I think it is recording okay okay great so let's start uh thank you everyone for uh joining our podcast the field uh in our seventh episode first I would like to welcome suban Jan thank you very much for your time dialing in all the way from India yeah Bangalore if I'm mistaken or Mumbai was it I'm in Bangalore Bangalore okay so before we start we always would like to do an introduction first of all about LIF life the organization that runs this podcast uh LIF life basically we are a group of event strategists we help Brands especially B2B to strategize their in-person customer experience so usually it's at marketing events or sponsored events such as exhibition now this podcast is called the feel for two reasons the first one because it's an abbreviation of the future of event experience and learning and then the second because we feel it's very important to actually design The Experience so that our audience feel something towards our brand towards our product now entering the seventh episode we have h suban s sarar I'm not I hope I'm not butchering your family name here okay now I would like like you to do a very quick self introduction so that people know who you are and what do you do huh so uh Mike uh first thank you for inviting me to this series uh I think you are having some really uh interesting guests who are sharing uh very uh actionable and and I would say mind opening ideas right so those of us who are interested in trade shows uh I think have a lot to gain from what you are doing so congratulations uh and thank you for for asking me to join you on this uh session um my background has been in the cusp of technology and media so I started the first technology show on television in India way back in 1996 uh it went on to become a prime time show which I hosted on CNBC India for about 3 years um thereafter I sort of took a break I made some films one of which was a national award winning film uh as executive producer uh and thereafter I built a few SAS products one of which we may get a chance to talk about today uh in the process I do have three us patents for the technologies that I developed uh yeah and that's pretty much it wow you're a man of many talents yeah doing several things than I didn't know that part where you actually became a filmmaker we can talk about it totally separately now um as one of our I would say tradition uh we would have our last guest to actually ask question uh as you know the last guest was actually Lee Ali so he had a question so the question is what gets attendees hook and want to learn more what would you say to them that makes them get hooked so that they keep on coming back for more see uh there's a short answer but I'll go with a little background to this uh I think uh trying to qualify somebody in a three-minute conversation is similar to trying to make a cold call and trying to do a qualification and then ask them to come for a uh for a discovery call which the other person knows and we'll talk about this later other person knows is so that you can qualify them rather than the other way around and and that doesn't work so we'll come back to that I would genuinely think simply asking them what brings you to this stade show is a great way to begin a conversation which might give you the opportunity to learn about what is motivating them at the moment and then figuring out what you can tell them which will be of value to them which will help them single you out as a different kind of salesperson in a booth than the rest that they're likely to meet who will straight away get into a sales pitch so the question is what brings you to the trade show right at the end it goes back to the audience we need to understand where where they coming from and at the same time what are their needs we can assume but still asking is the best uh policy yes yes okay um and at the same time we always want to know about our host a little bit better right so before we actually dive in into the meet the topic itself following up exhibition lead can you share with us some interesting thing about yourself that most people uh do not know absolutely I I am extremely interested in and fascinated with the world of circus the world of circus yes as a child I was I was fascinated those days there were animals so we had the the Tigers and horses and elephants and and and hippopotamuses of the world uh but since then obviously rightfully the world of circus has changed uh it's no animals anywhere in the world today uh except for some hidden places which I don't know of about and I don't really want to know um I became an early a fan of SLE and uh and and I was fascinated by how guy libert you know from from being street performers of Canada built a $2 billion Revenue circus company I mean this is something these numbers don't just add up in my head you know um of course they have now sold themselves to a a larger Corporation and I must tell you um Mike you know that I was in Vietnam a few days back right and and I actually found out uh a performance uh of what they called uh th Dar uh by Lon Productions and and and that's the famous bamboo circus of Vietnam this was in hyan and and we along with all my family we went and watched and it was fascinating I see if I may ask what's really fascinating about it well their props were really simple they were literally bamboos and coracle boats and stuff like that and it was like a mesmerizing one hour performance of people using bamboos rolling on a structure they built with bamboo and a and a round boat and and with their body momentum they they have that thing going all around the so basically there's a boat and there Bo and and there are bamboos coming out into into sort of a conical thing which is on the stage and this thing is moving right and they're inside that they're on top of that they're on the bamboo sticks and they're like playing around with that it it was great yeah I must have required a lot of practice here to do that absolutely absolutely and I did talk to them later and they said that one of the founders of Lon production actually uh worked with sir dusel I see I see interesting now let's uh go into the history of how you got into B2B sales and exhibition what's the story or is it related to Circus as well no not at all I mean it is a circus anyway the world is a circus you know the world is a circus we the world is a circus and we are all clowns I mean but that's that a part agree totally agree um so basically we set out to solve a big problem with pitch link and and so there's a two- part to this question so B2B sales and B2B trade show sales have absolutely similar features of in terms of problems they're literally identical it is it's literally behaviors in B2B sales get uh sort of you know you know copied into our behavior when we are in in a booth it's pretty much the same thing that we try to do uh so so the problem with B2B sales and we'll get into details as we go go forward was that we wanted to start by asking for something from our Prospect we don't know whether they are buyer we want something from them what is it that we want we want time we want time we want to set a meeting that's the objective of 99% of cold calls and cold mails give us a meeting so that I as a salesperson can qualify you Mike whether I can sell to you or not which means we are going to now apply band do you have budget do you have authority do you have this do you have that it's all about me interesting and we all know it's not working and we still want to do that at scale so cold calling is not working so get Robo calls so that you can make more calls cold email is not working get AI to write mails so our whole thrust is not about addressing the core issue of why people are not engaging but doing more of what is not working so that somewhere in the average it works out that is quite I would say a fundamental problem yeah yeah instead of focusing on the quality focusing on the efficiency yeah so and and this this this is something which is not new it's not a 2025 issue this has been this manifestation has started way back in 1990 what happened in 1990 many things happened but the first thing that happened was people figured that the buyer's journey is not the same as the sellers journey and I can tell you the sellers linear Journey has remained the same in the last 30 years where it started the salesperson was the biggest source of information to the prospect the salesperson walked in and brought information about what the competitor is doing of what new technology has come like everything else internet has made that irrelevant right I see so so coming back to pitching what we what what we are doing is we thought that we have to stop asking for a meeting and instead give them information which will make them interested to talk to us right right and we buil this platform where you can actually share content you can make it personal and you can also have conversation right there which is contextual so I'll not get into the details of that but that's what we built and as we were working working on this we thought that can we sort of zoom into a place where getting this meeting is not the criteria so that was straight shows we are already having the meeting we are face to face it's not even Zoom it's not even uh you know you know Google meet you are in front of me and we wanted to zoom in and see what's going on there sadly we don't value that face to face at all we want to quickly go through it we quickly in that mindset is Mike going to buy from me today and if not I will try to get rid of you quickly because you're asking me too many questions because I want to move on to the next guy standing next to and see whether he's going to buy from me today we are all narrow focused on who is going from going to buy from us today interesting interesting and that is ruining that is ruining the fundamentals we all talk about don't practice of of business building relationships building trust ask for ask any leader what is the fundamental of doing a transaction build relationship build trust two things will come up again and again and again you ask them the next question what is your team doing to build relationships zilch what are you doing to build trust zilch so we in this part of what you know your post today sometime back you said does a chain smoker not know that uh he he will be his health will be impacted of course they do but they still don't stop same problem we are all humans what we do there we do here right right it's a it's a reflection of a bigger problem interesting I'm going to play a devil's advocate uh probing into what you said a bit more uh which is okay uh definitely I understand where you're coming from we need to uh start a conversation start a again correct me if I'm wrong if I'm if I'm not paraphrasing it right we have to start a genuine conversation in this case in trade shows with our booth visitors a genuine conversation just like what you mentioned to get to know them better but at the same time I'm going to play a devil's advocate there's so let's say this uh B2B exhibition has 10,000 visitors definitely out of those 10,000 visitors there are those that are more relevant that are there are those that are less relevant we have limited time and we have limited resources I'm going to jump a bit right how would you recommend us juggling or should we just entertain everyone who passes by everyone who visit our booth what are your thoughts okay there it's it's multiple level one is that the list of attendees are the prized position of the organizers okay 90% of the organizer will not want to share that list with anybody yeah however if the exhibitor is not getting Roi the organizer is not going to able to sell spaces for many years to that exhibition okay so it's important that this the effort starts right there that pre-event if we can actually reach out to the to the attendees and and and some of the some of the registration actually asks them those questions right what are you coming for What are the areas of interest that you have and so on and so forth that data needs to be pursed and should be shared for the relevant portions to the relevant uh exhibitors and pre-event I would say marketing but actually setting up of appointment should be carried out so that out of the 10,000 all 10,000 are not coming for the same thing they all come with different objectives unless you are having a single product event which is very very rare for example lean construction right so where everything everybody is practically selling the same thing but most most events are not like that for the rest I may come to an event for something I want you may come for something completely different we may have some commonalities and so on and so forth right people come to look for things that they're already looking for people come to look for things which are ahead of time so that they know what's going on in the what is a trend and they're also coming to network with friends and and and known people MH so first thing that we need to do is ensure that those who are interested in our product know that we are there and give them priority for for meetings that's number one number two I really think there should be uh sit down engage M system okay so what I mean by that is I think that there should be appointment setting system in every Booth which will ask what do you need and then say okay this is the best person our expert in this area and he's available at 2:45 tomorrow afternoon we can give you a 15 minute slot to talk to him and ask all your questions I have not seen that happen anywhere yet it's like anama ask me anything session for each Booth because they have that expertise and the organizer facilitate that Booth based appointment with the audience based on their registration data correct correct okay because see your question was 10,000 people how do we prioritize at the same time we are like you and me we are talking about helping exhibitors Drive the right people to their Booth it's not that 10,000 are actually coming into the booth maybe the wrong maybe the wrong 500 are coming to the booth that's possible in fact we we are responsible because I can I don't know whether I told you that that example A friend of ours sponsored a very large Tech uh I'll not mention the names but a very large Tech conference I I might have mentioned this to you and they spent $75,000 sponsoring that event okay and this this was this was in in in the US and they had a giveaway so I spoke to them the day the event ended they said we have 1,400 uh you know leads for the lack of a better word obviously they were not leads sounds good but not so good okay now one year down the line I I have I had multiple discussions in between the the result end of one year okay the the first thing they told me after a month is that oh you know what actually about 70 odd are relevant to us and that balance 1330 came only for the swag okay of that 70 they had seven conversations going six months down the line and one conversation which might convert to a $50,000 order after one year still not converted so this whole thing is again about moving a lot of people through your doors by doing a b c d and there there are lots of things being done suggested and I'm I have nothing I'm not being judgmental about that by the way I I understand the need to do that but the point is it is not about how many people come to your booth how many relevant people come to your booth who will buy this squad next quarter the following quarter next year and how you manage each of these over this period so that you can actually sell and not your competitor right uh I would like to Branch out two questions before I ask the second question I'm going to dive slightly deeper here you mentioned you haven't uh seen an uh an exhibition organizer who proactively or successfully uh help exhibitors to actually drive relevant leads to pass by their Booth to know their Booth or even ask question or scheduled an a ask me anything session to their Booth right why do you think that's the case is it they don't they don't see theyve never thought about it or theyve thought about it but they decided not to do it for whatever reason or they do it but they do it uh creating a SP additional sponsorship package and it makes the exhibitor probably hesitate what do you think seems to be the reason why because that idea sounds great of course sounding and implementing there's a gap but what why do you think exhibitor exhibition organizers do not do that uh M honestly I mean I can only speculate because I'm not organizer right my primary feeling is that organizers are overtly conscious about the database that they they have uh and by the way I can tell you 60% of these databases are available in the dark web I can literally go and buy the attende the list of CES this year if I want oh oh I didn't know that okay yeah I mean everything is for sale right okay okay but anyway I mean I don't no no obviously these are stolen data basis so obviously you would not want to use it but it it is it is possible okay um but having said that I have a feeling that because the organizers value this so much they will like you said the last point you made they are possibly wanting to sell it as a add-on and exhibitors who are paying $500 for a TV and $300 for two extra PLU points are reluctant to spay that additional money this is my gut feeli I I may be completely wrong okay um I would not say they have not thought about it I would I think they have thought about it otherwise why would they in the in the registration ask for those details I'm I'm quite certain that they have thought about it and some of them may have a mechanism of sharing it also so this is not what I was saying I have not seen this p may be playing out in some form or the other what I've not seen is the conscious uh effort to set appointments where people can peacefully talk to this the the booth sales guys and not like a cursory as I'm walking by I'll go in and talk and then go I see I see okay okay uh for the second question which is the conversion rate you you mentioned of course it it depends there's so many factors at play can be whether people attending the exhibition are what the exhibitors are looking for how well the design and the copy of the booth in capturing attention how well they're engaging it following up there so many factors but I keep on hearing the ridiculously low conversion rate for B2B sales including I assume uh it trickles down to trade show as well why do you think is the reason of such and should we if I were exhibiting right if I want exhibit should I expect that to be the norm or should I set a higher standard for myself so it's a two-prong question why do you think is the reason and at the same time is that something that we just have to resign to it set something very low I don't know 2% 3% what are your thoughts okay so there are many many issues actually but I'll start with the end I do not think by any stretch you should think that 1% or 2% is the right conversion rate I think really what you have to think of is the size of your the ticket size of your product or service and what you're investing in in in the trade show in the booth and your people and your equipment and shipping it and so on and so forth and what is is a reasonable outcome from that okay so so there maybe in some cases if you close one deal which is like a million dollars that may be that may be it that that may be fine okay uh coming back see I think the way the exhibition the B2B trade show pans out I if you see the budget is only by marketing yep people manning the booth are from sales okay you you sort of sometimes marketing as well but yeah sales not really not really I mean un I mean okay marketing is there but they're not really selling at best they're demoing some stuff okay they're not in the transaction mode okay from what what I know look there can be exceptions obviously of course of course um so broadly the same Marketing sales dysfunction that exists in the rest of the organization just carries through over here okay which is why even Lee mentioned and I I will also REM mention that that 60 to 70% of Booth visitors never get a followup never you imagine you imagine that somebody walked into your booth unless you of course you disqualified him as a person oh he's never going to buy our product although I can give you examples from real life where somebody like that has actually recommended you to somebody else who has bought from you so you never because you have been so good you have been so good you have you have said you know what you don't need this but in this exhibition I know of three companies who can do what you need if you want if you come back whenever I have a little time I can walk you there or I can tell you where they are you do that this guy is never going to forget you but we'll come back to that later so the point I'm making is it's not that people don't know I think the dysfunction continues uh somebody owns the budget somebody is executing so so it's it's it's a big mess because I am talking I'm scanning the badges then I go and give all the visiting cards and the badge scan to the marketing for them to start the followup I don't follow up with them because I now get busy with my day-to-day stuff and only the really important ones which I which which I have spoken about I I try to reach back to them and that to Without Really the reference to what we discuss but more to start the conversation all over again which is a complete uh put off for the other guy so it is like it it is like completely sort of messed up literally you're mixing things up back and forth into a simple linear process and many multiple people you're creating multiple Fishers and multiple places where the drop ball can be dropped mhm and that's what happens right especially uh this people they go back to their daily operations like what you mentioned salese they still have uh call people to call leads to call to follow up to send emails sometimes they get lost into their busyness now do you think it's also because sales and marketing dat what's your observation do you see based on your experience do you do you see it as a common practice or seldom that sales and marketing sit to strategize not only the booth engagement but also the followup how to how to do it do you see it as a common practice or they don't really plan it or they plan it but they're not executing it well I'm just trying to understand where is the big most common it's it's a it's it's a great question and I would say that it's it's really uh uh divided amongst all those there are companies who do that especially the large ones who completely Outsource their uh event participation to external outsourced agencies there it is much easier for them to hold them accountable than your own people okay because your own people has multiple other things going on okay okay so so they do sit down but a lot depends upon who you finally send to the booth right and that's always tricky okay so so your question was do I see sales and marketing actually coordinating yes they do but not everywhere not always okay and they can be they can be working at Cross purposes also okay uh sales may be wanting to do something in a certain way but the but but the marketing will block it two steps down the line because they didn't agree with that process okay okay so I mean I cannot give you specifics because that might expose uh you know certain things but my point is that by no means is it a universal practice where sales and marketing sit together strategize there are the usual things right right so if the booth design is coming both sales and marketing has to sign off right uh if a if a campaign has to be driven before the event on on LinkedIn or Facebook or wherever possibly marketing does it alone and sales is not involved okay so so there are usual uh allocation of activities which is again carried forward into the trade show space as well so what you do otherwise you do here as well right right but but the actual expense of setting up the booth and buying the booth space and so on that budget to my mind rests with the marketing it's not with sales okay what sales pays for is sending in the people and many of times the best people are not necessarily there okay okay so it's it's the whole SDR story all over again where sdrs who are the Frontline Junior most people are entrusted with the job of calling up a CEO or a cxo or a VP of sales or a VP of procurement or whatever and their job is to convince this guy that they should come for a meeting you you see the problem okay so it's the same thing happening here possibly decision makers of are walking the walking the aisles of trade show the people facing them are not necessarily the best sales guys that you have I see I see and the last part I want to touch before we go to the next question what about do you feel uh not in St do you think one of the reasons is also because there is no coherent or discipline tracking of how those leads are being follow up and the result being tight to the ROI of the event so I'll give you an example so I'll give you an example if I have leads and those leads already exist from whatever marketing campaign which is advertisement and what have you right then of course on the CRM it'll be taged to a certain campaign and I'll follow it up based on me work in corporate before there's no deadline to it but when you strategize an event goal ideally you have a deadline for when you want to measure the event goal whether it's achieved or not or else it will be until perpetuity I exhibit right now oh I managed to do the sales 20 years later suban oh that's a good Roi no I have to cut it right unless I cut it one year and then the tracking on the CRM actually links to the campaign and track it for for one year then I see the result then it'll just be a floating leads I don't know whether I'm making sense here do you see it as one of the reasons why probably I don't know what you call it a lack of tracking or a lack of accountability or a lack of assigning it as a potential Roi to the event because there's no clear timeline what are your thoughts um we're getting a bit specific but yeah yeah no no that's fine that's fine so so my my thought on this would be it's not that the ROI is not defined but ROI ROI gets defined and Justified uh the way it sort of makes sense so that's a floating definition okay okay so we oh we had 100 people and we we uh we built a pipeline of so much or we got 500 people and we did a great brand building exercise so so people spin it the way they want according to me there is no fixed kpi or or expectation or outcome defined before they go in and and like Lee was saying lot of times people come in simply because the competitors are there okay so why you you are going to a event is nebulous because that's very convenient for everybody involved so that the outcome can also be nebulous it's like saying what you mentioned just now your friend again not singling him out if he were to use he I got 1,400 leads and out of each leads usually the conversion is 50% and out of the each leads usually the average transaction is 30,000 so assuming is 50% I already I will be expecting an Roi of this much is a successful event but because it's not clearly defined so it doesn't really hold water can I say that yeah absolutely absolutely right I see I see and and and Mike it is not see that's what I'm trying to say it is not specific to events this is a malice which is there from the border organization what we are going to do a campaign in LinkedIn we are going to do a campaign there we going to do this we're going to do that we're going to do a webinar it is nebulous everything is nebulous okay there is no hardcore okay if we don't get this then we are not going to repeat this very little of that happens very little of that happens I see I see so it seems to be working probably some of them they also have this fear if we don't do this event then there not there will not be opportunity or possibility to generate sales so let's just do it even though we're still unclear I think sometimes that fear also exist yeah yeah yeah absolutely okay absolutely it's the same thing as my competitor is going to be there how can I not be there it doesn't matter it doesn't matter whether we sell or not but we have to be there our face has to be out there for more for more and at the same time the formal is also being perpetuated by the event organizer absolutely abolutely okay now uh we talk about the problem we dive deeper into the problem we uh try to map out the potential root causes of course it can be a combination right now definitely B2B sales have a problem I I I'm also still learning uh to to improve it how do you think we should we should we should approach this problem so that so we start getting much better result instead of one or two% what are some of your recommendations how to approach this problem effectively see let's let's break it down what is it that we want we are going there to sell more of our products or we are going there to build our brand or we are going for both and the other thing we are going to we are also going there for is our customers are coming to that they are going to meet other competitors I should rather be there and ensure that my relationship with them continues in a good state right these are these are the the these are the four four things we go to a event for okay unlikely to have a Fifth Dimension now my feeling is that we are overfocused on the look and feel of the booth that's a great thing but it's sort of like being in Disneyland you know beyond the point all the rids start to look the same right so there's only so much you can you know something interesting I should tell you Mike I don't know whether I told you so last year yes uh between Toronto Calgary San Francisco and Los Angeles okay I attended a bunch of events and I personally interviewed 200 exhibitors and 200 attendees interesting okay okay B2B yeah B2B all of them tell me now I asked the attendees in that particular event which Booth stood out to you H none okay oh was there a salesperson a conversation you had which was different from the rest of the conversations which again my idea is to probe them to see what stood out okay none none wow that's extreme what was the most interesting interesting thing that happened in this exhibition okay oh I met a friend I had not met for 3 years three years 7050 right now Ju Just think about that for a moment and I may say it is exaggerated say that if I spoke to thousand people maybe 10 person would have said okay that particular person was good or that particular Booth was nice because my sample is not very large right across six seven exhibitions if I'm talking 200 it's like 20 30 per exhibition so it's it's not really very large so let's let's keep that in mind attendees are not having great ex great experiences at trade shows that is a fact okay so we can talk of how to make it great how to increase the Serendipity how to you know entertain them so that they remember my two sents over here is are are they coming there for a concert or are they coming there to get some work done I I'm I have nothing against I have nothing against concerts by the way or or a great party time in the evening that's fine but is that why they came in the first place no they came there with some specific objectives have we found out those objectives has those objectives been fulfilled I'm yet to see a report on that so my my point is that if we start with the attendee and try to understand if there are 10,000 attendees what each of those people have come to that exhibition for and are able to deliver them that everything else becomes cherry on the cake after that which is great I think our focus and and this is not a problem that we IU as as consultants or or people who are building technologist can do because lot of this has to come from the discussion of the triar of organizer exhibitor atende unfortunately the attendees have no organization so these two have exhibitors have their organization organizers have their organization attendees are you know free agents they're sort of there to fend for themselves but there has to be of course iae released a a series of research which I mean Nancy drao my latest episode if you have checked she she talks about those six uh attende related uh research uh data and the highlights of that uh which are which are quite interesting and and and uh eye openening but they don't have a seat at the table which decides what is working and what is not so going back to your question I think the the real Crux is to identify individual needs and fulfilling them pre during and post event I think that's that's the Crux of what we need to do to make Roi for everybody the organizer the the exhibitor and the attendee if if it is very simple Mike if we focus on the attendee everybody's bread is buttered you focus anywhere else it's not going to work what you said uh I don't believe in Serendipity but anyways what you said is exactly what I I was thinking several days ago I wanted to create a Content but didn't have time I was what you said just now if I were to summarize it again might not be doing Justice with the depth that you go into attendee do not have any organization because most of the time they go there because I think I should go there I think this is interesting I think this might be a cute product I think the speaker is uh of influential but they don't really plan their attendance they don't really plan the value of what they can get if an organizer can actually help attendee to share here are the things that you can gain from this event in terms of content what you get to learn content might be knowledge content might be product uh social the people that you get to meet with their profile and at the same time you might feel this way and if and if those can actually be designed such so the attendee can actually plan their journey and evaluate it afterwards I think that would be amazing because by doing that then they get to learn from that feedback from the attendee what seems to resonate what doesn't seem to resonate which speaker which Booth which product which topic and becomes a continuous ref finding can I say that yeah absolutely absolutely absolutely fascinating fascinating now um I want to inch closer to an example but before we go there so if you were to uh give some bullet points right great B2B sales engagement as you mentioned is similar whether it is outside of trade show and within trade show because it it it does mirror the behavior it's just that the space is constrain within the trade show right but the behavior should be similar what do you think are the I would say the do probably you can you can share the don'ts as well the do so uh from an exibitor point of view by the way yeah yeah yeah absolutely absolutely we are all talking from that because that that's the fulcrum on which this is revolving because they they're footing the bill to start with right yes yes um so I think a a clear methodology to understand the attendees need should be the first thing that we need to [Music] do our ability and willingness to help them even if they appear to be not our customer I will go to the extent like I was telling just a moment before I'll go to the extent is that I as a salesperson I would map the entire exhibition in advance not only me the entire exhibition and I should be prepared to tell him you know what you should visit given what you're saying obviously you have come to the right place and I'll tell you what we do and what how we can help you but you should also visit Booth 7 boot 23 and boot 101 because these guys also have some amazing stuff which you'll find useful mhm that is how you build trust MH when you recommend somebody else not you H that so so understanding the customer understanding why they're there and what somebody may come and say you know what I I'm not here to buy anything it looks like you are doing something interesting and this is my company and I just want to figure out is this something which can be useful for us say 6 months 12 months down the line that's great because now you're in a position to get into that conversation 12 months in advance before any of your competitors figure out MH what are we doing Mike we are doing cold calling cold mailing why because we don't want to invest time in relationships which will give us the seat at the table instead we want to get into the get into the room at the point of activity but they don't understand that at that point I neither have the time to build relationship nor build trust the only thing I can play on is money which is cost only way at that moment I can become relevant is but if I have a identical product and I say I'll sell it to you for less then you are in a commodity business that's fine it's like going to going and participating in an auction I'm selling rice 20 other people are selling rice I walk into that and I say okay I'll give you for 5 rupees less and that that's how I get the deal you you get totally which actually is what I've been thinking in terms of Ideal I I have this Theory right again I'm not saying that I know 100% but I have this theory that ideally the exhibition organizer ideally the exhibition organizer because they have the audience they have been organizing this event for quite a while they have a certain understanding of the audience I would say but feel free to disagree I want to hear your thoughts ideally the exhibition organizer what they want to do is sell the boot to exhibitors right if I were the exhibition organizers before even the event is fully designed the speaker I would talk to the potential exhibitor hey this is our next addition we're thinking of doing this theme what are your thoughts with your audience right who are the speakers that you think would be great here how do you think we should design it differently because if I were the exhibition organizer if I if I were to include the exhibitors beforehand and they will feel hurt instead of just like what you said the booth is the the the theme is is completed the main keynote speaker is is done the concept is done I just want you to buy my product versus the first approach where I talk to you I might not be following your approach but I want to listen you as the exhibitor because in this case uh the the the event organizer become the exhibitor the exhibitor becomes the visitor it's a similar uh what they call it um Dynamics and by doing this the insights about the target audience from the exhibition organizer and the exhibitor will form a clearer view what are your thoughts about that again feel free to disagree no no I I think these are all part of the same same process this is all part of the same process see the the the the problem I think is that we all look at these as transactional right and we do not want to invest the kind of time and energy that is required to fine tune things I mean we we we may think even it's a problem I go and ask my 100 exhibitors everybody gives a different name then the names I don't accommodate they become unhappy okay let me not ask anything to anybody simple this this is what I've got are you guys interested these are great we know what we are doing we know the best experts we have we are getting them in so so so the dependence of of the exhibitor on the organizer is also very high because they know that they on themselves they will not be able to get a big name but the organizer because they are they they can go and get somebody so so so it it is like the unwillingness to collaborate mhm and which is why we do not collaborate with our customer also we talk about co-creation but show me three companies who have co-created products in the last 10 years I mean it's all good to talk about Community we have all all read uh belonging to a brand okay we understand Nike does it they do it I mean these are all very far I mean like like like Standalone examples you know what I mean these are exceptions these are outliers you can't show out it's like saying you know what Bill Gates was a Dropout Steve Jobs was a Dropout so to create a great company you must be a Dropout that that's the biggest lie you can tell anybody right right tot totally totally understand oh we're going to extend this by 10 minutes because there are some things we want to dive deeper is it's really really fascin fascinating now one of the things that uh we talk about during the session with Lee is the is the transition the transition between the uh Booth visitors coming to the booth having a conversation you know uh and and and based on our understanding for their needs doing the follow-up that transition right what do you think is the current state of that transition whatever you call it follow up and what have you right yeah so again these stats are well known uh I told you that I I've spoken to 200 exhibitors as well uh so typically less than 3% of them send out a mail immediately from the booth itself less than 10% less than 5% wow so they send out like you come to the booth they immediately send out a mail hey thanks for hey Mike thanks for coming to our booth and there'll be possibly a PDF with some high level like a brochure yeah it have no reference to what discussion you had okay okay okay for the balance any response will be from 5 to 7 Days First Response same response thanks for coming to our booth here is a brochure but it'll take 5 to 7 days after the exhibition they go back and then it is sent out by the marketing for the rest it'll be 14 days before any response goes out okay and if you remember what Lee quoted and I quoted 60% to 70% will not even do that so this is going to happen for the 30% that will do [Music] it so to summarize 30 to 40 % of exhibitors will respond immediately in 7 days or in 14 days 30 to 40% okay 60% don't respond at all they don't follow up they don't do anything so when we say that it's not a zero sum game obviously they follow up with five or 10 or 15 people with whom they think something can move forward but there is no constructive effort to keep engaging with people who came to their booth in the first place H and thereby they lose the entire long-term momentum and by the way Mike you just said that I can cannot keep it open indefinitely for 20 years that's correct a lead can't be open I I agree I agree but it is not even one year in some cases there are many B2B uh products where the sales cycle is 18 months 2 years the point is are you having continued meaningful conversation which shows that the person is engaged they are also moving they're asking clarification and possibly we will do 20 more meetings between then and the sale but have you been able to effectively start the conversation we have a u pitch link has uh you know pitch link we have created a version of pitch link which is only for trade shows which is called at once right uh and and and literally the at comes from attendees but at once is at once we want the engagement to start right there so we talk about the golden hour of opportunity so people our platform enables you to send out specific content multimedia text whatever within one hour of the person leaving your booth and we have seen two things one 70% of those sent out open the mail and the link and look at it before they leave the exhibition that day okay so someone has come to our booth they we send out a at once link to them within an hour in their mail and they are looking at it while they're having coffee or sitting somewhere taking a break from walking because they're checking their mail anyway MH and you can be pretty much certain that you will be one or two of the people who have sent them anything and you are far more informative on point than any one of them the second stat is even more revealing 20 to 22% of these people actually come back to the boot the next day to ask for more [Music] information right so now you have given them material which have started to make them think and that's what you want M that is what engagement is about I see I don't know whether I I jumped the Quee of questions but no that's great that's great that means that means one of the trick is well there are a lot of tricks but one of them is of course continuing the conversation that we had uh the booth using the using the content that correspond accordingly meaning we need to have prepared a library of contents that will continue that conversation right because or else it will take us time to create the content from scratch again right so we need to actually plan what would be the engagement B the script of course some of them might go into an area that we haven't ma up at all but at least we have some materials or that we can actually utilize versus creating it from scratch because or else if that happens we're not going to do it within one two or three days absolutely so the way we do it is we we create Persona based communication flows okay so I as a company I know who are the people I sell to maybe the same product say I'm a edtech company and I'm selling I I'm selling to governors of Education districts I'm selling it to principls of schools I'm selling it to teachers I'm selling it to parents I'm selling it to students so I have got five different Target groups to whom I'm selling the same product which means the angle through which we sell to them is different of course so pre-event I'm going to create those five different communication flows and keep them ready when I've spoken to you I can identify whether you're the principal or the teacher or the or the or the District Governor or the parent or a student h i just Mark that and then the right thing goes out to them I see I see so the Persona is prepared the materials are prepared and the communication via which the materials will be sent is customized so yes we'll just be sending basically we're not creating it's ready in terms of persona that's why you mentioned it's important to understand the audience right beforehand yes yes yes I see I see interesting by the way we can if we think we want to add a personal message I could do that in in in in in our context suppose I think mic is really critical I can record a message for Mike specifically hey Mike thanks for coming I'm sharing some stuff with you based on what we discussed let me know if you have any questions I'll be happy to talk to you tomorrow again please do come back and so on I can record that and that will go out along with my rest of it and and correct me if I if I'm wrong by doing that then we can actually track which of the content can content the format might be different some of them might be text based some of them might be video some of them might be audio and let's be honest some contents perform better some perform less that will actually improve our approach for the same Persona let's say District government because we have used this for I don't know the five previous District Governor so it is also a is is it's a living being you keep on customizing it it's not like a exactly class rule yeah Improvement right this is really uh uh interesting uh uh last but not least right you mentioned uh this approach right can you share uh what you've just shared but probably an industry a sample exhibitor you don't have to tell the name it might be oh they're a technology company they do this they do this yeah and yeah some of the a more contextual example just now it's very clear but I want some examples in it so people can relate better yes so so the numbers I've already shared with you uh you know uh multiple companies uh both Tech and non-tech for example uh household sustainable chemical manufacturer to to uh tech technology SAS companies have used us from Toronto to Calgary to Dublin to Netherlands to us all kinds of companies have used us and they typically find the clickthrough rate hovering at 70% okay okay and post event even more on the same day they see 70% click through okay because see you can have a video message a gif will be part of the mail he'll see your GIF he knows that oh I just met Mike or I just met shanan and he has sent me something already and he'll be curious he'll open it and then he's in he's talking he's he's looking at it okay so so so 70% on the same day and more as in the following days and 20 to 22% coming back to the booth for follow-up conversations so so the these are these are happening and one of the things I did not mention is that the other thing that we do at the booth is we enable capturing of the entire conversation that happens with the customer or the Prospect and that gets recorded that gets that goes up to the cloud gets transcribed and summaries and action points are generated sitting next to the contact so now when I go back I have that available to me to start a followup right from where we left the conversation [Music] the combination of these two make it extremely powerful right right because when we actually ask people to register through this event some of them mention they're still using manual which is great but I find it very difficult especially as I am talking to you I need to listen I need to take notes I need to understand I need to reply and I need to take notes at the same time uh not many people are trained journalist that way fascinating fascinating and for those people who actually listen uh just like what suban mentioned the key here is not the tools the tools makes it faster the tool automates the tool make it easier the tool tracks measures give you data but you can still do it without a tool the most important is understanding the process the mechanism can I say that suban um okay the efficiency of do okay yes I mean to put it simply can it be done yes it can be done why is it not done because it's extremely tedious and difficult a lot of TSS yeah a lot of interconnected Tas yeah and see for example I have a 15minute conversation with you can I summarize that and write note it down yes I can is there a possibility I'll miss out on some critical components it's that's also possible but imagine how I'm going to execute I'm standing at a booth you have come I have had a 10-minute discussion with you good discussion I want to make note down so that I can do a good followup with you but John is standing right there once you leave he has to start talking to me where do I have the time to do that so I'm not doing that I'm doing three or four conversations after which I get a break because nobody else is waiting for me I try to summarize four conversations now you see the problem mhm number to trying to manually do the conversation summaries or action points is not very efficient so you can use separate tools like I'll give an example I met with somebody at Los Angeles he said look I have a method and by the way when I did this survey I never spoke about our product or what we do I I was not trying to tell them about my product at all so I I said I'm a podcaster which I am and I'm doing a survey that's all I said there was no discussion with them about our tool or our product at all okay so I'm probing them they said I have a way what I do is I take the photo of the gentleman in front of me or the lady in front of me my customer okay and apple in iPhone it allows you to write a description if you take a photo and you swipe up it gives you the metadata of that photo okay and he said I type the details of what we are talking and I tell them already that look I'm looking away from you but I'm actually making notes so we'll continue to talk now imagine you are the you are the customer I'm in front of you I have taken a photo of yours I telling you that look I'm paying attention but I'm typing but I'm not looking at you you telling me looking at me and talking and I'm looking down and responding to you while I'm making notes how does it really work this is the valuable time when I want to see your expression as I'm telling you things all the values of a face to face which We crave for right in B2B the Holy Grail is having a face Toof face meeting conversation totally and when I'm having that opportunity in a trade show I I'm looking away you see the problem yeah so absolutely without tools can it be done or without buying a specific tool like ours can it be done of course it can be done we have been doing it for Millennia right but there are problems when you're doing it at scale when you're doing it one after the other and there is exhaustion there is ption so on and so forth I don't know whether I effectively answered your question definitely you do it's it's a matter of when you want to scale when you want to do it fast when you make sure there's an accuracy now there will be Leakes over there you just have to be willing to foro that okay uh thank you very much this has been really insightful especially today we also have fireflies yeah summarizing it so that would be really useful now we have a threee closing question we extended a bit because it was really insightful right if you were to summarize today right lots of them right what be the three key lessons that our uh podcast listeners today can walk with right three key lessons that you should remember of course actually there are lots of them right what would that be to my mind the first thing is that be genuinely interested in your customers and what outcome they're looking for your customer's outcome is your Holy Grail and your job is to First find out what outcome the customer has come to your booth what outcome objective have they come to your booth with and deliver on that not on what objective you have set up the booth okay that's lesson one lesson two prepare like Lee what Lee does is so important to my mind is that it actually trains people to be there in the booth and and deal with this we need training I mean we can do as many flight takeoffs and down in a simulator but somewhere we have to go and fly the damn [Music] plane so preparation is key preparation is about the personas preparation is about the competitors preparation is about the kind of people coming to the exhibition preparation about knowing everything that's going on there you should be able to tell somebody okay behind that behind that pillar is the [Music] restroom or there is the cafeteria where you can go and get a cup of coffee so prepare lesson two and lesson three follow up quickly on point follow up quickly on point to get your ERI that is your exhibition return on investment right stra chisp and you dive deeper in each of the points perfect now uh we will be having future guest right so if you were uh if I were to wave a magic one you can bring anyone to ask question who would that be and what question you would ask him or her yeah so I suggest that you get in touch with joshaya tolby okay he's the co-founder of a company called go lucid he's a event Tech uh expert so he's basically building a landscape of eventech and um he he helps organizers and exhibitors to find good technology but the point is that he knows a lot about what's going on in the space that we are in and all of us need some update on that I I think he he'll make I mean I can tell you 10 names as you know but I I think it'll be interesting to have somebody like him on your show because then he can talk a lot more about the emerging Technologies and stuff like that okay great and the question I would like to ask more so the question doesn't have to be for Josiah can be for the next guest what question would you like to ask sure sure sure so my NE my question is again very simple whose stake is the highest in the trade show business the organizer the exhibitor or the attendee and why organ the organizer the exhibitor or the attendees and why why do they think that this person has the highest stake okay that's interesting we're definitely going to throw that question in our LinkedIn post and I will tag you and we will enjoy and see how the ball roll and see full answer what yes okay this been fabulous we extended for 15 minutes I really appreciate uh your time all the way from Bangalore uh we will keep in touch uh tomorrow yeah through WhatsApp we will will release the recording soon thank you very much suban you have a fabulous day over there youo you to okay have a great day okay bye bye