You know how some franchises just seem to be everywhere? Ever wondered how they do it? Follow an integrated marketing approach and you’ll be one of them.
A perfect pitch is a psychologically proven method of engaging with someone to help them understand quickly and simply, what you do, how you do it, why you are good at it and why it is relevant to them.
In short this process goes through four fundamental stages of:
1. Clarity
2. Credibility
3. Relevance
4. Believability
Across the business world outside the franchise industry, it is common for a company to have a perfect 90-second style pitch that they use at networking events or to train the sales team. They understand the value of having it, the power it provides in consistency of approach and how it helps engage their target audience.
This is such a powerful tool in franchising, once you understand how important it is and what impact it can have on your business, then you will realise why spending time developing your perfect pitch is paramount.
By utilising a perfect pitch approach, you can train your staff on the phone, email, on your website and at events to engage more effectively with prospects. As so many franchisors and franchise owners attend exhibitions (and we have the spring exhibitions approaching fast) we are also sharing some thoughts on improving your event success.
Exhibitions
Getting to the exhibition with an innovative stand design, appropriate merchandise and plenty of enthusiasm is a great start but there are a few more tricks to a successful show. We always prefer to have at least two people working on a stand, or more depending on stand size. Brief your stand team on what you want them to do and how you want them to record the number and details of visitors to the stand, remembering to cover any data protection issues. We like to set our clients’ stand teams individual goals. For example, if you want 100 leads over a two-day show and you have five people working on the stand that is 50 leads a day, 10 leads per person. Five before lunch and five after lunch each, per day. Breaking it down like this makes it less daunting for the team.
Multi-media
An exhibition provides an excellent opportunity for you to showcase any videos, testimonials, events, discovery days, case studies and product demos on a screen. Visitors naturally stop and watch and this gives your team a chance to approach them.
On-stand speaking
Some of our most successful clients adopt a system for attracting visitors onto the stand in a non-threatening way. A great way to do this is through the use of speaking slots. By scheduling a few speaking slots on your stand, you attract prospects to you.
Speaking at the show
Most exhibitions offer breakout rooms for seminar sessions. At the point of booking your stand, it is vital to get one of these slots. They massively affect the success of your presence at the show.
Don’t forget the press
Leave your media pack in the press room for any interested journalists to pick up to find out more information about your franchise. Always ensure that you include your perfect pitch in your press pack too.
After the show
Details of interested prospects that have actively opted in to receive further details on your franchise should be followed up fast! An eye-catching branded email and personal phone call works best.