The B2B Tradeshow Tug-of-War: Sales vs. Marketing

Let me know if this conversation sounds at all familiar:

CEO: "Should we keep doing these tradeshows? $150k for a 20x20 booth is a huge expense for us." Marketing Leader: "I’ve been wondering the same. The ROI over the last two years hasn’t justified the spend." CEO: "But if we skip it, will people think the company’s struggling?" Marketing Leader: "That’s a risk, but the sales team still insists on more events despite the super high cost per acquisition numbers and the lack of enthusiasm for staffing the booth and following up."

As a marketing leader, you've likely had some variation of this conversation. Your company is gearing up for a major industry tradeshow. Everyone from sales leaders to the C-suite is excited about the potential leads and connections, but no one seems eager to actually staff the booth, and more importantly, no one wants to work diligently to chase those leads if it doesn’t yield an immediate follow-on conversation.

Broadly speaking, let’s be real: Sales often wants leads with minimal effort—highly qualified prospects, ready to close. But the reality of generating those leads at a tradeshow requires extensive work before, during, and after the event. And more often than not, the on-the-ground reality doesn’t live up to the hype.

Surveys of sales and marketing professionals who produce or staff tradeshows support the notion that they can be valuable lead-generation channels, but the impact varies:

• The primary objective for about 83% of businesses attending tradeshows is to increase sales.

• Approximately 72% of exhibitors attend tradeshows to gain new leads.

• The performance of the staff brought to the tradeshow significantly influences the success of an exhibitor, according to 85% of them.

• Regrettably, a mere 6% of exhibitors are confident in their ability to effectively convert leads at a tradeshow.

This common dilemma highlights a disconnect in many organizations between the perceived value of tradeshows and the willingness to put in the necessary work. Let's dive into why this happens and how to address it.

The Allure of Tradeshow Leads

Tradeshows have long been a staple of B2B marketing strategies, and for good reason:

1. Face-to-face interactions with potential or existing clients

2. Opportunity to showcase products/services in person

3. Chance to gauge interest in new capabilities or get feedback on existing features

4. Ability to network with industry peers and partners

It's no wonder that stakeholders get excited about the prospect of fresh leads flowing in from these events.

But the fact is this: Attending major tradeshows may lead to disappointment for marketers, with 36% of them feeling they only got low-value leads.

The Reality of Booth Duty

While the benefits are clear, the actual work of manning a tradeshow booth and the work that comes after is much less glamorous:

• Long hours on your feet with big gaps of quiet times when attendees are in sessions

• Repetitive conversations and demos

• Dealing with a lot of unqualified visitors and time-wasters (my colleague calls these the drive-bys and the Sunday strollers)

• Potentially missing out on closing deals already in the pipeline

• Following up after the event with limited initial success

On average, it takes 3.5 sales calls to close a lead from an exhibition, compared to 4.5 calls to close a non-exhibition lead. Yet, that still feels like a significant effort from sales.

And many times, companies send their new or less experienced sales or even customer success people for booth duty to “get them some reps.” These people feel like fish out of water—especially in a more “remote” world with fewer in-person sales calls. This makes it tricky to understand the nuanced differences in doing a booth demo vs. a pre-arranged, highly planned sales demo.

This disparity between the perceived value and the on-the-ground reality creates the reluctance we often see with sales.

Marketing’s Reality

As the marketing leader or events person, mustering enthusiasm for tradeshows is also a challenge. Our goal is to fill the top of the funnel—a great way to quickly get a big list of potential buyers, especially in the world of GDPR and CAN-SPAM—is to go to a tradeshow where people have opted in to receive your information after the fact.

Plus, the buyer gets to see the product up close and personal and have all of their initial questions or concerns addressed immediately. While in theory, having an interaction like that should jump the prospect quickly from TOFU to MOFU to a true sales-qualified lead, that’s not always the case (see again the Sunday Strollers and Drive-Bys, and sales' lack of enthusiasm for following up), which makes these shows frustrating for marketing.

And many marketers are spending upwards of 35% of their entire yearly budget on events. That’s a good chunk of what’s generally not a windfall budget—particularly in the world of B2B marketing.

Another challenge is that while many people attend shows because they are in active buying mode, a good chunk of attendees just want to see what’s happening in the marketplace. But they may remember the company and, at some point, pick up the proverbial phone and ask for a conversation. These behaviors make it difficult for marketing to assess the effectiveness of an event.

Case in point: As a newly hired marketing leader, I was evaluating all of the events the company had attended over the last several years, looking at the deals that were created and closed/won. There was one event that had shown zero value—no wins over the last 5 years and very few leads that I could see in the CRM. So I made the decision that we weren't going to exhibit there the following year. So what happened? Of course, 3 different people who had been at that show (at different points in time) reached out over the course of the next year and asked for a meeting! Naturally, the sales team was annoyed that we had skipped the show.

Bridging the Gap - Steps to Take

As a marketing leader, how can you address this challenge? Here are some strategies:

• Communicate the Value: Help your team understand that booth interactions are crucial for lead generation. Share success stories from past events.

• Lean on Sales Enablement: Create certifications to help booth staff understand what’s expected of them while in the booth, help them prep for delivering a better experience, and most importantly, ensure they understand the Service Level Agreements (SLAs) for MQLs and SQLs.

• Incentivize Participation: Consider offering perks or bonuses for those who excel at booth duty and get the most leads that turn into qualified pipeline.

• Lead by Example: As a leader, spend time at the booth yourself to demonstrate its importance.

• Follow-up Plan: Have a clear strategy for following up on leads, so booth staff can see the fruits of their labor. This can include relying on SDRs or field marketing to help create sequences of personalized outreach to keep those new leads warm.

The Bigger Picture

Ultimately, this dilemma speaks to a larger issue in marketing: the need to align expectations with reality. While tradeshows can be a valuable source of leads, they require significant effort and investment.

The reality is, tradeshows and conferences can yield valuable results (see my 3-year dilemma).

• Converting a tradeshow lead is 38% less expensive than relying on sales calls alone.

• For those who put in the effort and follow-up, 5 to 10% of tradeshow leads can convert.

• Among Fortune 500 companies, 14% reported a 5:1 return on investment (ROI) from their tradeshow exhibitions, meaning they earned $5 for every $1 spent.

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As marketing leaders, it's our job to bridge this gap—to help our organizations understand that generating quality leads isn't just about showing up, but about putting in the work to engage meaningfully with potential customers.

By addressing the tradeshow booth dilemma head-on, we can create a more cohesive and effective approach to these events, ensuring that we maximize their potential while fairly distributing the workload.