I just finished my third webinar for the National Business Media (NBM) and their exhibitors.  I am still on a high – the presentation and Q & A time was awesome [she humbly thinks].  But I wanted to let you know you can access these webinars for FREE!!  Obtaining the correct information so you can better plan for the trade show activity is critical.

Here are the links to the other two webinars:

• Marketing Your Presence to Attendees: Bringing them to Your Booth

• The NBM Show Webinar: The ROI of Trade Show

Each webinar is about a half an hour in length.  If you have any questions after reviewing them, please let me know.  joycemckee [at] letstalktradeshows [dot] com.

This is a reminder for you to sign up for Lew’s webinar on his new “game changing” application for the iphone.  Below is the description and the link for the sign up form.  I know I will be on the webinar and I hope you will be too.

iLeads Lead Retrieval App Overview

It’s live, brief, and interactive and you’ll have a chance to learn about iLeads directly from Bartizan’s president, Lew Hoff. You’ll quickly see first-hand how iLeads offers the best price, performance, and the most complete lead retrieval solution to improve your trade show results.

• Date: Friday, March 12th
• Time: 2pm (New York, GMT-05:00)
• Run Time: 15-20 minutes
• Presented by: Lew Hoff, Bartizan Lead Retrieval president
• Cost: Free

Register here: http://tinyurl.com/yjem39h

What you’ll learn:

iLeads is a new and better way to collect data and exchange information. In less than five minutes, we’ll walk you through all of the steps required to get the iLeads App up and running.

• Learn how iLeads can help you improve your events
• See the Cost Savings
• Learn this Easy System – No Barcode Required

If you have any questions, please call me, Lew Hoff at 914-375-7981, visit www.Bartizan.com or email me at: Lew@bartizan.com

Please join us so you can determine if this truly is the game-changer we are predicting.

Rick McPartlin and his co-founder Jane Adamson of The Revenue Game produce a monthly newsletters for executives.  The newsletter is called the CEO Challenge.  I want to share almost all of the newsletter since there is a trade show case study.  This should cause some conversation around the water cooler in your office!

Assumption testing has always been important in organizations. Right now, however, it’s more critical than ever. Markets are evolving so fast that the wrong assumptions can be fatal.

Worse yet, an organization’s inability to routinely identify and test assumptions is a cultural defect that can be very difficult to correct.

Case Study

Here’s a simple, true example of how one bad assumption leads to a myriad more. Let’s say that an organization is attending a trade show with the assumption that the best way to succeed is to attract as many people as possible into the booth and get their contact information.

Based on this master assumption – we must attract as many people as possible — the organization makes all of these secondary assumptions:

1. The booth needs to be huge and highly visible.
2. We need sensory devices, contests, premiums and actors.
3. We’d better be a show sponsor so our name is on the program, the walls and the big banners.
4. We’ll need plenty of power, labor and technology in our booth so we can electronically swipe contact information and download the data in order to follow-up with everyone.
5. We need a new booth because it can’t look the same as last year.
6. We need to increase our trade show  budget to X.
7. With this huge budget, the sales team must close $X million in new business from this effort.

This show will now require a significant effort from multiple departments – sales, marketing, finance, operations, and the executive team who banks on lofty results to propel the business toward its quarterly and annual goals.

WHAT IF SOMEONE HAD SPOKEN UP?

What if one person in the organization had been encouraged to challenge the initial master assumption? That person might have brought up these arguments:

Having a lot of traffic in the booth will mean we won’t have time to separate real prospects from tire kickers. We also won’t have time to work with the strategic clients and prospects we’ve invited to the show.

A massive effort to fill our database means lots of pre-show prep and post-show follow-up for a team of sales reps that doesn’t have the resources or budget to absorb an enormous influx of extra work hours.

90% of the names we put in the database won’t be prospective customers, so afterward we’ll need to talk to everyone and find the 10% who are real prospects. This effort will actually reduce sales time with qualified prospects.

We know that 10-20% of the 90% non-customers will ask us to quote or send us RFPs, which will further reduce sales team time to sell strategic prospects. At the same time these extra RFPs will add to the work burden of the various support teams, decreasing their ability to meet their budgets.

Since the post-show marketing program will require a big follow-up effort with limited staff, it will be a long time before we get to the 10% who are the qualified prospective buyers. By that time, many of them will have already bought from someone else. We will be lucky if we can get 33% of that 10% to buy, and we’ll never hit our revenue goals at that rate.

These challenges highlight the fact that “more people” wasn’t the right strategy for the show. And a challenger would have saved the organization many headaches and put millions back into the top and bottom lines. However, since nobody challenged the master assumption, the ramifications negatively affected the company and its strategy for a year.

SOLUTION

If your company’s culture isn’t proficient in identifying, challenging, and testing assumptions … you’re not alone. Therefore, you can gain considerable advantage by evolving into an organization that welcomes and benefits from this kind of consistent, strategic analysis.

ACTION PLAN

1. Make sure your organization supports assumption testing.

There are two tests that demonstrate whether your organization is good at identifying and testing assumptions.

First, when new employees join the organization, find out what they informally learn about the company and its culture. Preferred cultural norms pass from person to person. Listen carefully to what you hear. Are new employees inspired to challenge the status quo? To speak up in meetings? To drive new initiatives? Or are they encouraged to get along and keep their heads low? If there’s any semblance of the latter, you have a serious cultural problem.

Second, observe what gets rewarded and why. When team members question an assumption, what do they receive? A look of annoyance, an eye roll, or a pat on the back? If a company wants a culture that identifies and tests assumptions, it must reward that behavior openly and consistently.

2. Start listening for assumptions. You’ll be surprised by how many are being made.

There are two basic categories of assumptions – those made about the external marketplace and those made about and internal environment of the company. Here are just a few general examples of common assumptions companies make.

External Assumptions

• Who are our best prospects and clients
• What’s happening in markets, organizations, industries
• What our competitors are doing
• What will happen in the economy
• Who our best suppliers and partners are and why
• Which trends are real and the impact they’ll have

Internal Assumptions

• What our strategy is and where we want to be in X years
• How teams, individuals and businesses should be evaluated and rewarded measured
• The purpose for an existing policy, process, or metric
• How the organization and teams should work together
• Roles and impact of different teams and individuals

3. Identify the risks.

In the ideal world, you’d take all of the assumptions from #2 and test each and every one. Unfortunately, that’s not possible or practical. Instead, you can start by requiring that assumptions simply be labeled as such. Separate the known facts from assumptions being made.

How do you implement this step? First, keep a list of assumptions during any important discussion. Then when someone draws on one of those assumptions, ask two important questions:

“What makes you believe that to be the case?” Listen for substantiation. If the answers are vague or hearsay or judgmental, then keep probing.

“If we’re wrong about this assumption, will it cause substantial harm?” If the answer is NO, then move forward, but look for ways to substantiate the assumption in the future. If the answer is YES, then testing is required.

4. Test the most costly, dangerous assumptions.

For those assumptions that will cause substantial harm, focus your team to identify the best and fastest way to uncover the truth and mitigate the risk. The investigation could take numerous forms such as talking to customers or prospects, formal market research, internal surveys, competitive research, “secret shopping,” or even simply asking someone who may have the true facts.

5. Encourage and reward the challengers.

Remember the old adage “Focus on what is right, not who is right.” When there’s a win, credit belongs to the whole team. When there’s a loss, it’s the leader’s fault for not identifying and validating assumptions.

Thus, an important way to encourage challenges is to publicly embrace them. That doesn’t mean you have to engage in long discussion every time someone asks a question, but it does mean that when someone challenges an assumption, it should be labeled, accepted, considered, and appreciated.

It’s also important to establish the difference between negativity and positive assumption testing. Negativity simply shuts down ideas. Positive assumption testing asks questions and forces to the surface thoughtful discussions: What evidence do we have that this is true right now? What will be the result if we’re wrong? What alternatives might we be exploring if this assumption proved false?

Finally, you can include assumption testing as a critical behavior that is expected and discussed during regular performance evaluations. That certainly elevates it from a “tolerated” status to a mandatory action.

6. Identify assumptions (and how you’ll test them) in your annual, quarterly and project-based plans.

Make sure each assumption is clearly identified, and understand how the company will test and react to the results. Then make sure teams are testing and reporting back in real time.

When an assumption is tested and proves to be faulty, don’t punish the team for the original assumption; instead, praise the team for identifying, testing, and preventing expensive mistakes that hinged from that assumption. Point out the importance of the new conclusion and the resulting benefit to the company. The team will now have a new direction based on facts, not assumptions, and that is worth celebrating.

CONCLUSION

Part of the benefit in testing assumptions is greater clarity, completeness and accuracy in cost considerations. Understand why there are different assumptions from different teams, or roles within the company, or from those that impact your success from outside the company (customers, partners and vendors). Understanding their assumptions will help us see gaps, inhibitors, time considerations and cost impacts for all the parties.

We assume you’re going to bring this principle of assumption testing back to your company and put it to work. Is that assumption valid? Let us know!

To get a hold of Rick McPartlin, contact him at rick.mcpartlin@therevenuegame.com.  If you want to subscribe to their blog click here.

This is an experiment – I am planning on hosting weekly webinars where I and my trusted colleagues will answer your marketing questions, especially around experiential marketing.  Here is my personal invitation:

Please plan to join me on Friday March the 5th at 3 PM. It will be a fluid, spontaneous time solely to answer your questions.  Here is the link to the webinar registration form.  Look forward to hosting this FREE event!!

We will analyze the results of this experiment to see if this should be an ongoing weekly event.  March is the test month, if all goes well I will continue it.

Recently I have had a couple of unexpected but delightful phone calls which have left a lasting impact on me.  Let me share the story about one of those calls.

My colleague Mike Courtney from Aperio Insights had recommended that I check out SlideRocket.  I wanted to dramatically upgrade the way I was presenting material via PowerPoint.  My uses for clever PowerPoint presentations that engage and keep the interest of webinar attendees is now paramount.  My webinars schedule is growing!!  And I like sharing content via this communication tool.

So last week-end I signed up for a 30 day FREE trial on SlideRocket and started my education of this service.  There  are a couple of features right off the bat I am thrilled with, like having all my PowerPoint presentations in one place and then being able to easily scan all my pictures.  I watched one of the tutorials on how to use the service and started to “play” with it.

Continuing the word of mouth: on Monday I sent an email to one of my clients about this service wanting to spread my good experiences, thus far.   My client produces online education for their exhibitors and advertisers and I felt they needed to review this service for future webinars.

Blown Away

On Tuesday of this week, I receive a call from David Hershenson, Director of Sales for SlideRocket!!!  He is calling me to see how my experience with the product is coming along.

Now I need to share with you the times I have tried to find support or someone to talk with regarding other products and services I have PURCHASED and had mountains of difficulty navigating that path.  So here I am on Day 4 of a trial and receive a call – well it really rocked my world.

David and I had a great chat.  I gave him a lead for someone else who should know about this product and he provide a direct link for further education on their site.  We now have a relationship established.  If I need something, I know who I can call and that leaves me feeling very comfortable.  So if I have some issues or challenges with the service [operator error, you know] I am one phone call away for assistance.

The Business Loss of Poor Customer Service

Every day it seems there are stories of BAD customer service.  Either we read about it or hear the horrible tales from our friends.  So it was not a surprise when I saw this research brief.  In a recent email from the Center for Media Research, they shared this:

Genesys, with research firm Greenfield Online and Datamonitor/Ovum analysts, measuring the cost of poor customer service in the U.S., found that enterprises in the U.S. lose an estimated $83 billion each year due to defections and abandoned purchases as a direct result of a poor experience. Nearly two-thirds of consumers said they had ended a relationship due to customer service alone. The survey participants said that when they end a relationship, 61% of the time they take their business to a competitor.

Have You Talked to Your Customers Lately??

We all can learn from SlideRocket’s sales playbook and assess the impact of a call during a potential customer’s trial period.  For me, they have won me as a customer and via my word of mouth a whole lot of other customers.

So it leaves me thinking, who do I need to call and check in with them on my services????  What about you?

Now I believe you all know that Bartizan is a current client of mine, so there is some bias in my words.  However, other trade show industry experts are calling Lew Hoff’s new product – game changing!!  I couldn’t agree more.

Lew is offering a FREE webinar on March the 12th and I want my audience to be aware of it so you can attend this event.  Here is his invitation:

iLeads Lead Retrieval App Overview

It’s live, brief, and interactive and you’ll have a chance to learn about iLeads directly from Bartizan’s president, Lew Hoff. You’ll quickly see first-hand how iLeads offers the best price, performance, and the most complete lead retrieval solution to improve your trade show results.

Overview Demo: iLeads Lead Retrieval App

Date: Friday, March 12th

Time: 2pm (New York, GMT-05:00)

Run Time: 15-20 minutes

Presented by: Lew Hoff, Bartizan Lead Retrieval president

Cost: Free

Register here: http://tinyurl.com/yjem39h

What you’ll learn:

iLeads is a new and better way to collect data and exchange information. In less than five minutes, we’ll walk you through all of the steps required to get the iLeads App up and running.

-Learn how iLeads can help you improve your events

-See the Cost Savings

-Learn this Easy System – No Barcode Required

If you have any questions, please call me, Lew Hoff at 914-375-7981, visit www.Bartizan.com or email me at: Lew@bartizan.com

Please join us so you can determine if this truly is the game-changer we are predicting.

My dear colleague, Rich Erschik and I are having a rousing discussion about leads and how to ensure every trade show lead is follow up!!!  That discussion will be in the form of a webinar.  It is scheduled for February 25th at 2 PM (CST).

Lead follow up has been the Achilles heel of event marketing.  There are statistics out there that “say” up to 80% of trade show leads are NEVER followed up on by the sales teams.  So if you are an event marketer, how can you differentiate yourself and show your management that you have a plan in place to follow up ALL trade show leads.

If you need help with that “PLAN” – attend our webinar.  Details of it can be found here.

Yes there is a fee for this event.  However, we have some valuable enticements, like Rich’s examples of lead response documents  - fulfillment documents for lead qualification.  This normally is sold as part of a training program for $1,500 and you all will get it as a gift for attending the webinar.

This webinar is absolutely packed with actionable information and we guarantee your satisfaction.  Take a look at the invitation and determine if it is right for you.

If you have any questions, email me: joycemckee [at] letstalktradeshows [dot] com.

Some help filming the promotional piece from Ember – ahe is excited about the webinar – too!!