The two-day NCIA Seed-to-Sale Show happened at the Colorado Convention Center earlier this week. I spent a couple of hours with the sales team each day so I guess you could say I “worked” the trade show, but it was more interesting watching Tim and Shannon in action. The highlights:
You have about five seconds to size up your prospect. Basically, you glance at the badge to see if it’s an exhibitor badge. You don’t want to miss an opportunity with a prospect because you were chatting it up with the guy who sells grow lights. Then you try to vet the prospect with a friendly opening. Something like, “what brings you to Simplifya today?” or “what part of the industry do you work in?”
If it’s a valid prospect, you have about 30 seconds to steer the conversation in your favor. This particular show attracted a lot of people from out of state, so we all danced around a bit on when we would be in other states. Honestly, it made it very difficult to steer the conversation.
You don’t really KNOW a sales pitch until you have to deliver it at a trade show. You know you want to talk about a culture of compliance, our fantastic technology, and our best-in-class regulatory content. But it’s hard to find the right segue, make it relevant to the person you’re talking to, and say it without it sounding scripted.
Kudos to Tim and Shannon for shouldering the load. In addition to gracefully meeting the challenges I’ve just listed, they also handled the setup and tear-down of our exhibit table, transported a bunch of marketing materials, and attended some of the conference networking events. There’s plenty of standing around too – hard on the back and feet. Thank you, Tim and Shannon, for representing Simplifya!