If you're not sure how you can follow up on your leads after a networking event, here are a few pointers.

Carrie Simpson, President

November 5, 2014

2 Min Read
Follow up on your own leads
Follow up on your own leads.

Every time I attend an event, I get a huge barrage of calls the following week. If you are sponsoring events to get leads for your CSP, don’t let that investment go to waste. Do not hand off your trade show leads off to a third party for follow up. Do it yourself.

“Carrie, I met 500 people at that event!” You did, I know. Your new prospect, however, only met a handful, and they expect you to remember them. Nothing will turn off an interested buyer faster than a phone call that makes it sound like they weren’t important or memorable.

Here are a few things you can do to make your trade show follow ups easier and more productive:

  • Take a minute at the event to make notes on each person you meet — something that will allow you to reconnect with the prospect and remember who they are. Did you talk about golf at dinner? Did they ask about a specific feature?

  • Use a numeric ranking system and write it on the card immediately after your conversation. Hot prospect? That’s a one. Lukewarm? That’s a two. Cold? Three. Weed out non-prospects and competitors. Yes, you may miss a few leads at the booth because you’re taking notes, but your connections will be stronger.

  • At the end of each event day, sort those cards — ones, twos, threes.

  • Connect with everyone on social media as soon as you can with a personal note.

  • Send all of your “one” leads hand written, hand addressed notes. They are unexpected and always opened.

  • Wait a week. Let the post-show frenzy die down.

  • Now call the ones. When you’re done that, call the twos.Threes go into your drip marketing campaign.

Is there a way you follow up with leads after networking events? When taking notes, what do you consider to be essential information for a follow up call?

Carrie Simpson is founder and CEO of Managed Sales Pros.

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About the Author(s)

Carrie Simpson

Carrie Simpson

President, Managed Sales Pros

Carrie has 20 years of inside and field sales experience. She is the founder of Cold Calls Lead Generation, a business to business sales appointment setting firm. For fourteen years she has helped technology companies sell more, more efficiently. Carrie spent two years building the Managed Services lead generation program at The Eureka Project before founding Managed Sales Pros, a sales cycle acceleration firm that focuses exclusively on the managed services ecosystem. She was named by MSPMentor as one of the 250 most influential people in the technology channel for 2013.

Carrie still cold calls daily. She is responsible for client strategy at Managed Sales Pros and is available for consulting, training and speaking engagements. Carrie’s client list includes MSP industry guru Robin Robins, RMM vendors AVG Managed Workplace and Nable by Solar Winds, Network Security firm OpenDNS, the document management startup ITGlue and emerging and established MSPs from Seattle to New York City.

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