Exhibition News May 2020 | Page 7

News “To be successful every event or product we produce will need to deliver greater and more obvious value to our customers than ever before.” Lisa Hannant, Group MD, Clarion Events 46% Flume reveals ‘lockdown’ sales insight Flume Sales Training has compiled key feedback following a series of successful online sales training courses during lockdown. The company has successfully engaged with and supported 2,180 professionals with over 1,000 attendees joining their ‘Media and Events Selling in a Crisis’ Linkedin group. The company, whose goal is help event sales teams navigate their way through the crisis, explained that they are committed to listening, learning and sharing the best ideas, approaches and best practice across the industry. Here are five core things they’ve learned so far: 1. Redefining your purpose is crucial. Centring your team around a common purpose, built around what your clients and audience need right now, will help you make the right decisions 2. The client’s perspective is king. Build buyer personas for the crisis and design opportunities which connect 100% to what they will care about right now 3. Audience insight is the key to client engagement. Your client wants to impact audience behaviour in the right way - research your engaged of attendees attend only one trade show per year community and use this insight to open client doors 4. Sales leaders need a new charter for their teams. Clients need salespeople to behave differently and remote working is a new experience for most. Sales teams need to buy into the new way of working and agree upfront what behaviours they need to demonstrate and how the sales leader will help them during this time 5. Salespeople who are human and authentic will come through this stronger. Clients are looking for partners right now, so hard-selling is obsolete. Salespeople who are genuinely looking for ways to help the client and guide and support them through this crisis will see the greatest rewards Flume have created a programme of resources which help industry sales teams, including regular free webinars, free video tips, impact workshops, ‘sales chat’ interviews, whitepapers and blogs. To join the 2000+ salespeople and leaders who are already engaging, learning and sharing with the industry, go to: www.flumetraining.com/covid- 19-response/ £11bn in business sales across UK exhibition industry 2018/19 114,000 total jobs are directly and indirectly supported by UK exhibitions 92% of trade show attendees want to see new products 9.1 million visitors to exhibitions in 2018/19 May — 07