales and marketing team.

It is up to you, but in an economy like today, you can grow your business quickly and economically if your  tradeshow strategy uses a premeditated process . . . not a reactive course.

But if you go to a tradeshow, follow these guidelines:

• Create a pre-show marketing plan to tease qualified prospects to come to your booth . . . or don’t go. If you can’t afford pre-show marketing, then you can’t afford to go to the show. 
• Don’t just go to tradeshows — create an event that forces your  value to be experienced not just heard. 
• Develop specific handouts with unique messaging that forces prospects to listen and competitors to fear you. (Brochures are not specific handouts.) 
• Do market brand, but sell value. 
• Understand that it is better to go to 2 tradeshows a year that are planned than 6 tradeshows where you just show up.

If you are looking to increase your success at tradeshows and maximize your qualified lead generation right now using a proven method like I used at Ibertech, then learn more about our business coaching  here.

It’s up to you!

To your success,

Rick Erling

Advertisement