Bill Kenney is the Founder of MEET, a company specializing in aiding international B2B and B2G companies in scaling in the US market through trade shows, events, and strategic connections. With a background in hosting and participating in trade shows, he recognized the challenges and complexities businesses face, especially when expanding internationally. Bill and his team leverage their expertise in event strategies, negotiation, and execution to create meaningful growth opportunities. Since 2012, Bill has been pivotal in helping companies navigate the US market’s intricacies and achieve sustainable success.
Trade shows present unique challenges for companies entering a new market, particularly in a vast and competitive landscape like the US. How can international businesses leverage these events to ensure a successful market entry?
According to Bill Kenney, a seasoned expert in facilitating international business expansion, the key lies in strategic focus and preparation. He emphasizes the importance of building customer density in specific regions and industries to create a repeatable sales model. Bill highlights that presetting appointments and aligning event participation with clear business goals are crucial for maximizing ROI and building productive partnerships. This focused approach not only enhances efficiency but also significantly improves the chances of sustained success in the new market.
In this episode of America Open for Business, host Cameron Heffernan is joined by Bill Kenney, Founder of MEET, to discuss optimizing trade show strategies for international companies. They talk about the importance of customer density, the role of integrated marketing, and the benefits of detailed pre-event planning. Bill shares valuable insights on leveraging trade shows as part of a comprehensive annual strategy to ensure long-term business growth and success in the US market.
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This episode is brought to you by Your B2B Marketing.
Are you a mid-market B2B company facing challenges articulating your value proposition to customers? Without a well-defined strategy, allocating marketing funds may not yield optimal results.
Your B2B Marketing, a team of experts specializing in devising and implementing plans, helps entrepreneurs and leaders understand what makes them invaluable to customers and puts that front and center in their messaging for scalable growth.
Discover how strategic marketing and communication approaches can drive your expansion by visiting www.yourb2bmarketing.co or contacting us at info@yourb2bmarketing.co.
Transcript
Narrator: 0:03
Welcome to America Open for Business, where we talk with high growth entrepreneurs and leaders who have found success in one of the world’s most important markets.
Cameron: 0:14
Hi everybody, I’m Cameron Heffernan and welcome to America Open for Business. I’m very excited about today’s show. Before we jump in and introduce our guest today, I’m going to mention that this episode is brought to you by us, your B2B marketing, a truly global marketing agency, Many mid-market B2B companies. They face challenges as they enter new markets and expand across borders. So we handle end-to-end marketing, from strategy through execution, allowing our clients to be free to focus on customer growth. So if you want to discover how we can drive your expansion, visit our website, yourb2bmarketingco not com. And some past guests of our show have included Brian Smith, the founder of the UGG brand from Australia, and Ben Tija, the CEO and founder of Earthly Wellness, a $21 million direct-to-consumer e-commerce health and wellness brand.
Cameron: 1:09
I also want to thank today Ryan Colley of Colley Intelligence, who was good enough to introduce me to today’s guest, Bill Kenney, and I give a shout out to Ryan, who is a great connector and a very knowledgeable person in the intelligence industry. So, Bill Kenney, welcome to the show. Bill is the founder of Meet Since 2012,. Bill and his team have specialized in helping international B2B and B2G companies gain traction and scale in the US through trade shows, events and strategic connections. Bill Kenney, welcome to America Open for Business.
Bill: 1:44
Thanks, Cameron. It’s so great to be here. I really appreciate it.
Cameron: 1:47
Yeah, I’m excited to jump in with you and welcome you to the show. I want to ask a big question to kick things off. So, by the way, meat is an acronym which I love. My Expo and Event Team. That’s fantastic. How did you get into this area of marketing? Why trade shows?
Bill: 2:08
Yeah. So I have a background where I used to run some trade shows, certainly as a business owner. We’ve done lots of trade shows, and so I guess in my experience it kind of seeing both sides, both the sort of the exhibitor, participant side, and seeing the host side, it really gave me a view, in particular as a host, at the continuum or the span of confidence that companies have at leveraging trade shows. And you know, I think trade shows are different than many forms of marketing. You know, you can put an ad in the paper, you can, you know, put an ad online and that’s more of sort of a response, a direct response type situation where a trade show is it’s, you know, roll up your sleeves, it’s elbow deep, and you have to activate not just yourself but your team to really leverage what trade shows are. So my point really is, they’re much more complex and it’s, I think, where our specialty is, at least over the last several years, in specifically helping international companies exhibit at US shows. That adds a whole other level of complexity. So my observation is, you know, us companies are challenged to execute trade shows well, and that is even more difficult for international companies and ultimately, you know, sort of in B2B and B2G marketing, every form of marketing.
Bill: 3:48
You know the real goal is to create meetings and the really cool part about trade shows is you actually see people face to face. I mean it is, you know, versus many of the other forms that are, you know. Just you know whether it’s you know, picking up the phone or you know online or whatnot. You know this. You actually have an opportunity to build credibility in person and create kind of more connection and see people who are, you know, kind of likely in the looking zone, all face-to-face, which you know. It certainly it’s not, it doesn’t solve everything in marketing, but it certainly should be one part of the strategy anyway.
Cameron: 4:32
At a high level. How do you help people? What does Meet enable?
Bill: 4:36
Yeah, I’d separate our service sort of into two buckets. One is strategy, so you know whether that’s what trade, chosen events to go to and kind of built, having an annual view of that. And and also in that bucket is you know, with each show there should be a unique strategy because there are unique buyers, unique buyer personas and all that, and they’re going to all have different, they’re all going to have different value propositions that they’re going to respond to, whether it’s, you know, unique industry or geography or whatnot. And so making sure that the strategy is very much aligned with the service being offered and the buyer persona who’s targeted. Almost think of it like fishing, right, you know we want to look at, you know what fish do we want to catch at that particular show, and then you know where at the show they’re going to be or how to attract them, and then what, what messaging will sort of attract, engage and convert them, and convert them into, ideally, a conversation or meeting. And then the second part of the service, or the other bucket, is really around the execution. So you know it’s sort of everything from what happens behind the scenes, such as, you know, the negotiation with the host, the logistics, the individual. You know the personnel training or we even do representation about half of our clients. We fully represent them. In other words, we’re their first employees in the US. So we take on all of that responsibility.
Bill: 6:08
And then kind of the last part of it is the you know, the measurement we have. We’ve built a whole suite of analytic tools, both from the sort of decision making process around what events to participate in in to what we call a cookbook which helps organizations prepare for events and properly task their team and hold their team accountable for actions pre-event and during and post-event, and then finally the sort of the metrics post-event is. You know, how do we know how do we value certain events versus others or certain events year over year, and being able to look at it, and that ultimately kind of empowers the fourth tool, which is really around negotiating, so the ability to negotiate with trade show hosts. We’ve got an analytic tool that very much empowers that and a lot of people negotiate emotionally with trade shows because they can’t. You know, they look at the stack of cards they came home with and they, you know well, this stack was bigger than that stack, and so you know, and obviously that’s probably not the best models.
Bill: 7:20
We’ve developed a really strong model that you know. Ultimately, you know, we’ve found good success in terms of getting much better value out of the process and value. A trade show is kind of simple it’s you know, it’s, it’s, it’s you know, the only, the only levers the host has are, you know, sort of money, what do you pay them, and value that they can offer, and they have a lot of choices of value, whether it’s better location, additional marketing, exposure speaking. There’s all sorts of sort of value levers, and so it’s really kind of, how do we look at that and make sure you know, in each case, we’re getting the best value for our clients’ dollars?
Cameron: 7:59
That negotiation part is really interesting. I’d like to pick into that a little bit more with you because I think particularly companies. If you’re coming from another country to the US for the first time, you’re looking at going to a big, huge show. You see the exhibit hall and man, how am I going to make an impact here? What kind of negotiation tips or tactics do you guys coach your clients through?
Bill: 8:27
your clients through. Well, yeah, let me say first is, if you’re coming from another country and it’s your first event in the U? S, I would definitely not go to a big show. Um, right Cause it. You might go and walk through and, and you know, get industry intelligence, start connecting with partners, those types of things all good, but in terms of exhibiting, um number one, companies coming in, if they’re early stage, don’t need lots of prospects. So why go to a place where there are lots of prospects? And, even worse, you don’t want prospects spread all over the country because that’s exceptionally inefficient. I mean, in the early stage I’d say you have two goals. One is, you know, certainly to create traction, get customer dollars in exchange for your product or service. But parallel to that and I think an equal goal in that first stage is to build a repeatable system.
Bill: 9:20
And a repeatable system is very difficult to build if you have prospects and clients spread all around the country. And I just had a call with a company that I mean this is a true story. I just had this call they have a hundred. They’re a new company in the US, they have a hundred clients here and you go wow, that’s impressive, that’s really good and you go, wow, that’s impressive, that’s really good. This owner and this founder was so frustrated because they do not yet have a repeatable system, and the reason is those clients are spread pretty much geographically across the whole US and, even worse, they represent like 10 or so industries and so they haven’t found sort of that. You know an industry to focus on, and so you know.
Bill: 10:11
The first thing to that question is really in my mind is identifying a region or even a state to focus in and an industry vertical no more than two and build density. And there’s a lot of reasons why customer density is important or why it is important. Number one is, if you want to build a repeatable system, then let’s just say you build density and pick New York as an example. You build density there. You’ve got 20 customers. It’s very easy to bring another person in and say, okay, see what we’re doing in New York. Either take over New York and I’m going to go to the next region or industry, or I want you to do the same thing in Boston, or I want you to do the same thing in financial services. Right, we can then use that as a model to scale Very difficult to do if you’ve got to fly from Atlanta to Dallas to wherever, okay, now we’ve seen two customers and so we want to really help that.
Bill: 11:20
But in terms of making the decision about negotiating for events, which was your original question, ultimately when you look at you know, the best basis to negotiate is when you have some history. So if we’ve done, let’s say, a year’s worth of events and maybe you’ve done, you know, let’s say, 10 of them you can rank those events in terms of production. Our biggest, you know, in B2B, our biggest indicator of sort of value generally with most clients ends up being the number of first appointments scheduled post-event. Yeah, so, yeah, obviously a lot of companies want to look at revenue, but the best leading, because in B2B, revenue takes six to 24 months to happen. We don’t want to wait that long to have an assessment of value.
Bill: 12:17
And so, you know, first appointment set. We know that. You know, if you, you know, begin analyzing sales, we know that a certain number of first appointments creates a certain number of proposals. A certain number of proposals creates a certain number of sales. All we have to do is look at sales history over the last year or two and we can come up with an average value for a sale and annualize that, and so we can then sort of create a value per appointment or first appointment, because that’s some fraction of what ends up being the resulting sales.
Bill: 12:56
And so we can then go and say if we, 30 days post appointment, if we’re consistent in terms of measuring first appointment, set post each event, then you know after whether it’s six months or 12 months, begin going to those trade show hosts and saying you know, here’s where your event ranked in our spectrum of events. You know, over the last six or 12 months, you know you’re in the bottom half or you’re in the bottom quartile. We like your event, we like your audience, but something didn’t work. And so help us figure out, walk through this with you so that we can get you in the top half. That’s where we need to be in order for you to be considered again. So maybe you can reduce the cost, maybe you can add some other values, whatever it is, again, we want to be here. Help us be here. However, we need to do it.
Bill: 13:49
But instead of the antagonistic way a lot of people look at negotiation, our goal is to sit on the same side of the table, because if they want to retain us, which, as a trade show host, I can tell you. Retention at a lot of shows is terrible, and it’s because you know, ultimately people are, you know, just willy nilly in terms of how they make these decisions and they’re not able to articulate why they’re not happy and to come at it, you know, in a more logical sense. And so, in any event, yeah, I think the more analytically you can approach it, the better a chance you have, and again, in a partnering way. We’re not combatants here. We should have the same goals, and there are some trade show hosts that operate sort of like Cro-Magnon. They’re not walking upright yet. They won’t get this Right. They may not be the best ones for you to work with.
Cameron: 14:49
Yeah, exactly Of those two approaches them, lowering their price or offering you more stuff, which is more common.
Bill: 14:57
Oh, offering more stuff. Because, there’s quite often things that aren’t expensive or at zero cost to them, that are high value for you, and that’s I mean that’s, that’s a win-win ultimately, because you, you know you don’t want them to lose income. You want, you want more value though. Yeah, that’s, you know, that’s really in the end, that’s really all you care about.
Cameron: 15:18
And you’re having those. You’re having those conversations with these trade shows organizers on behalf of your clients effectively.
Bill: 15:29
Exactly and, and. To give you a sense of how big an impact you can have, we have one client who we just we’re just working on a program for now and they’re this program that one of our clients is going to take advantage of. Is is about a $25,000 investment.
Bill: 15:42
So this um, this um, this uh host loves exposure yeah we were actually able to um, and, and one of the things that they like is exposure are billboards. And we, for this client, we’ve helped them, uh, with some billboards. They’ve got a, they it’s a military client, so they’re they’re out in front of bases, uh, and and they want to be able to kind of have that exposure. So we were able to give this host a billboard in exchange for this $25,000 opportunity. That net cost to us was about $4,000 for $25,000 in value. Nice, we win, they win Um, and you know again, I think the more you can find you know sort of that win-win um situation, cause you want long.
Bill: 16:41
Ultimately, in all this stuff, you want long-term relationships. Cause when you find good pipes, uh, you know flows of of prospects, um, you know the, the and, and you know this well. Right, the adage in marketing is what was it the CEO who said we know that we’re wasting 50% of our marketing dollars, we just don’t know which 50%. So when you find pipes that work, it’s really about how do we double down and get more flow from those pipes.
Cameron: 17:04
Yeah, you said a lot of interesting things there. I want to unpack a couple of them. One is this concept it works in marketing in general, strategic communications, trade shows, blue ocean versus red ocean thinking or concepts. I think a lot of companies think that’s a big show. It’s a huge crowded floor. We’ve got to be there. It’s really important to be there. It’s really important to be there among all these other people doing, you know, variations like french vanilla and vanilla and vanilla bean versions of what we’re doing versus a or a blue ocean kind of mindset or thinking would be. There’s a show with 30 exhibitors. We can be there. We can actually book a cocktail reception. We can have somebody up on the dais. Wow, all of that is the package. Yeah, but it’s really small. Is that where we want to be? Do you struggle with that or your clients struggle with that challenge?
Bill: 18:11
So you know, we, we’ve kind of learned, I would say, three truths in our, in our kind of 12 years of doing this. And the first one, the first thing that we don’t need to learn again, is that is that when you’re entering a new market, your first priority should be and particularly the US because of our size and diversity of industry and so on the first priority from a marketing and traction standpoint should be client or customer density. And so, if that’s the concept, if we sort of buy into that and that’s kind of our true north for strategy, in that you know that first phase, which might be six to 12 months, it may be, may extend a little bit beyond that, really the measure of exiting that is a repeatable system. Yeah, and, and you know, it’s when the, the founder can bring in one more person who can, who can sell on their own. That’s sort of the transition. So in that early phase, number one is, if you have customer density, think of the things right, that person who is coming into the market to sell can come into one geography. Their time’s already limited. They don’t have their time’s already limited, but they can build relationships, whether it’s partner or any type of support organizations or anything like that, it can be much easier. But then also, all of their appointments are local.
Bill: 19:50
Is that first sale? And the only way the second sale gets easier is if there’s some proximity, right, and proximity might be geography, it might be industry, it’s probably a combination of the two. We certainly would advise that. But the second sale is easier because of what you learned in the first sale you can apply to the second sale, right, the stories you, you, you amplify the right things. You, you, you can do that. That also if there’s some reference that that you know that second sale gets from the stories of the first sale, right? You know, oh, you know, you’re an oil and gas. Well, you know, that’s really cool. You know, one of one of our earliest adopters is another oil and gas company. Maybe you’ve heard of them. Yeah, whatever that can be. And then you know, I think, all the operational efficiency. There’s just a zillion efficiencies in that.
Bill: 20:42
So again, if we think, you know, if we agree, that our first true north in terms of strategy should be customer density, then everything should align to that. And going to a national show or a show in the US that is even global, again, it might be great to walk through and sort of get all the industry, intelligence and all that, but the idea of exhibiting there is just wrong from so many standpoints. If we bought into that strategy, there’s a lot of wasted money. You’re going to create prospects that are not in that sort of dense geography. You’ve got just a and you’ll create them just at cocktail receptions. You don’t even there’s. There’s nothing you know egregious about that. But you know, again, if you can really focus in on that, that customer density, it goes so much faster and I, you know most of our clients come to us after they failed at US market entry and this it was so awful to have this call that I mentioned earlier where this guy’s going.
Bill: 21:57
We have 100 clients and by any measure they’re doing well, except for the fact that he can’t hire somebody to sell yet because he has no repeatable model, which he’s just stuck. I’ve never talked to an owner of a business that felt so stuck because they kind of get to they kind of get to this and you know they’ve no more dry powder left to sort of pivot the process and so they’ve sort of they’ve put all this time in and I think a lot of things that you know, the one thing that never gets talked about with, with sort of you know, sort of us expansion is time. You know, I guess, as I envision in my head, the metaphor for me is this you know that when a company begins that journey of expanding in the US, you know there’s an invisible hourglass that sort of gets set down and the sand starts coming out of it and it’s going to be different by company and by by um sort of resource. But what people don’t realize is that you know that whether it’s the founding team or the key employees or the family members, investors, partners, everybody’s invested for a certain amount of time and they’re all going to leak. You know, without and and and kind of, another kind of big concept around customer density is these various stakeholders are all going to leak out at various intervals.
Bill: 23:23
Sort of emotional investment from them is to have base hits, to use the US baseball metaphor, and frequency of base hits creates much more sort of continued confidence and investment. Confidence and investment keeps people. Their eyesight gets very narrow, as opposed to when they don’t see that they. You know, gosh what other opportunities are here for my money, my support, my love, whatever it is. And we see, you know, we see people go bankrupt, we see them lose marriages, we see their health go to hell, and it’s all because they’re. So, you know, like most entrepreneurs, right, we find shiny objects and we go chase them. Oh, I have a prospect in California, one in Oregon, one in Chicago, one in New York, oh, kill yourself, please.
Cameron: 24:26
How many times do you remember when I worked in the house of the stories I hear of the CEO changing the business model because of the person sat next to him on the flight across the country? Just that shiny object syndrome. I couldn’t agree more. And so what’s your advice to a client like that? Focus on one niche, one area, one sector, and let’s just get that down first and then rinse and repeat.
Bill: 24:49
Yeah, I think I would look at both geography and industry verticals and so pick a very dense sort of segment, you know, and it’s pretty easy to figure out where there’s sort of customer density. And I would even, you know, I think for most clients I would even look at proximity and ease of access, so proximity to their home base or where they’re going to be coming from, so that it’s easy for them, and whether it’s their own time and whatnot, or it’s the customer service and the relating time zone. Wise, is it five hours, six hours, 10 hours, 12 hours, what is that? So that even when you’re not there, the connection is reasonable. And yeah, and then it’s really just from once you make that decision, then it’s being laser focused on. And the good thing about that and you this is you know I’ll preach to the choir here for a sec that when you’re focused, you know you can do a lot of A B testing and and get and and and believe results that you’re getting when you’re spread across the country and you’re spread across industries.
Bill: 25:59
And when I say A-B testing, we’re going to A-B test. You know various media, various modes of attracting customers, whether it’s trade shows or online or you know any other form, and then we’re also going to test. You know messaging, so what is you know any other form? And then we’re also going to, we’re going to test. You know messaging, so what? What is you know? And if you’re, and if you’re specific, you can get. You can have high confidence in what you’re learning and you can and you can fairly quickly get to good answers, whereas if you’re everything to everybody, you can’t get there.
Cameron: 26:38
It’s a hard sale to make because you can’t stand out, you’re not unique, you’re not different. What I like to talk about with companies coming over just take Europe. What is the competitive advantage you have from there that you’re importing Because you’re coming into a new market? It’s not like this didn’t exist before. The person I had in my podcast, brian Smith, was an exception to that. That was 1978 when he brought over these sheepskin slippers and boots from Australia. They were huge in Australia and here they didn’t exist and he was attacking, going after the surfing market. It took him maybe eight to 10 years to realize that wasn’t the core where he should be going. It was Midwestern families coming back from hockey and mothers that needed them in the winter.
Cameron: 27:21
So you go through those different things, you try things out and I think what I work with companies that are headquartered overseas I love you said it is leaning into. Let’s try out one area, one thing let’s deliberately go to a place where it is a niche. We’ve got a client in Austria, e plus E electronics that makes automated sensors and the production environments they’re in. I would never have thought of these sawmills, lumber mills, cannabis grow rooms and weather stations Right, so like easy to target. Yeah, yeah, that’s right, that’s right easy, got easier to find. Uh, there’s a gentleman I met a couple weeks ago at an event. You, you know you talk to other entrepreneurs. What’s your business? Pet cremation right, talk about a specific niche. You know he does pet cremation here in central ohio. His customer, his customer base are veterinarians, right, and that’s again to find he’s. He’s offering them a great solution.
Cameron: 28:23
That is a problem that that you can solve right away I love working with, with clients and businesses that are like that, and to me, when I look at you know, from a stress content strategy, content marketing, standpoint, trade shows are part of it, but it’s also who are the associations, the groups, the publications that they have that we need to be in.
Cameron: 28:41
Um never knew so much about cannabis grow room trade shows in my life, but like, wow, that is a great solution that you and to me I think of. What are the trends? What is your problem? What is your product solving? It’s that labor is really expensive or unavailable in this country and nobody wants to do those jobs anymore. It would take you hours and hours to walk around and do all the measurements needed that you can do right away with a sensor that you know who’s urgent to solve the problem right.
Bill: 29:16
Who’s got the whether it’s the cost or the anxiety that’s happening from this problem and yeah, it’s you know kind of what’s keeping them awake at night. I’m really trying to understand that.
Cameron: 29:26
So fishing metaphor is great. It works for me all the time. I’d rather have my clients sharp with a very sharp spear than this huge net where I’m going to bring back everything in half the ocean and there’s, for one prize, fish that I might want.
Bill: 29:40
And I think you go through stages, certainly at the early stage, you, you, you, just again, I don’t. You know, most B2B focused companies do not need lots of prospects in the early stages and in fact, and in fact can’t handle them. So why would we go to a large event to do that? I mean separate from the idea that we want to really build up customer density. We can’t handle 100 prospects, maybe five to 10 a month or, you know, five to 10 a week, if they’re really, you know, sort of maybe more advanced, but but getting a hundred or hundreds at one time, they just can’t handle it.
Cameron: 30:25
Now, how for you, did you get into the international side of things? You know, B2B makes sense, B2G. But why overseas headquartered companies? B2b makes sense, B2G, but why overseas headquartered companies?
Bill: 30:36
How did that evolve? Well, I have an MBA and I had a finance teacher who was a great influence. His viewpoint was he had several, but one that really struck with me was a small business. The objective of a small business is to create a great lifestyle for the owner, and my wife and I both love international travel and I mean that’s kind of the fun reason. We also saw that there was additional barriers and challenges that international companies have because of the lack of familiarity with the US, and then how to sell and how to attract customers in the US. I mean there are all sorts of sort of nuanced and very prominent things I think that they’re just not used to. And you know, I mean just the number of trade shows across the US is insane, and then all the micro events, the local and regional meetups and so on, and so we really felt, besides our personal interest in being international and engaging across borders, yeah, I think the need is even greater for what international companies need as they expand into the US. Yeah, no, but we love travel.
Cameron: 32:07
That’s a good answer. I like that I could work with that.
Cameron: 32:10
So I know coming up in a couple of months is one of the biggest, well probably perhaps the biggest show specifically focusing on FDI into the US SelectUSA. If anyone goes to Bill’s site, which I didn’t mention, meetroicom First of all he’s got a fantastic array of resources, tools, cookbooks, calculators, advice. He has his own podcast, belly to Belly, and a lot of the content currently is gearing up for SelectUSA. Tell us a bit about that show, why it’s so important to companies, maybe HQ’d overseas, that are looking at the US market.
Bill: 32:47
Yeah, so SelectUSA this is the 10th year of the event. It’s run by the US Commerce Department. 10th year of the event. It’s run by the US Commerce Department, just to give you a sense of the level of US engagement there. So there will be typically every year there are somewhere between five and 10 cabinet secretaries that participate in SelectUSA not just the head of the Department of Commerce, but many of the other areas of the US. Every state in the union plus many regions will exhibit there.
Bill: 33:21
So if you’re looking to connect into not just the federal government but into state and local governments, it’s an incredible conduit for that. There are lots of service providers, support organizations that help or specialize in helping international companies prosper in the US, and then finally, there’s just tons of content that really is beneficial. So in two and a half days and it’s just outside of Washington DC in a place called National Harbor you can answer tons of questions that you would have about entering the US, whether it’s you know sort of all the jurisdictional things like tax and formation and so on to the. You know where to expand and you know and how to engage your first customers, kind of all. It’s kind of a euphemism in this way, but kind of all under one roof and it’s, you know, really easy to access. And you know, it’s kind of one of those events that you know happens so quickly that you want to do as much.
Bill: 34:28
And part of our the content we’ve offered is really around helping people pre-connect to the variety of resources they might want to meet. So we’ve done a lot of podcasts around with the various states and regions that will be there and also a bunch of the service providers. So to the extent that companies have an interest in a certain region or need certain services, they can pre-contact. And then, you know, ideally by the time you get to SelectUSA you’re having sort of second and third level conversations, as opposed to everything being sort of new and preliminary. You can be a bit further down the road.
Cameron: 35:04
What do you tell clients when they’ve again we talked about the ROI with the trade show and they say we’re all in, we’re flying over the owner and a couple of staff from Europe to go to this event, paying a lot to opportunity. Cost is huge, obviously, the booth itself and all that is high. What is part of your recipe for maximizing the number of engagements they have so that when the CEO, he or she shows up they’re as full of a calendar that’s booked as possible for the event?
Bill: 35:33
It’s a good question, so it’s funny we get asked every once in a while can you help us go to an event, go to CES, or you pick the event? And so I seem to be answering most of your questions with two answers. So the first answer is we wouldn’t get involved in discussing an event, probably just the same as you wouldn’t get involved in discussing an event, probably just the same as you wouldn’t get involved in discussing. You know an ad or one article.
Cameron: 36:01
Yeah, it’s not my favorite way to proceed.
Bill: 36:03
Right, I mean. So the output of our work and I think yours very similarly is how do we create a steady flow of opportunity? Right, this is you don’t want, you don’t want prospects in April but none in May. Right, we want, we want, you know we want a steady flow of opportunity. Right, you don’t want prospects in April but none in May. Right, we want a steady flow and ideally a steady and increasing flow of high quality prospects. So if that’s the outcome we want, then the trade show is just one part of that puzzle and it’s likely a series of events that have all sorts of other marketing that’s complementing them. So it’s likely a series of events that have all sorts of other marketing. You know that’s complementing them. So it’s really much more an integrated process that you know that creates that outcome and working. You know, ultimately our marketing in B2B should be. You know sort of stages. How are we? What marketing are we doing to create awareness? You know, trade shows are kind of good for that, but there are other inbound marketing and so on can do very similar things. What are we doing to create intimacy? What’s building that trust ultimately is where we feel that prospect converts from a marketing activity to a sales activity. Once we have trust, we’re likely able to have schedule a meeting where we can then need to assess and present and so on. And so you know, I think the first thing is, you know if we can agree that the idea here is to create a steady stream of activities. You know, let’s look at this event you’re going to in that context, and so you know what can we do.
Bill: 37:39
You know there are two outcomes ultimately that we’re looking to accomplish at most events. One is of the attendees whether it’s 100 attendees or, you know, 100,000, you know, one goal is to find the prospects within that sea. So how do, what strategy are we going to use to separate the prospects from everybody else? And it may be, you know, a big number, might be 1% of the audience, but it may be a fraction of a percent of the audience are prospects, which means we have to agree on what a prospect is, because most people, I would say and I see you smiling we think of it as prospect creep right, which is what they imagine. A prospect is just as social as growing. So a prospect, very specifically, has a need. They have money and they’re urgent. They have to have all three in order to be a prospect, at least by our definition. So we think of it as need money. Now is sort of the basis of the easy way to remember that. But so if our goal in that sort of that first stage of going to this CES type event is to find prospects, then what is it we’re going to do to separate the crowd from that small fraction of people? That’s one, and we may have a booth, we may be just networking, but we have to have some specific activities that drive that.
Bill: 39:06
The second sort of and we may speak. I think there are lots of maybe opportunities there. The other is, I think, parallel is we have existing relationships. What are we doing at this event to take those to the next stage? So we have existing prospects in our pipeline, we have existing partners, partner relationships, and what are we doing to do those and quite often these, you know in some cases it’s the same person doing both, but more often than not you.
Bill: 39:38
You know if it’s a team going, as you said, we can separate out. We can have, you know, two or three people focused on, you know, finding the prospects in the event and you know one or two people in the second activity. So that means we’re going to have one-on-one meetings, so that, and that’s you know you want to preset those. You know like you use SelectUSA. You know at SelectUSA I have generally average about 12 meetings a day plus you know just all the networking activities and so on. But the more you can sort of build your schedule with, you know again, second level type opportunities, ones that you already have some relationship with. That you know they’re either prospects that ideally you’re kind of whether you’re reviewing the proposal, signing the agreement, you know you know finalizing whatever you need to, but you know there are those type of meetings. And then there are the partner or multiplier type. But you know there are those type of meetings. And then there are the partner or multiplier type meetings where you know you’re finding more common ground, finding ways to work together.
Bill: 40:40
And also you know I think one of the things and certainly in B2B this is a huge opportunity is account penetration. You know you may have. You know you may have. You know the business in one division or one region. You know how do you get the. You know you may have. You know the business in one division or one region. You know how do you get the you know how do you then take that and go to the next you know region or the next business unit.
Bill: 40:59
And so you know, I think you know there are a lot of those opportunities and we tend to see, particularly in the early stages, companies sort of logo hunting because that satisfies their investors as opposed to what probably serves their business much better, which is account penetration, which is, you know, be efficient.
Bill: 41:19
You know that old, what is it? Uh, boston, uh, consulting group, uh, yeah, where they had the four quadrant thing. You know what’s the most efficient way to sell is all, it’s always selling, you know, more products to the same customer is, you know generally, you know, kind of number one. So obviously we want to have a mix, you know generally. But. But our dominant should, and especially at the early stages, to be to be efficient. Selling more to the same people is, you know, you know and, and, and you’re also defensive right the better a relationship we have, the larger the switching costs, the, you know, the more we’re going to know about a company’s needs and be attuned to, you know, any competitive threat. So I think you know, in a lot of ways, I think that’s self-serving to make sure that you have that depth of relationship with your existing clients.
Cameron: 42:16
Great shows can also be great places for intelligence gathering. The messaging is right there, front and center. It’s on a banner and learning about what the competition is doing. And I’ll often tell clients if you’re not sure that you can do this event or do it right, go walk the floor, go pay for a day pass, not even with the intention of meeting people. Yeah, if it happens, great, bring business cards. But you know you’re you’re soaking it in. If you’re shifting from industry x to y, all the approaches that you use in x don’t necessarily apply to y. One of my clients in manufacturing support are doing marketing now more into medical device and some of the outreach there. It’s not about cost, competitive, low cost labor. It’s about innovation and forward thinking and sustainability into the future, not so much industrial manufacturing. You know dollars and cents per hour, so it’s that messaging has to shift too.
Bill: 43:10
It’s funny. You mentioned that we just had a client call yesterday and this client’s going to a fairly large event in the U? S in in their vertical um in early May. And so they’re, they’re, they’re sales, they’re. They’re almost like Intel, they, they know what no one ever buys. Well, only the industry buys their product. It’s always embedded in into some some other. You know it’s a component of of of a system basically, and so you know it’s all part their.
Bill: 43:40
Their goal is to have a lot of partner meetings. So you know we’re helping them sort of, you know preset a bunch of partner meetings. And so yesterday we were talking about the script for those meetings and so there’s going to be, you know, certain agenda items, but you know one of our probably biggest you know things that we were advocating is, yeah, and we’re sort of scripting this up for them is, you know, at the end of the meeting. You know you may not know the reference, but you know think, like Columbo, right, there are two more questions, or there’s another question you want to ask before you leave, and you know one is of of the partner is um, who else here should we meet? Because those partners, you know they’ve been doing business in this space for mostly a long time, you know, and, and this event is fairly large and there’ll be lots of partner opportunities. So who else should we meet? You know, can you introduce this type thing? And the other is, what other shows or what other events are you going to this year?
Bill: 44:42
So thinking of this strategically is, you know, this company doesn’t need lots of partners and the partner sort of sales process is a process. It’s not, you know, sort of one trend. You know we had one meeting and now we’re. You know we’re going to be productive because, I mean, these partnerships are worth millions of dollars and so the idea really is, besides, going to events, you know, once you get a certain number of feedbacks on what events people are going to, not only going to events that partners will be at, but we want to go to events that these specific partners should be at we want to make reasons to collide.
Bill: 45:23
Again, you know that we’re going to have, you know, this company’s based in the UK, so it’s not, you know, and all their partners are going to be all over the US. So, having these convening points places, you know, we know we’re going to see. You know, we saw you in May. We know we’re going to see you again in August. We know we’re going to see you again in October, whatever the case is.
Bill: 45:42
But you know at least what we find, particularly as geography as we all get separated by geography having points on the calendar that we know we’re going to interact again whether we have a consistent, you know, zoom interaction or we’re going to see each other at these events makes things happen. You know they’re, they’re, they also act as deadlines and so having you know, you know, gosh, I can’t show up at that event without having these answers or having that contract or whatever the whatever the case is. So you know, a big part of this is, you know, once they’re in the funnel is how do we nurture that relationship to the place at which it’s productive and then obviously more productive, you know. And so having having that as part of the strategy. So you really think through this isn’t about no one wins by having more partner prospects. You win by having productive partnerships, and so it’s how do we get them to that place?
Cameron: 46:40
I love to just thinking of events as part of an integrated annual marketing strategy. You’ve got those events across the year and it’s a reason to be in touch, an excuse to reach out. Are you going to come to this event in October? Put it plop in a webinar. In between, we had a really good success with a client that built a relationship with a publication in the wire harness sector you know, somewhat obscure, very labor intensive, but no one else had it with them. They had a successful. They’re now going on their four-year partnership.
Cameron: 47:10
Every year before the biggest trade show in person in Milwaukee for this event is their webinar and it’s become branded. It’s become a thing that they do every year and they have a great relationship with the publisher and the editor and they kind of own that space. I like to look at great success to build on. What’s the next one that we need to consider? What’s the next industry or area that we need to branch out? I’d rather have them go to a show with 15, like I said, 15 exhibitors than a huge one where they’re just lost in the shuffle.
Bill: 47:38
Yeah, well, I mean a whole, a whole. Nother topic, maybe for another time, is events. Trade shows are really a 365 day a year opportunity and, to the point of integrated marketing, it’s because you’re relating to an audience. How do you, you know, the trade show is just the excuse to relate, but it’s, you know, I mean, it’s, how do you, you know, how do you look at? You know, I think the more savvy trade show hosts are really beginning to understand that, because it’s, it’s very hard.
Bill: 48:06
You know, so many things can affect the actual day of right or or days of. You know, bad weather can affect and you know, you know, just, you know, covid was such an invasive thing. But you know, how do you relate to that audience? You know, at least looking at it minimum, as sort of the three months before and the three months after. But I think the more sophisticated are looking at how do we relate much more in an annualized way. Because it’s, you know, and that’s where the integrated marketing really can take hold, whether we’re doing webinars or we’re, you know, having, you know, writing various posts on the host website or on their LinkedIn. I mean, I think there are just tons and tons of strategies, press releases and so on, leave behind pieces you need to have at the end of the show.
Cameron: 48:59
I’m going to ask you one last question, bill, before I do that, to throw that at you, just to thank you for coming on the show. This is fantastic for takeaway. I knew it would be. I encourage people who are interested to check out Bill Kenney’s website, meetroicom Very rich resources and tools. My last question for you is you’re engaging with a client for the first time. They’re coming to you. They want to be at Select USA. What’s the one takeaway you’re going to really emphasize for them more than any other?
Bill: 49:30
It all starts with goals. If they’re going to Select USA than any other, it all starts with goals. You know sort of you know if they’re going to SelectUSA or any other event, you know what is it you want to answer or as an outcome for that, and then it’s really aligning everything to that.
Bill: 49:44
So you know, if you’re you know, again, if you’re going to SelectUSA, then it’s, you know, maybe you’re looking to get your first customers in the US. So you know, maybe you’re you’re looking to get your first customers in the U? S. So you know sort of where. What you know is there a geography or an industry that you know is going to be most prominent. You know sort of what. What are the big cause? Everybody’s going to be at different stages. So what are the big questions that are keeping you from sort of that goal and and so, and then it’s pre-setting appointments that will help you on the road to answering those questions and getting towards accomplishing that.
Bill: 50:18
I think you know the worst thing to see is sort of when you whether it’s like USA you get to some other event and the first day and you know people are at their. You know, you know sort of the networking tables and you see a team of people I’ve had this experience, you know hundreds of times where they’re setting the strategy of the event. At the event on the morning it’s happening where there’s just zero preset appointments. There’s, you know, there’s no pre-thought. I mean, at least they’re doing it there, that’s great. But you know, the months before is really where the leverage is Yep, but you know the months before is really where the leverage is Yep.
Cameron: 50:55
Well, Bill Kenney from Meet, thank you so much for coming on the show. This has been America Open for Business and I look forward to catching up with you in the next episode. Thanks so much, Bill.
Bill: 51:04
Thank you, cameron, it was a real pleasure. Take care.
Narrator: 51:12
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