Coronavirus & Trade Show Cancellations: Now What?

Lead generation and sales enablement are the lifeblood of a B2B sales organization. Trade shows are a very important stop on the prospects buyer’s journey and facilitate both lead generation and sales enablement.

Coronavirus Curtails Travel and Trade Shows

Most B2B sales professionals are blind to the buyer’s journey except for when a prospect reveals themselves at a trade show. And now corporate travel restrictions and trade show cancellations are becoming the norm with the spread of the coronavirus.

The Invisible Buyer’s Journey

The consequence is many B2B sales organizations are ill prepared for the potential loss of their trade shows. As a result, the prospects buyer’s journey has totally moved online and is now completely invisible like a whale running deep. 

Forrester Research found that 68% of buyers prefer to research on their own online and 62% develop selection criteria or finalize a vendor list based solely on digital content.

Competing on The New Invisible Playing Field

To remain competitive and keep their sales pipelines full, B2B sales organizations must evolve their prospecting and lead generation.

They must embrace new technologies to clearly be able to recognize online digital behavior and resolve the identities of their true prospects. Doing this will give them an unfair competitive advantage as they can understand where different prospects are on the invisible buyer’s journey. Then they can insert themselves into the process at the proper time using the right business intelligence.

Digital Behavior + Identity Resolution = SMART Lead Generation

Imagine artificial intelligence technology that collects and analyzes online prospect behavior in real-time. Then it identifies those prospects exhibiting buying behavior and creates a sales ready lead delivered right to your CRM.

Gone are the days of spamming prospects (who are really suspects) with boilerplate emails and cold calling. The future is now.

 Andrew Gordon is partner at Growth Engine Partners, providing an unfair advantage through technology for generating sales-ready leads, increasing customer retention and growing lifetime client value. You can reach him at Andrew@GrowthEnginePartners.com or call 339-225-1550