Offline B2B sales strategy: how to generate leads at conferences

B2b sales don’t end at online communication. In fact, good old face-to-face chats are much more effective if you look at the conversion rates. And one of the easiest ways to find your target audience offline is to attend a professional conference.

Why sell at the conferences

Conferences are not only a platform for exchanging experience but also a potential opportunity to expand your client network.

For example, for one of our clients, we organized lead generation at a specialized conference: within a month of preparation, we scheduled 32 meetings, 28 of which took place. Half of these meetings converted into warm leads. We continued communicating with them online.

When it comes to b2b sales, face-to-face communication is drastically more effective than online communication, regardless of the goal at hand, whether it is to find new leads or advance ongoing negotiations towards closing a deal. Therefore, your goal at the conference is to engage with as many people as possible.

How to choose conferences

If your goal is lead generation, it is necessary to select events where your potential buyers gather as participants or speakers.

How to prepare for a conference

Going to an event without preparation and attempting to talk to every person you meet is not the most effective strategy.

To make the most of your time for business benefit, it is best to do some preliminary work and schedule meetings in advance. We follow the following algorithm:

1. Determine the start date for preparation — one month in advance should be enough.
2. Find the list of conference participants. If the event’s website doesn’t show it, you can request it from the organizers.
3. Collect the contact information of the participants: email addresses or LinkedIn accounts.
4. Prepare emails/messages with a meeting proposal for the conference.
5. Send out the emails manually or using automation.
6. Create a schedule for the conference meetings. It is crucial to carefully manage time slots during the meeting discussions.
7. A few days before the conference, reach out to all contacts again to confirm the meeting and its time.
8. Choose a convenient format for documenting agreements. We use a Google Sheet where we enter the name, position of the interlocutor, and the outcome of the conversation after each meeting.

If your current clients or prospects will be at the conference, it is also essential to arrange meetings with them. This significantly speeds up your work online, whether it’s a deal promotion or customer loyalty management.

How to act during the event

If you have free time between scheduled meetings, try to interact with people randomly. Everyone attends such events for networking, so the chances that they will be happy to talk to you are pretty high. The event map will help you understand which locations are most effective for these random encounters.

It is crucial to record information after each meeting. The easiest and quickest way is to record voice messages for an assistant who will enter all the data into the spreadsheet. If there is no assistant, you can save the voice memos and transcribe them later.

After the conference

Immediately after the event, it is necessary to enter the data from the table into the CRM system and assign tasks. When it comes to contacting people you talked to at the conference, it’s best to start emailing them 3–4 days after the even. Otherwise, there is a high risk of getting lost in the spam flow.