New CEIR Report Helps Event Sales Teams Overcome Barriers to Exhibiting

July 17, 2019

Center for Exhibition Industry Research has released the third report in its Head of Marketing Insights Series, entitled Overcoming Non-Exhibitor Objections. The report provides insights and ideas for how B2B exhibition management and exhibit sales teams can not only overcome barriers when making the case for exhibiting at their trade shows, but also formulate strategies for gaining new exhibitors.

“Overcoming prospect objections is an ongoing challenge,” said Cathy Breden, CEO of CEIR. “This report identifies how to minimize objections through offering the right event content and deploying other tactics. It can also serve to launch a brainstorming session on refining event content and sales pitches that maximize sales conversions.”

In addition to sharing survey results gathered from marketing leadership at organizations throughout North America, the report provides a list of suggestions for effectively addressing each objection, a matrix exhibit sales teams can then use for strategic planning brainstorming sessions to help refine event content and cultivate more targeted sales approaches.

“Overcoming Non-Exhibitor Objections” provides results relating to:

  • Reasons for not exhibiting
  • What convinces non-exhibitors to exhibit
  • Suggestions on how to counter objections

In addition to total results, differences in results are reported by:

  • Organization size, by number of employees
  • Average market share in primary target markets
  • Heads of marketing by generation

CEIR

“A surprise finding from this research is that a substantial percentage of marketing leadership at organizations not using [exhibitions as a marketing] channel are open to considering the opportunity,” Nancy Drapeau, CEIR’s vice president of research. “The challenge is to make a compelling offer [exhibitors] value.”

Designed to quantify the power of B2B exhibitions as an effective marketing medium, the multi-report Head of Marketing Insights Series uncovers areas of opportunity to expand awareness of the channel and what to address to enhance its value and relevance to brand marketers going forward, according to CEIR officials.

 

 

The series includes five reports:

This new series has been made possible thanks to funding by the Society of Independent Show Organizers.

To learn more and download the report, go here.

  

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