MARKETING STRATEGIES: Why branded golf umbrellas won’t lead to sales

At the same time, a prospect who sees a clear match between the problems which the vendor addresses and the need they are resolving can progress more rapidly to becoming a qualified lead.

The objective behind the lead generation program should be to attract the right enquiries and deter the wrong ones. Too often lead generation programs are set up to generate numbers rather than quality. The system needs to be able to distinguish between genuine potential buyers and others. As long as the system has no self-regulation or self-qualification, the quality will be low.

You only have to man an exhibition stand to see the level of activity of non-buyers. Brochures are collected by students, academics, analysts, competitors, friends of employees, brochure collectors, low-level employees, overseas attendees, organisers, service providers, consultants and so on.

At the same time, we often fail to capture information on the genuine buyer. All too often we encourage people to take a brochure without in anyway soliciting their level of interest or finding out what their purpose is.

Many salespeople seem to take the attitude that a successful event is measured in the number of brochures that are given away. Yet many brochures are not designed to solicit interest, they are merely product specifications. Alternatively, they are motherhood statements, which fail to assist the customer.

Initial brochures should be designed to assist the customer to refine their requirements and allow them to opt in or out of further communications. Instead, many vendors dump material on the prospect hoping that something will stick.

I have seen numerous exhibits that collect business cards, sometimes for prizes, without in any way qualifying the level of interest or the background of the attendee. This then results in large numbers of contacts that have to be followed up. Then there is the tendency to give away items as mementos, usually branded stationery, toys or gifts. Often these are given away without any effort to collect the names of the recipients.

I recall being at a Chicago exhibition for paint and coatings, noting the absence of visitors to a large exhibition stand next to ours. Not being from the industry, I had no idea what they did as it was not obvious to me from the signage on the stand.

At one point, they received five large cartons of golf umbrellas branded with their logo. Within two minutes they had about 100 people on the stand collecting umbrellas, which they simply handed out. Two minutes later, with all the cartons empty and no umbrellas left, the stand was again empty of attendees.

Our team all collected umbrellas but we still didn’t understand what they did. What a waste, but it is not unusual.

Next week, I will look at how to attract the right kind of leads.

Tom McKaskill is a successful global serial entrepreneur, educator and author who is a world acknowledged authority on exit strategies and the former Richard Pratt Professor of Entrepreneurship, Australian Graduate School of Entrepreneurship, Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne, Australia. A series of free eBooks for entrepreneurs and angel and VC investors can be found at his site here.