From the exhibits, graphics, electrical, Audio/Visual, to logistics and more, The Rogers Company helped ABB bring Automation & Power World to life.

CRM programs were supposed to be the cure to the woes of sales and marketing. If you don’t know already, a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) is software that can track every single contact, transaction, sales call, bill, and delivery that is entered into the system. Basically it puts an incredible amount of information at your fingertips to help make smart choices. If you don’t have CRM software in place, there are a whole range of options in terms of price and functionality. GoldmMine, ACT!, SalesLogix, and PeopleSoft are some popular choices. Many of these programs offer free trials and on-line tutorials in order to determine their efficacy for your company and its products and services.

With all of the information CRM systems provide, you would think it would be easy for a company to determine their ROI from a trade show or any other marketing effort. Unfortunately, it’s not always that easy. A spread sheet may not reveal the full extent of your trade show success or failure. Here are a few strategies for getting more out of CRM systems when it comes to trade shows:

1.) Walk Down to Accounting

Many times marketing and sales just never talk to accounting unless there’s something wrong; but your financial folks can be of great assistance in helping determine trade show and event ROI. Along with your IT department, they can work at the front end of the process when researching CRM programs to see if the CRM can integrate with your other accounting software including and most especially “Order Entry” and “Shipments by Client”.

In addition, accounting can provide information that can either verify or inform output from a CRM. Who are your biggest customers? Who are your smallest? Who are your top twenty customers? What percentage of total sales do those top twenty represent? Were any of them a new customer this year? When did their orders come in?

By asking questions like these, you can get clear information based on facts. Accounting doesn’t deal in vagaries (or at least it shouldn’t). Asking accounting some fact based analytical questions can help you create a connection with your trade show marketing. If a trade show contact is recorded in your CRM, compare the sales timeline with accounting to see if the trade show had an impact. If there are new customers this year, were they noted in the lead list from a trade show? Did you see your top five customers at a trade show? Or did you see the 20% or your customers that make up 80% of your business?

(Sometimes CRM systems are actually linked to accounting — so the trip down to their office may not be necessary. But do it anyway, chances are you’ll learn something and they’ll enjoy the company.)

2.) Look at What You’re Not Getting

A CRM can tell you who you met at a trade show and whether or not that lead turned into a customer, but you have to use that information to find out who you’re missing at your trade shows. Companies tend to look at success and build on that. It’s a sound strategy, but if you use it exclusively, you’ll miss opportunities at trade shows. Also look at the types of customers you’re not seeing at your booth. How can you attract them? How can you design and promote your trade show booth to appeal to a new demographic without alienating the old one? Building on the holes in your CRM can also help you build business, even in a slowing economy — there are only so many investment dollars to spend and you may have tapped out an existing market. Exploit the markets you currently aren’t reaching with new strategies.

3.) Create Customer Stories

With all of the complex data that a CRM can output, it’s tempting to just look at it as a pure expression of fact. In fact, a CRM may be able to recite 100 facts about your best customer, but it cannot tell you exactly why they are your best customer. Use the information from the CRM as well as from sales staff to find out why some relationships begin at a trade show and why they grow. If the CRM shows several leads turning into sales in the months after a trade show, talk to the sales staff to find out why. These narratives can be powerful because they combine the gut feelings of sales with the hard facts that only a computer can retain.

Creating customer stories will also make it easy for sales and booth staff to understand last year’s successes so they can duplicate that success this year and beyond.

Another strategy is to create aspirational stories — who are the customers you want? What impact will your trade show exhibit have on them? Are you trying to work with bigger companies? What scenario might attract them to your booth and win their business? Aspirational stories help determine everything from exhibit design to trade show execution, to sales strategies and marketing collateral.

CRM programs are incredibly helpful in tracking the marketing and sales activity that go into a successful customer relationship. CRMs not only can also help you measure the success you’ve had at a trade show, but they can help you shape a more successful marketing and trade show strategy in the future. Bottom line -better ROI.

Determining trade show ROI is a long road paved with facts and stats, but like the old saying goes, every long journey starts with the first step, so when beginning the journey of determining trade show ROI, start with what you know.

Instead of beginning with so many unknowns, start with something you do know. Ostensibly you know your customers — they’re a wealth of knowledge about your trade shows and events and your overall marketing program. They can tell you what’s working and what’s not.

So it’s easy, right? If a customer says: “I met you at a trade show and liked what I saw. Three months later, I purchased your product.” then you can put them solidly in the trade show ROI column, right? Hold on! What about the brochure they received? What about the advertisement? What about the call from the salesman? Doesn’t all that count? Isn’t there a way to determine which of those things contributed most to the sale?

There’s no easy way to tell because at that point you’re trying to get inside your customer’s head. Asking them to determine which marketing tool had more influence would require some very sophisticated survey techniques that may not get you to the truth. So how do you get useful information from your customers?

1.) Start with a profile

Divide your customers into broad categories: Completely new customers who basically “walked in the front door”; returning regulars who seem very loyal to your brand and methodical clients who researched a long time before making a decision. These can be anything you want, but limit it to four or five categories. These profiles will help you organize information more easily as you identify what kinds of customers you have and why they bought from you.

2.) Look at Their Stories

Why did these customers buy from you? What influenced their decision? Where did they talk to you or first hear about you? This “customer narrative” gathers the facts about how and why you made a sale and continue to make sales.

Existing sales can also tell us what the gateways are to a sale and how they’re connected. So if a customer says that they were influenced by an advertisement, a trade show, and a sales call, try to put that together into a story. Which came first and what followed thereafter? What wouldn’t have happened without the other?

3.) Look at the Facts

It’s important to create some pertinent facts about your sales and marketing. How many companies that appear on your lead list, are actually already customers? How many customers came to your booth at a trade show? How many leads did you collect? How many of these leads were followed-up?

These hard facts help separate theory from reality. Many times people at all levels of business have pet theories about marketing activities. Make sure that, at the very least, you understand some of the things that are working. There will still be a lot of holes in your knowledge, but at least you’ll know what you know and what you need still need to learn.

4.) Determine What You’re Losing

There’s a story from WWII that is possibly fanciful, but could shed some light on this problem. Looking at returning bombers from missions over Europe, aircraft designers were trying to figure out which parts of the planes to add extra armor. They could see heavy damage in certain parts of the planes more than others, but finally decided to place armor exactly where the damage didn’t exist. Why?

The theory was that the planes damaged in those areas, simply didn’t return from their missions.

You have the same issue in determining ROI or the effectiveness of your trade show campaign. Your customers can tell you which tactic worked for them — but look for the piece that is consistently missing. Where are you not reaching customers? Why aren’t they finding you? If you’re getting customers A,B, and C, why not D,E, and F? Build on what’s working but also examine if some of things that aren’t effective for customers A, B, and C might work for the others. In the end focus on what works with each specific market or customer and leave everything else behind.

Finally, there’s no magic answer to ROI. But there is a process for determining what is working within your company and what is not. It may sound simple to do more of what’s working and less of what’s not — but that’s the essence of successful marketing. A trade show is no different. Your quest for ROI really is a quest for more leads and, ultimately, more sales. Instead of cutting based on lack of ROI or poorly defined ROI, use the tools above to determine where the shortfall is and concentrate on fixing it.