Have you ever started working on a puzzle only to find that you are missing a few pieces? The puzzle just won't look right unless all the pieces are in place. When it comes to developing sales plans, each piece of the plan must also be in place if you are to reach optimum sales goals. Knowing how the pieces fit together enables the show manager to set goals, determine what is necessary to reach those goals, and then evaluate the results.

But sales goals for an exposition should be more than just numbers -- number of companies or booths and number of square feet. "When you do a show, whether it's a trade or consumer show, you have a mission statement," says Jay Partington, Director of Expositions for the Hartland, WI-based Trade Show Marketing Inc. "It's your reason for doing the show. The sales plan tells you how you achieve that."

Determine the potential
The first step in creating a sales plan is to analyze the universe. How many companies are there in the markets served by your show, how many of those companies can you reasonably expect to bring in and which of those companies are most important for your event?

Assessing the universe will enable you to create a targeted prospect list.There are many sources of information on market potential: your current exhibitors and attendees; competitive shows; your show's history; industry reports and publications; and your sales force.

"We survey our exhibitors by phone immediately following a show," says Dan Hamilton, Vice President of Marketing and Sales for Ottawa, Ontario-based Connelly Business Expositions. "We ask them what trends they see, what the hot growth areas are, and what they did and didn't like about the show."

Feedback from attendees can also give show managers a sense of direction. "We survey attendees and ask them what they want in a show," Partington says. "Then we ask ourselves what it takes to offer that."

Responses from these types of surveys can help show management identify markets to pursue when creating a prospect list for the next show.

Checking out competitive shows will give you an idea of how high you should reach when setting goals. Nancy Walsh, Vice President of Sales for Norwalk, CT-based Association Expositions & Services, a division of Reed Exhibition Companies, looks at how the competition is faring in each market segment targeted by a particular AES show. "We want to know how many exhibitors they have in a category and how much space those exhibitors take. If we have 25 companies in a category, but 50 are out there and are exhibiting in other shows, then the potential is 50 companies."

Researching the competition for a public show can be more of a challenge, says Partington, who produces both trade and public shows. "There are a lot more shows competing in a particular market. And the market changes faster because of the type of exhibitor. There are a lot of mom and pop businesses, and retailers change hands quickly," he explains. Consequently, "You must constantly update your list."

Another source of information on market segments and prospect companies is industry magazines. Articles in those publications highlight growing or emerging markets. Also, ads can often alert you to start-up and established companies that might not be on your list.

Eric Udler, Exhibit Sales Manager for the Washington, DC-based National Association of Broadcasters, starts by taking a broad view so as not to overlook any opportunity. "My prospect list is every prospect in the universe that I can track down," he says. "That includes everyone who ever exhibited with us, everyone who doesn't exhibit with us but is in competitive events, everyone who advertises in trade journals and everyone who calls us for information." He also scans The Wall Street Journal and his local newspaper, The Washington Post, for relevant product announcements from major companies. Those announcements often mention a product manager, he notes. Thus the item gives him both a prospect company and a contact name.

But it's important to focus that broad list, Udler says. "You can do a general mailing to everyone, but what really sells is a targeted mailing," he emphasizes. Thus he breaks down his list by product category -- for example, television and video, radio and audio, and multimedia. "I can then target, for example, all desktop video companies. We can do focused phone calls and mailings and attend the shows those companies exhibit in."

In addition to building a prospect list, it's important to assess the growth potential of current exhibitors, he adds. "I look at how much space they're taking in other shows, what the size of their company is and how many products they have. And I ask them the key question: 'How much space do you need?'" If a company says it needs a 50- by 50-foot booth but can afford only a 30- by 30-foot booth, Udler says, his goal is to get that company to take the 50- by 50-foot booth.

Partington expands his prospect list with a technique he calls "back-dooring." For example, if a distributor for a major machinery corporation is exhibiting at one of his shows, Partington finds out what other companies' products the distributor handles. Then he calls those companies about exhibiting. Approaching it from the other side, if a manufacturer is exhibiting, Partington finds out which distributors that company uses and then contacts them.

If show management has a sales staff, these salespeople should play a key role throughout the entire process of determining the potential. To begin with, they're on the front lines and are in an excellent position to know what's happening. "They're on the phone; they have their fingers on the pulse of the industry," says Walsh. "We ask them what they think. And that's put into the formula, along with the industry assessment and the look at the competition."

But there's another, equally important, reason to involve salespeople in the earliest stages of formulating a sales plan. "It's the issue of concurrence vs. compliance," says Gerald Lewis, Vice President and Operating Officer at Production Group International in Arlington, VA. "Just because they nod their heads doesn't mean they agree. If they've been part of the planning process, they're more likely to accept the goal."

Convert potential to goals
With prospect lists in hand, show managers are ready to set two types of goals: quantitative and strategic. Quantitative goals specify the number of exhibitors and number of square feet that must be sold in order to reach the desired level of profitability. And strategic goals might, for example, identify the specific companies whose participation is vital to the success of the show.

Quantitative goals need to align with the show budget. "One of the reasons we're in this business is to make money," Hamilton says. "So we ask how much money we would like to make and how we'd go about doing that." But quantitative goals also must be realistic. "We look at our prospect database, which has details on each account, including their stature in the industry and information on other shows they exhibit in. And we look at what success we've had in the past in each area," Hamilton says. "For example, if in one product category we close one of every 10 prospects, and we decide to project 20-percent growth, how achievable would that be? Do we have enough new leads to make it achievable? Or are we going to do something to improve the close ratio?"

Setting numeric goals is something that show managers continually wrestle with. There has to be a balance between what they'd like to do -- how much they'd like to sell -- and what they think they can reasonably do. And show managers are hard put to explain the way they achieve that balance.

"It's part science and part philosophy," says Hamilton. "We take it as far as we can with science. We analyze industries, close ratios and so on. But then the philosophy comes in. You can make the goals very realistic, so that you're almost absolutely certain to reach them, or you can make them ambitious -- something you really have to stretch for." Hamilton inclines toward the ambitious.

Lewis, too, finds that setting quantitative goals is a combination of hard data and gut feeling. "First, you need points of comparison," he says. "What have we done in the past? Have we grown? If a show has always been 1,500 booths, you can't go crazy and aim for 2,500 booths." If industry assessment has revealed significant changes in the marketplace, such as companies acquiring other companies, he says, there probably won't be as many companies exhibiting. "We take all the information that's available and do an analysis," he says. "But in the end, it's 'What do I think we can do? Will we be aggressive?' There's a certain area where you go for it, you stretch a little. But you also have to talk to the people who'll be doing the selling."

That's a key point for organizations with a booth sales staff. Just as show management should seek salespeople's input when surveying the universe to compile a prospect list, management should also ask their views on setting goals. Are the goals too high to be attainable or too low to be challenging?

Here, again, says Partington, some adjustment might be necessary. "We get some indication from the salespeople of what they think they can do. But we might raise or lower the goal, depending on the type of salesperson we're talking to." That is, some salespeople are overly optimistic, but others suggest low goals in order to be sure of exceeding them. In order to work through all of that, a show manager needs to know the sales force very well.

Quantitative goals set numbers. Strategic goals, in this case, identify the companies that must participate if the show is to fulfill its mission and attract not only attendees it wants but also other exhibitors. "There are certain key exhibitors who always have to be in the show," says Partington. "The first step is targeting them. It's like a mall going for the anchor tenants." The anchors give a mall -- or a show -- an image of solidity and viability.

In fact, a show is at risk if it doesn't pull in those key exhibitors, Lewis warns. If there's a perception that a show doesn't have all the top companies, he says, other companies may feel that it's not necessary for them to participate.

That's what happened with the American Society of Interior Designers Show, he says. "It got smaller over the years because some of the huge names stopped coming and other companies said, 'Why should we go?' We knew that for the show to grow, we needed to get a top company from each of the categories. We identified the top three to five companies in each category and aimed to get a minimum of one from each category." The goal was not simply quantitative -- bring in more companies from each category -- but strategic -- bring in specific, significant companies from each of those categories.

Develop an action plan
Prospect lists have been built, and targets have been set. Hitting those targets requires creating and implementing a plan that integrates direct mail with sales calls.

At AES, "Once we've identified the growth segments for a show, we do a vertical prospectus for each product category," Walsh says. "For each show, we talk with the marketing director about how many mailings there will be and when they will be sent out. Marketing is heavily involved in the whole sales plan process."

Sales calls are also carefully planned, Walsh says. "We allocate resources against the number of companies we need to contact. For example, if we wanted to contact 100 companies, and an average sales rep could contact 20 per day, then we'd need one rep for a week."

Not that the formula is quite that simple, of course. "We also need to calculate the closing ratio," she continues. "We need to determine how many calls will be needed to close an account." When all of that is factored in, the ultimate goal is divided by the number of weeks until show time, and weekly goals are set.

Salespeople get a boost from preliminary work done by the research department. "We're very big on research," says Walsh. "Our research department almost partners with the sales team." The department mails prospects a survey with specific questions that help pre-qualify each company: Who is the company targeting? How does it target them? What is the available budget? What marketing vehicle does the company use -- trade shows? Ads? What else? Armed with the survey results, salespeople already know a lot about a company when they make the very first phone call. As a result, they find it easier to schedule appointments with prospects, Walsh says.

NAB finds fax-back letters effective in paving the way for salespeople. When prospects can't be reached on the phone, Udler sends a fax-back letter with a postscript giving the recipient a choice of four responses, which say, in effect:

• Send me a prospectus,
• Have a salesperson contact me,
• Fax me a floorplan, or
• Stop bothering me.

"We get a very good response from those letters," says Udler, "and then we know what step to take next."

Implementing the sales plan is a lot easier for public shows than for trade shows, says Partington. "Public shows have a great track record and so much publicity that it's easier to attract new exhibitors." Show management works with the salespeople to develop a plan for the entire sales cycle. "For example, during the first month, we'll do a certain number of calls. Then, after a certain number of days, we'll do a postcard mailing and follow-up phone calls. For companies on our hot list, we might even send postcards every three days.

"We usually don't have as much money to spend on a public show as on a trade show, so we don't have as many steps," Partington says. "But a trade show is part of its industry, and technology in each industry keeps changing. So we need to be in front of people more often to let them know that we're up-to-date on the changes."

Although the total number of contacts with prospects is larger for trade shows than for public shows, "Our initial mailings on all shows are huge," Partington notes. "It could be 6,000 or 7,000, even if we want only 200 or 300 exhibitors."

As important as all these tactics are, they are essentially geared toward making the numbers. Meeting strategic goals -- bringing in the specific companies that are vital to the show's success -- requires more specialized approaches.

"We rate companies with a one, two or three," says Hamilton. "The 'ones' might need a totally different approach from what we do for the others. We might have to meet with them face-to-face and tailor a package that meets their requirements. For example, we might provide value-added direct mail services. But for a smaller company, we'd look at different aspects. We might, for example, go to one of its suppliers to see if they would provide support for the exhibitor." Hamilton explains that a lot of individualized selling is needed these days because of the way markets have changed: "You can no longer count on a continual flood of new prospects." Nevertheless, you can still be profitable, even in declining markets, by taking the individualized approach, he says.

Walsh also mentions the importance of customization. "We identify bellwether accounts -- the industry leaders -- and try to provide them with one-stop shopping," she says. "We make proposals to them based on what they say they need. Our sales plan offers customers total marketing access," she continues. "Our salespeople are selling solutions. Customers might want to advertise in one of our publications, purchase our direct mail lists and so on.

"We put together a geographical plan for the companies we'll visit," Walsh says. "The total solution is a more sophisticated type of selling, and we can't offer that over the phone." In addition, "Staying in front of the customer yields higher returns." Consequently, 40 percent of AES's sales calls are face-to-face.

Monitor your progress
Even the most carefully crafted plans won't stay on track by themselves. Periodic status checks are needed to determine how the sales plan is progressing and what, if any, course corrections are necessary.

"We check performance against goals frequently," says Lewis. "If you get off target, it doesn't take long for the plan to become irretrievable." Numbers are checked weekly. But, he cautions, "Don't make the mistake of just comparing results with last year's. It's not good enough just to be ahead of last year -- we look at where we need to be this year." If the weekly check reveals that the plan is behind schedule, show management considers such actions as sending another mailing or having a phone blitz.

Strategic goals can be more difficult to measure, Lewis says. Yet he still wants a sense of how it's going, so he might request feedback from an exhibitor advisory committee.

He also re-evaluates the entire plan quarterly. "Even if you're hitting your numbers every week, the quarterly review might reveal a major change in legislation or in the marketplace," he explains. "The change might not have caused a problem yet, but we want to anticipate problems."

Connelly Business Expositions breaks annual goals down into monthly targets. Then at weekly meetings, salespeople discuss their progress. If the plan is behind schedule, show management looks for the reasons. "If people aren't responding to our program," says Hamilton, "is there something we must change?" Perhaps there needs to be a change in the educational program or maybe a special feature area should be added.

Another reason for lagging sales, says Hamilton, might be that salespeople aren't active enough on the phone. There is a way to check that. Connelly's telephone system records the amount of time salespeople spend talking with a customer or prospect. The timing mechanism doesn't kick in until after the first 30 seconds of a call, to allow for conversation with a switchboard or assistant. "We set a goal of two hours of actual connect time per day," says Hamilton. But that's flexible. "If someone is achieving the sales targets, phone time doesn't matter," he says. "If the person can hit goals in an hour, that's great. But if people aren't achieving their targets, phone time is one thing we can evaluate."

Walsh at AES uses a computer program called Forests and Trees to help track progress toward both quantitative and strategic goals. "It's an executive management tool that is customized for us and is on all of our screens," she says. The program gives a real-time status report on a particular show and also compares it with the previous one. Among the data shown are: square feet sold; money collected and money owed; retention rate by number of exhibitors and square footage; and sales by region, by salesperson and by vertical product category. If the plan is behind schedule, there are a number of options. "We might do additional mailings," Walsh says, "or bring in telemarketers to qualify a list. If there's a problem with a product category, we might discuss it with the salesperson for that segment. Or we might do research to see what we're doing wrong."

Not all checks reveal problems, of course. The plan might very well be on target, or even ahead of schedule. But don't get complacent, Partington warns. "We've learned not to sit back even if we're ahead of schedule. Circumstances that are out of your hands can slow things down. Holidays cause a lull in sales, and presidential elections are tough. You have to keep going, no matter how good it looks."