

This Startup Wasted a Whole Lotta Money on a Conference - gk1
http://www.gkogan.co/blog/how-to-get-non-crap-sales-leads-from-conferences/?hn=1

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sokoloff
I mostly pass the Goldilocks tests (maybe not the 'immediate need' one), but
I'm surprised at how much followup spam (email and calls) I get from
conferences. I have taken to registering for conferences with tagged email
addresses (to filter more easily) and don't answer my phone for numbers I
don't recognize.

Booth staff are often literally scanning badges of people as we walk by. Not
even glancing at the booth, I get stopped and asked "can I scan your badge?"
No. Trust me, if I'm not in your target set by not allowing you to scan my
badge, I'm helping your company more than you are right now. (It's one thing
to stop people walking by and engage them to see if they're interested. It's
quite another when the purpose of your day is to scan as many badges as
possible. That's metrics becoming a target sillyness.)

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chrisabrams
What kind of conference/badge are people asking to scan? I go to 10
conferences a year and I've never been asked to have my badge scanned.

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arethuza
Anything involving "enterprise" technology will have vendors who are desperate
to collect leads e.g. Microsoft Convergence. To be fair any time I've been at
a conference people on stands were very polite about asking whether they could
scan you and it's easier to be scanned than giving out business cards or
scribbling down email addresses.

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chrisabrams
I'm assuming these badges have QR codes or RFID then?

I definitely don't go to enterprise conferences :O

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caminante
It doesn't have to be "enterprise." It's any conference with a demo alley
and/or sales booths.

As others mentioned and only if you're forced to walk the gauntlet, remember
to use an email alias (or email+tag) and a non-important phone #. Each scan
gets your name, email and phone #.

If you don't tread cautiously, you get an army of sales drones calling you for
the next year at all times during the day in addition to a never-ending,
unfilterable drove of sales emails clogging your inbox.

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cmdrfred
I host my own private mail server and have an entire domain just for spam
emails for this reason. I give each company an email like
CompanyName@domain.com that filters down to a catchall so I can track who
spams the most.

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exelius
The reason most conferences are crap for sales is because most conferences are
90% vendors. Chances are anyone you talk to is looking to sell something of
their own, not buy your stuff.

The Internet has made it too easy for people to keep up on trends that buy
side of most conferences has evaporated. I'm not going to fly for 2 hours to
listen to some guy give a speech that I can watch online, which used to be the
draw to get the buyers to the conference.

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MichaelCrawford
Talk to Jim Johnson. I don't have his contact info but he does direct mail in
the san francisco bay area.

It has been well-documented for decades that conference attendees are poor
sales leads.

There are many good ways to obtain sales lead though. Tell Jim I sent you.

