Virtual Event Sponsorship Best Practices: For Your Sales Team

Virtual trade shows and conferences will never replace face-to-face but they do provide a few significant benefits that you cannot get from in-person:

1. Wider reach from all geographic areas
2. Richer data including demographic, purchase intent, and engagement levels
3. Optimized lead followup and pipeline tracking
4. Cost effectiveness
5. Less time out of the office, more time selling

With that said, virtual events cannot replace a few critical user experiences that in-person events offer:

1. Casually bumping into someone you have wanted to meet at a networking event or “at the water cooler”
2. Gaining prospect engagement at your booth when someone walks by, sees something that excites them, and approaches you or you encourage them to engage
3. Well-run in-person events generate energy and excitement that simply cannot be replicated via virtual
4. Easily creating interactive experiences during thought leadership - think of calling on folks, back and forth interaction, breakout rooms after sessions based on deep dive topics

To ensure your investment delivers ROI, we suggest you ask for the following components to your sponsorship from your event organizer and that you develop a custom solution that goes outside a virtual tabletop or booth. A few suggestions include:

1. Matchmaking & Meeting Scheduling: If developing pipeline is a critical ROI for your organization, meetings are a critical must have in my book. And not all meeting capabilities that platforms offer are the same. As a sponsor, you should have a guaranteed number of meetings, your event organizer should be able to facilitate this easily, and there should be a plan to account for no-shows which tend to be much higher at virtual events than in-person. In addition, you should have the ability not only to find and request meetings with potential prospects before the event starts but you should also have a way to nurture prospects prior.
2. Lead Delivery: The days of delivering leads days if not weeks after they are generated are over. Prospects who are in the buying process do not stop that process to wait for an event to take place. It is critical that event organizers allow sponsors to access their leads in real time so that they can effectively be put into the pipeline and nurtured. In turn, the sponsor organization should ensure they have the correct messaging protocol for those leads based on where/how they were generated. 
3. Data: Not all leads are the same. Behavioral data should accompany data secured during registration. Behavioral data can include how many of your assets the lead downloaded, whether they attended one of your sponsored roundtables or sessions, if the lead scheduled a meeting and if that meeting was actually conducted. This data should be available to you via one comprehensive report.
4. Engagement & Networking: In addition to allowing you to have a sponsor presence complete with downloadable content, branding and matchmaking, and meeting scheduling, the program should also allow for on the spot networking via video in one-to-one, one-to-few, and few-to-few formats. I would also recommend adding on sponsored networking events in the form of roundtable discussions or fun engaging events such as a health and wellness event or evening wine tasting or cooking class. 
5. Thought Leadership Participation: Thought leadership is a core component of virtual events. I recommend sponsors pursue relevant thought leadership opportunities in the form of a seat on a panel, presentation of research, or positioning of a company thought leader who may be seen as an industry expert. The key for you and the event organizer is to ensure that the content you present is not promotional in any way and that your participation adds value to the session.

Prepping Your Sales Team for Virtual Event Participation

Virtual events and in-person events are inherently different in another way: how your sales team engages and makes the event worthwhile for your company. There is no booth for them to stand in and watch people as they walk by, check their badge, and try to engage them on the spot. Virtual events require a bit more finesse and creativity to engage prospects outside of the pre-scheduled meetings. 

A few suggestions below may help tee your team up for your next virtual event sponsorship:
​

1. Training: Ask the event organizer to host a webinar or offer a pre-recorded version that walks your team through each aspect of the event and your sponsorship. The overview should include how sales reps can find and meaningfully engage with prospects in the context of booth visits, meetings (inbound and outbound requests), and thought leadership sessions.
2. Engagement: There is no such thing as a “trade show floor” in a virtual setting that attendees walk. Therefore, salespeople need to change their mindset from standing in an aisle and handing out promo items to being present in sessions that pertain to your company/industry/solution and listening to the Q&A. Your sales reps should be proactively looking for questions that your team can answer by providing relevant information in the form of case studies, video content or market research, or connecting the prospect with a senior thought leader on your team vis-a-vis an impromptu meeting. Sales reps can invite audience members to your booth to discuss further or to access the materials I mention above. Or better yet, if you are hosting a networking event or roundtable on that particular topic, your sales reps can invite those attendees to join.
3. Pre-Show Marketing: Your event organizer should provide you with not only the tools to invite your prospects and customers via email, social posts, email signatures, landing pages and other marketing, but they should also provide a way for your team to see who from your invited list has registered. Those who converted should be invited to attend your sponsored sessions, 1:2:1 meetings and any networking events you are hosting. Your sales team and senior leadership teams should also be provided with individual 1:2:1 invitations for direct prospect list emails.
4. Meetings: If your sponsorship includes matchmaking and appointment setting, your sales team be trained on how to find, connect, and schedule meetings as well as how to confirm and prepare for those meetings and have a plan B if attendees cancel or don’t show up. The project manager of your sponsorship should ensure that each sales rep is assigned a set of prospects or types of prospects to reach out to so that audience members are not receiving multiple requests from different people from the same company. 
5. Content Marketing: Your marketing team should train salespeople on what type of information to refer prospects to based on identified pain points and questions asked during sessions and meetings. 
6. Post Show ROI Assessment by Rep: Make sure to evaluate the pipeline developed by each rep engaged with the show organized by pre-scheduled meetings, sales originated leads from the event, and leads that engaged with you from the event but though a content download or more passive action.

A little more on leads generated from the event:

1. Data: I spoke about data earlier and wanted to expand upon that here. Speak to your event organizer about the data that accompanies your leads. Not every lead is the same. Prospect behavior is equally if not more important than the self-identified characteristics you are provided. For example, a prospect may fit your ICP to a “T” but not engage with you other than to download a white paper from your sponsor area. In contrast, you could have a ICP who is not perfect (right industry, wrong title and vice versa) but who has visited your sponsor area multiple times, downloaded a few case studies, attended your roundtable session and asked for a meeting. Those behavioral aspects may show significant buying intent even if your sales team has to move up the decision chain.
2. Nurture Paths: Again, do not discount leads if they don’t fit your ICP. While they must be treated differently in terms of post-event messaging, it is still very important to connect with them. There is a lot to learn from the people who engage with your content and virtual event presence. You may identify a niche market, new buyer types and more.
3. Lead Filtering: Do ask your event organizer to separate out students, analysts, competitors, academics, industries and regions you cannot sell into - people who simply would never fit into your ICP/TAM criteria. You should still receive them but they should not count as part of your ROI Assessment. The event organizer’s job is to not only provide you a platform to showcase your company, products and services, and thought leadership but to connect you with the RIGHT types of prospects.

In sum, there are a multitude of factors that impact your ROI as a sponsor for a virtual event. If you want help implementing any of the elements above or would like to utilize H2K’s services, please contact us.

Heather Holst-Knudsen

Founder & CEO, H2K Partners
Email Heather

​A top performing multi-functional executive in the events, media and event tech industries, Heather is passionate about all things related to sales, revenue stream innovation, & new organizational structures. She is particularly adept at helping her clients achieve growth during challenging times. Heather has won and failed leading her own businesses and through those experiences, she has learned. She shares what she knows openly with all of her clients and lives by being honest, true, transparent and authentic. Heather delivers results that matter using her strategic planning abilities coupled with operational expertise.