Let’s be real. Most of the trade shows that went digital this year are going to suck (thanks again, COVID-19).

But if you can think “outside the booth” there’s actually potential to scoop up a TON of leads at fire-sale prices.

I recently did a deep-dive into the 2020 National Electrical Contractors Association (NECA) Trade Show. NECA is our company’s “Super Bowl”. An event that the entire electrical construction industry revolves around. Every industry has one like it.

This year, NECA decided to go “digital” using the vFairs events platform. And they expect a record turnout this year. 10,220 people showed up to NECA 2018. So if major conventions like the Adobe Summit are seeing triple the attendance of years prior, NECA could see over 30,000 people in 2020!

Not only will there be more attendees; this year will see a greater variety of contractors.

Here’s what the 2020 NECA Exhibitor Prospectus advertises:

Deeper audience reach (positions within the firm). Before, firms would only send a few people – usually the president and a V.P. Now, ANY employee – from apprentice to project manager – can attend the show. In fact, they can be at the show while pushing papers at a desk…or eating lunch on the job site.

Wider audience reach (no borders). Basic admission is free, and there’s no hotels to book or plane tickets to buy. The flood gates are wide open to union electricians all across the country (and I’ll bet we’ll see higher numbers of merit shop contractors too).

So, yes, exhibitors miss out on the in-person meetings. We miss out on brand-building and product launches. But there is huge potential to siphon twice or triple the amount of attendee data in the virtual world.

Once you scoop up those contacts, you can market to them how and when you want. Build those important relationships and schedule meetings on the “back-end”.

In olden days, exhibitors spent most of their time and budget on big, flashy booths and displays. The idea was to drive attendees like flies to a spider’s web.

NECA (and other trade show organizers) are going to sell to exhibitors as-if all the old rules apply.

• Upgrade to a larger digital booth, where you’ll have more customization.
• Turn heads with “ticker tapes” and big signs above your virtual booth.
• Buy into gamification incentives, so attendees have to visit your booth for a “prize token”.
• Buy commercial spots that play between the educational sessions and keynote speeches. Sponsor a virtual lunch hour. Get your logo on mailed swag boxes. Buy a rotating ad in exhibit hall.

But in this new virtual setting, are attendees really going to walk aimlessly through a 3D exhibit hall?

And even if you throw the party-of-the-century from your booth…how much marketing effort is it going to take to drive enough traffic there?

My theory is that virtual trade show attendees are going to be laser-focused.

In the case of NECA, I expect a lot of contractors will register for the educational sessions only. There’s a burning need for training in this industry, and never enough of it.

Attendees that actually intend to visit exhibitor booths will be laser-focused as well. They’ll study the exhibit floor plan first, then make a bee-line to the brands they want to visit. If there’s a more direct route than “walking” the virtual trade floor, they’ll use it for sure.

Exploit EVERY Opportunity to Livestream Outside Your Booth!

Find any opportunity to livestream outside of your booth. Why? Because exhibitors can scoop up attendee data from anyone who joins these broadcasts – even if attendees bounce 10 seconds later!

For instance, NECA offers 30-minute Trade Show Education sessions ($5,000 each) and 5-minute Product Demos ($500 each). Last I checked, there were still dozens of empty slots available. Exhibitors seem to be overlooking these lead-generating opportunities.

Best of all, the education sessions get listed in the official schedule posted on the NECA Convention web page, email blasts, and mobile app!

That’s really all the marketing you need (native advertising baby!).

If your education session has a tantalizing title…on a subject that is in high demand…you’re sure to get a good turnout. Any extra marketing you do is gravy on the potatoes.

Take that $15,000 ear-marked for hotels, airfare, displays, and drayage fees. Put it into lead-getting webinars you can host outside the booth. The more the better.

How to Attract Hundreds of New Leads with Out-of-Booth Webinars

So, how do you find an educational subject that attracts an audience? Study the schedules from previous years. See what topics and keywords keep popping up. For NECA “Safety” and “Code” training is always an evergreen topic.

And don’t forget to ask exhibitor salespeople for advice. One helpful sales gal informed me that panel-style educational sessions are the way to go. They are more engaging than a single-person presentations, and give your webinar a veneer of credibility.

Think about it. How hard would it be to put your top four company subject matter experts (SME) on a recorded Zoom call, and keep them talking for thirty minutes?

If you choose to host an educational livestream, make sure it has informative content. In other words, it can’t be a long commercial with only thin educational value. Do the selling later, on your own platform, once you have the leads.

Final Tips for Virtual Events

So am I arguing that you don’t put any money or creativity into your trade show booth? No, and in fact small brands can go whole-hog if they want to. This year’s top-tier Platinum booth package is $7,000 cheaper than a 20’ x 20’ booth from 2019 (not including hotels and airfare). You should still provide a rich experience for attendees inside your exhibit.

With that rich experience in mind, select your booth package based on the marketing collateral you want visitors to find inside. By collateral I mean videos, catalogs, case studies, pre-recorded webinars, etc.

For instance, if you only had 3 videos, then the $6,300 Platinum package is all you need.

Lots of videos: go with the $8,800 Diamond package.

Could you get away with a Basic $3,800 booth package, and just post a link to your website?

You could, but it’s unlikely visitors will want to bother navigating away from the tradeshow experience.

A few more things to consider for your event virtualization strategy:

• Ask about “match-making” programs. At NECA, exhibitors who get Gold package ($6,360) or above are eligible for matchmaking. When attendees register, they check boxes for products / areas they’re interested in. If those boxes correlate to boxes that exhibitor’s check in their profile, IT’S A MATCH! That exhibitor can now “see” the attendees’ data and reach out for meetings. So even if the attendee never visits your in-booth / out-of-booth webinars, you still get that contact data!
• Don’t put your booth or webinar on auto-pilot. Try to have at least two people. The first one should be a tech-savvy moderator from the IT or marketing team. In the case of webinars, the moderator can keep attendees engaged in the chatroom, using audience polls (“where is everyone from?”) and feeding prepared questions to the presenter. The second person should be an SME or salesperson who can talk in-depth about the products, as well as present webinars.
• Send out “spies”. In the case of NECA, there’s a virtual Lounge Area and other places where attendees can mingle away from exhibitor soap boxes. But what if you sent a few sales people…disguised regular attendees? Join conversations. Mention that “insightful webinar happening in booth X”. Controversial tactic, I know 😉
• Consider hosting small “breakout rooms”. Each breakout session (limited to 5-6 people max) should focus on a very specific topic. Neil Patel and Eric Siu reported breakout meetings were incredibly popular at their recent Marketing School Live events. It allowed attendees to share ideas, meet new people and encouraged bonding and participation in a way that larger webinars could not.
• Take advantage of the “chaos”. Most trade show organizers this year are scrambling to go digital. For instance, NECA, still hasn’t finalized what the different booth packages will look like, and the show is less than 2 months away. You can bet the organizers and platform vendors are in a panic. Beta-testing new features as well as offering new ways to advertise. Keep in touch with your event sales staff — you might be one of the first to discover a marketing breakthrough.
• Don’t think of it as a trade show. Instead, try to re-frame virtual events as a digital marketing channel – like Facebook, banner ads, or Google ad network. A market place where (if you put a strong enough offer) you can convert traffic into leads. Let go of the old event marketing paradigm – its a completely different entity!
• But…remember what makes trade shows special. Attendees come to these shows to learn about next year’s innovation; interact with peers; forge new relationships; re-connect with their industry; build their business; get inspired; and a whole host of other reasons. In every aspect of your virtual trade show strategy, ask “How can I infuse some of that secret sauce here?”

I’d love to hear the perspective of other event marketers. What other lead-producing opportunities did I miss? Am I completely missing the mark here? Do I have my head up my @$$ and why?

P.S. Once the NECA Trade Show has ended, I’ll try to report back my findings. How much I got wrong. How much I got right. And if our influx of contacts was noticeably greater than in previous years.

Like many B2B marketers, I’ve spent the last three weeks adapting to the COVID-19 quarantine. Working from home, and coming to terms with the fact that my carefully constructed 2020 marketing plans (and personal goals this year) are out the window.

But now that we marketers have written our perfunctory “COVID-19 Response” email newsletter, and sent it out to our industry subscribers…what do we do next?

If you happen to be in the building materials industry like me, or any of the other “essential” industries – like food production, healthcare, utilities, transportation, or news media – you are lucky enough to continue working through this quarantine (albeit remotely).

But that blessing might also seem like a curse in these uncertain marketing conditions.

For instance, industry Trade Shows were probably 40% of your marketing budget, and a top source for new leads. Now that all major exhibitions are canceled, what do you do with nearly half your unspent marketing budget?

Your beloved Outside Salesperson – whose sparkling personality, shiny shoes and firm handshake were major drivers of our business – will now have to sit things out at home.

Maybe your C-suite is kicking themselves (and rightly so) for not investing in that CRM, ERP, website re-design, eCommerce store, or EDI/VMI system when times were good (“we were just so busy at the time…”). Now you’ll have to wait until the next bull market comes around.

Meanwhile, as we struggle to adapt to this sudden recession, Amazon, Walmart and large distributors like Grainger are poised to fill the gap. Amazon recently put out the call to hire 100,000 warehouse and delivery workers amid the Coronavirus shutdowns.

Your colleagues are probably throwing around a lot of ideas right now. As the B2B marketer, your job is to be the “clearing house” for these ideas: sales promotions, hot deals, clever sales activation, more email marketing, and live video feeds on Instagram and YouTube.

My advice: thank each and every colleague who contributed. Put their ideas in a spreadsheet, and really consider those ideas (this ain’t the time to be territorial or argumentative). At this early stage, however, most of the random ideas you hear will be “tactics”.

Any of those tactics could work. They just need a “Crisis Strategy” to bind them together.

I challenge you, dear marketer, to discover your company’s Crisis Strategy. It will take every ounce of your marketing brain power; you’ll have to sell it to colleagues and make compromises…but it must be done. You can’t afford to market as if it’s business as usual. Nor can you afford to go radio silent.

Last weekend, I read a lot of articles on marketing during the Coronavirus, as well as marketing during a recession. Many of the authors contradicted each other on “tactics”. For instance, some argued to “offer deals where possible”, while others argue “no amount of hot deals can stimulate a market that is currently terrified.” However, almost every article agreed on a few big picture “strategies”, including:

“Now is the time to get really close to your customers.”

It seems bloody obvious, right? I know. As marketers, we’ve seen this mantra come up in articles, how-to books, and seminars. “It’s all about the customer. Customer-centric. Customer-first.”

But in actual practice, we tend to be much more excited by BIG campaigns that generate thousands of responses from a single post, email, or ad placement. We’re less interested in talking to one customer about their kids, their hobbies, their hopes, their fears…without some kind of hidden agenda behind our call.

And sadly, that’s the attitude of most businesses people!

So, to really stand out during the COVID-19 epidemic, I believe companies that truly get close to customers (and don’t merely “say it” in an empty ad campaign) will be taking a bold step that most businesses in their category are not taking.

Yes, it may seem highly inefficient to call each customer one-by-one. To strike up a conversation…and not expect any business transaction.

To be their shoulder to cry on…or a punching bag for someone who’s had no outlet for their frustration.

But I think 1-to-1 contact could be the most powerful tool for keeping good customers tied to your hip…and invite stray customers back into the good graces of your brand.

Best of all, you only need a phone, an email server, and a contact list to do it!

Whether you adopt my “customer care” strategy…or find your own course of action…you must “commit” to it and see it through. In a recent episode of NAED’s DistributED podcast, guest Dirk Beveridge highlighted that most businesses are seeking the “confidence” of a clear ROI. However, we can only hope to achieve that confidence after we’ve shown the “courage” and “commitment” to take the first step.

In short, you have to be courageous first before you can gain confidence.

In his opinion piece “What 9/11 Can Teach Us About Marketing in the Time of Coronavirus”, Bradley Johnson makes the comparison between the post 9/11 attacks and our current epidemic.

Just 10 days after 9/11, at a time when all other advertisers went radio silent, General Motors released its controversial “Keep America Rolling” commercials. Critics roasted GM for its blatant sales promotion (no interest for two years), calling it “insensitive” and “immoral”. But in GMs defense, they were heeding President Bush’s call for patriotic Americans to “keep shopping” in order to keep the US economy strong (“don’t let the terrorists win”). Most importantly, GM acted boldly and swiftly before they had the “confidence” to know if their commercials would be a success.

“I hope we will see marketers…willing to take bold risks to keep this economy rolling.”

Bradley Johnson, “What 9/11 Can Teach Us About Marketing in the Time of Coronavirus”, courtesy of AdAge.com

So, get up close and personal with your customers. Act boldly, even if you don’t have the confidence yet. If you read this blog post looking for COVID-19 marketing “tactics” or “hacks”, then I’m sorry-not-sorry. However, if you’re looking for other great resources for Marketing in the Time of Coronavirus, take a look at:

• A Regularly Updated List Tracking Marketing Responses to Coronavirus – AdAge.
• Coronavirus Champions: A Running List of Brands Getting It Right – Forbes.
• Corporate Goodwill Efforts During COVID-19 Outbreak – Courtesy of Scott Monty. Running tally of companies making extended efforts during the novel coronavirus outbreak.
• Responding to Coronavirus: A Playbook for Marketing and Communications – Forrester Research, Inc. Julie Ogilvie talks about how to market with transparency and compassion. You can also download a free “B2B Crisis Preparation” eBook.
• What Marketers Can Do Right Now in the Age of Coronavirus – Marketingprofs LLC. In her motivational letter, author Ann Handley says sometimes companies “need to slow down now to speed up later on,” and how crisis moments can have the positive effect of forcing that necessary slowdown.
• Marketing in the Time of COVID-19 – Marketing Week. Mark Ritson’s take on what really matters when marketing crisis is compelling, simple, and contradictory to most articles out there.
• B2B turns to digital marketing in the wake of Coronavirus outbreak – ClickZ. One Dan Gerstenfeld’s of most poignant takeaways is “This is not 2008”. A must-read for B2B marketers.

Sometimes it’s better to have real product literature in your hand.

Not a PDF.

Not a product web page.

I mean a real, honest-to-God, full-color flyer, brochure, or catalog.

There’s even science that backs this up.

In the case study “Using Neuroscience to Understand the Role of Direct Mail”, Milward Brown hooked up 20 people to fMRI brain scanners. Each participant looked at a dozen advertisements. Some ads were on screen, others were on printed cards. Ads on printed cards generated more activity within areas of the brain that integrate visual and spatial information. “Physical materials,” reads the study, “produced more brain responses connected with internal feelings, suggesting greater “internalization” of the ads.”

Who says “Print is Dead”?

Here’s a personal case study. I used to work for a commercial lighting dealer. In our office was a bookcase swelling with lighting catalogs. One day I picked up a call for 12-volt landscape lighting – a category I knew nothing about. “Can you hold one moment?” I asked the caller. I jumped to that bookcase, and pulled any catalog that had landscape lighting pictures on the spine. With a few of these catalogs open, I was able to walk the caller through step light options (and sound like I knew what I was talking about).

The result? I actually sold 8 step lights along with a $100 transformer.

Call me dumb. But when I need to speed-learn a product category, catalogs beat Google any day of the week. Twice on Sunday.

Finally, look no further than a contractor’s truck to see the endurance of printed media. Here, you’ll often find crumpled, dog-eared pocket catalogs on the dashboard and floor mats.

Given the power of printed material, manufacturers should love mailing out their literature, right?

You’d think that, wouldn’t you?

Well, if you’re an engineer, contractor, or maintenance professional (what suppliers call an “end-user”), I have a secret to tell you:

Most Manufacturing Marketers DON’T like sending physical literature!

In fact, the dirty little secret of our industry is… we actually hate mailing literature.

That’s why we’ll bury our literature request forms seven pages deep in our website.

We’ll hide our email addresses for general inquiries (or not list them at all).

Call up the company operator, and you’ll probably get bounced from one department to another. After listening to “hold” music for a while, you finally reach someone of authority. And they tell you to “just go to the website”, “download the PDF” or “call your Rep”. Then CLICK.

If it sounds like I’m disparaging manufacturers, I am not. It’s simply an ingrained defense mechanism we have. We’re over-worked. We wear too many hats. And literature is expensive to print (not to mention the postage).

We don’t have mailrooms staffed with kids working Summer jobs. Instead, requests get handled by a mid-level marketing, sales, or customer service person. Folks who have bigger things to worry about, like making sure orders get shipped on-time.

Suppliers also have to make sure their sales team is flush with literature at all times. It’s their “ammunition” for making sales calls. These sales people will always get top priority over you.

Make friends with the manufacturer’s representative, and they’ll be your best source for literature.

Read ahead only if you don’t plan to go through the manufacturer’s rep for literature.

How to Get Free Product Literature without going through the Manufacturer’s Rep

Use my Seven Commandments of Requesting Product Literature to amass your own library of catalogs and brochures. I based these Commandments on my “insider knowledge” as a manufacturing marketer. I’ve also requested literature from dozens of other suppliers, so I know these tactics work (at least 7 out of 10 times).

Expect some suppliers to be stubborn or unresponsive. Some will push-back and say you have to “call your rep” or “visit a distributor showroom.”

The Seven Commandments of Requesting Product Literature

1. Avoid Web Forms like the Plague: trust me, you’ll almost never get a reply from most suppliers by filling out a form. Completed form requests often get logged in the website back-end, and rarely see the light of day.
2. Look for General Inquiry Emails: most businesses have email addresses like ‘sales@xyz.com’ or ‘info@xyz.com’. These are often distribution list emails, meaning several employees see your request at once. The manufacturer’s own sales reps and customers often hit up these email addresses. So your request will have a high probability of getting seen by the right people.
   
   Can’t find any general inquiry emails. See the side note at the end of this list.
3. Specify the Titles of the Literature you’re requesting in the body of your email. Don’t just say “Can I get some literature?”. Be exact. Look at the supplier’s Literature web page (sometimes called “Resources”). Call out the titles of the brochure, catalog, or flyer. See my example below.
4. Give Quantities: most sales reps know to call out the number of “pieces” when ordering samples. The same goes for literature requests (ex. “1PC—Full Line Catalog”). Put the quantity next to each title. “Act” like someone the supplier does business with.
5. Ship-To Address in first email: I’ve gotten so many vague lit requests where the person does not leave a ship-to address. Doing this may irritate the marketer on the other end, who now has to follow up. Please, don’t make us work so hard to send you FREE shit. Make your email so complete that I could copy-and paste it, and send on down the line.
6. Act “as if”… without being pushy: when you type that email, imagine you are the supplier’s ideal customer. Also, assume the person you’re addressing is the right person. One easy way to convey this is to never ask a question (like “Who do I go to for literature?”). If you do get push back (such as you need to be a distributor customer) don’t snap back or ask “Why Not?” It’s a waste of effort and puts you on their company poop-list.
7. What’s In It For Me?: remember how I said in commandment #6, to act as if you’re the ideal customer? The best way to do that is be the ideal customer you already are. Got a construction project where you’re trying out the suppliers products? Say it ( even better, mention the project name). If you’re a contractor, engineer, or facility manager, SAY IT, as well as which company you work for.
   
   But what if you suspect you’re not the manufacturers ideal customer? What if you’re a student, a handyman, a DIY’er, a property owner? Well, do you a have friend or family member that’s a contractor, or an engineer? Then say “I’m requesting these on behalf of my uncle who is an electrical contractor.” It’s surprising how often that works.

Note on Commandment #2: sometimes you won’t be able to find general inquiry emails anywhere on the corporate site. This is generally true for really big companies. When you can’t track down that all-important email address, here are three ways to reverse lookup:

1) Open a new browser tab, go to Google.com and type info@[company URL], (do the same with a sales@ alias). There’s a 50/50 chance you’ll uncover a buried webpage or old flyer in the search results confirming a valid email address.

2) Google search didn’t yield any usable email addresses? Try running that info@ or sales@ combination through an email verification site. My favorite free tools are MailTester.com and Email-Checker.net. If these sites return a VALID or UNKNOWN result, type up your email lit request, send, and see if it bounces back.

3) So what do you do when those emails don’t work? Log into your LinkedIn account, look up the company page, and click over to the hyperlink that says “See all _ employees on LinkedIn.”

Scroll through the list of employees. Pluck out names of anyone with a “Sales” or “Marketing” role. Typically, you want someone mid-level, with an “Assistant” or “Coordinator” title. However, if you can’t find anyone mid-level, take a crack at a “Manager”, “VP”, or “Director” title.

So now you have a few names. You can bet the contact’s email alias is probably the company’s URL (if it’s www.xyz.com, they will have an @xyz.com address). In my experience, 95% of corporate email addresses follow one of three patterns:

1. FIRST NAME.LAST NAME@ALIAS
   • ex. Joe.Blow@xyz.com
2. FIRST INITIAL+LAST NAME@ALIAS
   • ex. JBlow@xyz.com
3. FIRST NAME+LAST INITIAL@ALIAS
   • ex. JoeB@xyz.com

Draft your lit request email to each marketing employee, hit send, and see what happens. If your email bounces, try one of the other two variations just listed. One is bound to work.

In my experience, this approach works wonders with large manufacturers. It’s hard to ignore a request when its addressed directly to you!

Email Template for Product Literature Requests

Here is a generic template of the email I used to great success. Go ahead, copy & paste it, and modify to your liking.

Pretty simple template, am I right? You can fire off a dozen of these requests during your lunch hour. Again, if you can’t say you are a contractor or distributor, replace that second sentence (“I work for…”) with mention of a friend or relative who is. For example, “This is on behalf of my uncle, who is an electrician.”

That’s it for now, buckaroo.

Can’t wait to start building your library of free manufacturer’s product literature?

Stay tuned for the next blog post. I will give you the full list of 50+ electrical and lighting manufacturers that I reached out to. This list will include links, phone numbers, and email addresses.

Are you a contractor, engineer, facility manager, or distributor? Do you request product literature directly from you manufacturer? Or do you go through a sales rep?

And if you’re a manufacturer marketer, what does a “good lit request” look like to you?

How important is the pre-frame in your sales pitch or marketing piece?

I recently learned about this little-known psychological technique in Russell Brunson’s book Dot.Com Secrets. As I read about how the pre-frame applies to online sales funnels, it got me thinking about a time it was used on me in a retail setting by a very good watch salesman.

His setup and pitch was so good, in fact, that years later I still have these “ah-ha” moments about why it was so well executed.

If you’re in a sales or marketing role, pre-framing needs to be a big part of your strategy. It may just be the most important part. And it applies to every type of business; not just online marketing and retail.

If you’re new to the concept, Brunson sums up pre-framing as:

“…the state of mind you place someone in as they enter the next step of your funnel. Changing the frame of mind, the mindset, can profoundly change the answer to a question or the experience you have…”

Russell Brunson, DotCom Secrets

In the book, Brunson talks about how he tripled his sales at conferences by playing an “introductory video” before he got on stage. This three minute video was full of testimonials from real business owners, and even celebrity gurus like Tony Robbins. When Russell finally jumped on stage, the audience was “primed” to listen, and his sales started improving consistently after that.

Why did this simple three minute video work so well? Because Brunson could control the frame through which the audience saw his presentation. Before he made the video, his presentations lived or died by how well conference promoters introduced him (and they usually did a shitty job).

Effective Use of Pre-Frame in Trade Show Marketing

I’ve seen pre-framing work to great effect at trade shows. In this setting, manufacturers spend thousands – even millions – of dollars just to stand out from the other riff-raff.

Contractor A stops by our booth, and he picks up one of our brackets. A sales person approaches, attempts to talk-up the product. Contractor A is just not hearing it. He starts turning his body to make a clean getaway. Before he does, Contractor B walks up.

“Hey! Do you know what this bracket does?” Contractor B asks Contractor A. “This has been a game-changer in our shop. It does so-and-so-and-so…”

Contractor A raises an eyebrow, and faces our booth again. He asks for a catalog. He asks about specific applications. He wants to know which distributor to buy from.

Contractor A’s change of mindset had nothing to do with our beautiful flyer. Nothing to do with our salesperson’s expertise. And it had nothing to do with the potential value of the product. Contractor B’s pre-frame did all the work!

In DotCom Secrets, Russell boils down an effective pre-frame into seven critical steps. While these steps refer to online landing pages, you can already see how they apply to literally any selling or marketing environment.

How an expert watch salesman Pre-Frames his pitch, turning “just browsers” into real Shoppers

A few years ago, I walked up to a store called Westime on Sunset Boulevard, which sells high-end luxury watches. I had no intention of buying a watch that day. My plan was to browse for 5 minutes, fantasize about the watch I’d buy if I had the money, then leave.

As I enter the spotless showroom, I see two sharply-dressed sales people at one end of the store; a man and a woman. I move to the opposite end of the store, putting display cases between us, hoping to escape a sales pitch (even a low-pressure one). I’m sure most shoppers can relate.

Pre-frame Phase #1: Determine Traffic Temperature

In Brunson’s method, this is where you gauge the mindset of the prospect. Are they hot, warm, or cold? This should tell you how to personalize the next 6 phases.

The salesman sees me and walks over; a genuine smile on his face. He’s wearing a dashing blue suit with perfect tailoring, a crisp white shirt with a relaxed collar, and no tie. He reaches out to shake my hand, and I catch a glimpse of his a silver watch, twinkling like a disco ball under the track lights.

“Hi I’m Alex,” he said. “How did you find us today?” His delivery was genuine, catching me off-guard. It was a far cry from the usual “is there something I can help you with?” I expect from most retail settings.

“I was just shopping for clothes for my sister-in-law’s wedding. I saw this store and figured I’d stop in for a look.”

“Can I get you a coffee, espresso, cappuccino?” he asks. “It’s on the house.”

“Sure,” I said.

And here’s a subtle move: he asked the female salesperson to fetch the coffee (as if to demonstrate his prestige).

Now I couldn’t go anywhere, cause I was waiting for coffee. Alex asks me more about the wedding and about myself. Where I was from, where I live now, and what I do for a living.

His small talk was sincere. I didn’t hear a trace of a pending sales pitch. Alex was either the worst watch salesman ever, or he was a genius. I couldn’t tell.

Phase #1 Analysis: I was definitely Cold Traffic. From the first few questions, Alex could tell I was not there to buy a watch that day. He could also tell I knew very little about watches. But I did have a life event coming up where I just might be susceptible to “keeping up with the Jones’s”.

Pre-frame Phase #2: Set up the Pre-frame Bridge

In funnel-building, this would be the eye-catching banner ad or PPC link that leads you to a landing page. For Alex, it was gourmet coffee and an offer to try on expensive watches.

The pre-frame bridge can’t be generic. It must be set to the temperature of your traffic.

The saleswoman brings the coffee in a ceramic cup and saucer. She includes a cube of brown and white sugar, and offers a creamer in the other hand. Definitely NOT the Styrofoam cup of mud you get at at the bank, or waiting for an oil change.

“So what type of watch do you see yourself wearing?” Alex asked.

“Well, I like the look of Rolexes. But I think they’re a little played out” I said. “I guess I’d have to say Omegas.”

“Omega is a really solid Swiss brand. Did you know that every part of an Omega watch is still made in the same factory in La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland?”

I did not.

“That’s a big difference between Omega and Rolex. To keep up with demand, Rolex makes up to 2,000 watches a day. To do that, they have to source parts from different factories around the world. So the quality of craftsmanship is actually different from one batch to another. Rolex kind of diluted their brand name by doing that. But then again, a Rolex is still a Rolex in the minds of most buyers.”

Alex went on to talk about Omega’s history of precision timekeeping. It was the official time keeper of the British Flying Corps in 1917. It was also worn by Buzz Aldrin on the Apollo 11 moon mission.

I was very impressed with Alex’s knowledge. He was not only teaching me about watches. He was demonstrating his value as an advocate for discerning watch buyers.

Phase #2 Analysis: based on my temperature, Alex had to extend a Cold Traffic Bridge for me to cross into Phase #3. “This bridge is the longest”, writes Brunson. “You have to do a good bit of preliminary work to get the prospect into a desirable frame of mind before he hits your landing page.” Russel calls Cold Traffic Bridges the “holy grail of online marketing.” It’s easy to convert a Hot or Warm prospect. Most people are terrible at converting Cold prospects.

Pre-frame Phase #3: Qualify Subscribers

This phase applies more to online marketing than it does retail stores. But there are some similarities.

In a sales funnel, this is where certain visitors will exchange their email address for free information. Visitors are “converted” from prospects into warm leads. After they a receive a few marketing messages, some of those leads become buyers.

So how does Alex, the luxury watch salesman, qualify a me as a “subscriber” in a store environment? One way he might do it is to see if I continue to pay attention and stay engaged.

As he let my try on a few Omegas, I started feeling guilty that Alex was “wasting” so much time on me. Did he not sense I was a terrible prospect?

“I really appreciate this. Full disclosure, I don’t actually plan to buy a watch,” I told him. “Not now. Probably not in the foreseeable future.”

If Alex had replied “Oh, okay. Thanks for your honesty,” and then walked away, it wouldn’t have offended me. I might have even been relieved.

“Hey, I understand,” he said. “But since you’re here now, why don’t I show you some of our other Swiss watches? I think you’ll really appreciate their craftsmanship.”

So I take my coffee, and Alex leads me down a hall. We enter a room that looks like a museum, complete with glass cases, sparkling jewelry, oil paintings, and a leather couch.

Alex takes out a gold watch – a Chopard – and lets me try it on.

“This is one of our most expensive time pieces. It goes for around $40,000.” He tells me the history of the brand, their manufacturing process, and how its accuracy compares with Omega.

From there, Alex shows me a variety of Swiss models in quartz and mechanical movements. He explains how some watches are like pieces of art, but don’t keep accurate time. Others are precise time keepers, right down to the milliseconds and leap years.

As I try on each watch, Alex carefully gauges my reaction. He asks “how does this one feel for you?”

With each successive watch, we descended the price ladder until we reached the $2,000 range. He rounded out the tour by showing me some pre-owned watches, as well as a Japanese Seiko that resembled some of the more expensive Omega watches.

Phase #3 Analysis: Alex did not let me off the hook when I said I wasn’t buying a watch. Consumers lie. Their behavior doesn’t. I stayed engaged through the whole 15 minute tour, and I learned a lot about watches. Alex had indeed “subscribed” me.

But could he call my bluff and sell me a watch?

Pre-frame Phase #4: Qualify Buyers

In DotCom Secrets, Brunson writes “…find your potential buyers immediately after you qualify subscribers. Don’t wait a day or a week.” In his own online sales funnels, Russell often entices subscribers with a “free” book. Subscribers are only required to pay $7 shipping & handling. Talk about a low-friction sale!

For our watch salesman, whose products start at $1,000, it made sense to show me the highest price items first, then work our way down. After seeing a $40,00 Chopard, a $2,500 Omega seems like a pretty reasonable price, right?

The watch tour ended and my coffee was done. I shook Alex’s hand and thanked him for my unexpected lesson in chronographs.

“It was my pleasure. As you can tell, I am a big watch nerd. I don’t just do this for a paycheck; its my passion.”

Alex continued, “I want everyone who walks in my store to have a great experience. Even if they don’t buy anything right away.”

With that, he handed me his business card, and off I went.

Phase #4 Analysis: Alex did not sell me a watch that day. Does that mean he’s really a mediocre salesman? Far from it. I was never going to buy a watch that day. He took my temperature, extended the bridge, and subscribed me. I left with his card and – more importantly – a positive and unique shopping experience I’ll never forget.

But let’s say Alex DID manage to sell me a watch that day. What might be his next steps be?

Pre-frame Phase #5: Identify Hyperactive Buyers

Brunson writes that out of the pool of buyers, you want to seek out those few hyperactive buyers. Folks that “are in some kind of pain right now and will buy more than one thing at a time”. He does this by offering another product before the buyer even completes the first sale. Often with at a one-time only discount of some kind.

Had I bought the watch, I’d probably worry about it getting damaged or stolen. Alex could offer some add-ons to relieve my worry, such as an extended warranty or insurance plan.

Pre-frame Phase #6: Age and Ascend the Relationship

Phase #1 through #5 all took place at the initial point-of-sale. At this point, I’ve left the store with my $2,500 Omega watch. How can Alex help guide me to bigger and bigger purchases?

One way is he can use my purchasing information to stay in touch with me. He could send Christmas cards, postcards, or even flyers for new items.

Over the years, I get promoted and now I have more funny money to spend on luxury items.

Life events such as anniversaries and birthdays will come up where I’m open to buying another watch. If Westime plays the long-game with me, they stand a good chance of staying my retailer of choice.

Phase #7: Change the Selling Environment

What happens if I get “stuck” somewhere in the middle of the Value Ladder? Let’s say Alex knows I’ve been eyeing that $40,000 Chopard. I keep making random “visits”, trying on that same watch model. But I never seem to actually buy it.

It could be that no amount of brochures, postcards or Christmas cards will be enough to move me. Here, Alex might resort to calling me instead, where I’ll be more likely to listen to his offer. It might be the right push I need to justify buying that watch.

Conclusion:

So how important is the pre-frame of your sales pitch, seminar, or marketing funnel? It is THE most important thing.

Westime looks at everything that happens during a customer’s experience in the store. They realize it pays to hire a well-trained and motivated sales staff. It pays to keep the store clean at all times, change out light bulbs, and serve gourmet coffee in ceramic cups. They don’t need to spin their wheels on “largest selection” or “lowest prices” like so many other stores do.

When was a time that you experienced the perfect pre-frame? Was it online, off-line, or blended? And how many phases did you cross in the process? Leave your comment below and I’ll reply back.

B2B MARKETER: “What are our big goals for next year?”

BOSS: “Increase Market Share and Expand Growth in East Coast markets.”

B2B MARKETER: “How do we currently measure those things?”

BOSS: ???

If you’re a marketer in the business-to-business (B2B) world, this should sound very familiar.

My theory is there are many business owners out there that kneel at the alter of “Market Share” and “Growth”. Maybe they read these words in Forbes, Fortune, or the Wall Street Journal and go: “gee, those words do sound important.”

But at the end of the day, business decisions still get made with good old “gut feeling”. It’s how we’ve always done things around here...

Have you ever actually tried to track the Return On Investment of your print advertising? Do you go based on what the trade publication gives you in the form of media kits?

In my experience, all those “brand preference” graphs and “recall” surveys for your ads don’t count for much. How can you take an “ad recall” score from one ad in July 2018, compare it to a different ad you ran in July 2019…and gain any kind of meaningful insight?

Maybe you’re saying “Oh come on, Aaron. That’s the print side. Nobody can track that that old stuff. At least on the digital side, we’ve got things like Clicks, Likes, Opens and Shares. Plus there’s lots of cool line graphs. Can’t we use those stats to guide our marketing?”

Well, as Dan Kennedy used to say: “Sure we can use those metrics. So long as its okay for me to pay you in likes and shares.”

So anything you can glean from digital marketing tools out-of-the box is, at best, a signal. And its really easy to confuse a signal with its noise when you have no context.

I’ve struggled with this lack of actionable marketing insight for years. If you are in B2B marketing (especially on the manufacturer-side like I am), it can seem like there’s this giant “Ice Wall” between you and the end-user buying your product through distribution.

“How can I tell which marketing campaign is actually working and worth my company’s investment?”

I don’t know the answers…yet.

But to quote Pike Bishop from The Wild Bunch “What I don’t know about I sure as hell am gonna to learn!”

So if you work in the Marketing department of a B2B firm…if you’re the type that’s not okay with doing things as they’ve “always been done”…if you’ve ever wanted to present a real business case to your boss in REAL $$$ figures he or she will understand…and if you’re determined to crack the “B2B ROI code” like I am, then stay tuned to ebizmarketer.com.

Let’s learn this thing together.

P.S. What B2B market or industry do you work in? What are some of your biggest challenges? Leave a comment and maybe we can write about it in a future post.