Have you ever wondered how trade shows fit into Flō’s sales strategy?
Our customers don’t buy products from us – they buy projects from a collection of people. The decision to buy is based on trust … trust developed through relationships … relationships developed after making connection with the right decision makers.
Historically, initial connections tended to be in person, usually after numerous phone attempts or physical cold calls, hoping to finally get past the gatekeepers to reach the right person. In the past few years, certainly since COVID, our point of entry tends to be online first, then perhaps a meeting. Zoom calls and webinars are helpful for imparting information and eliciting interest in further discussion, but don’t contribute much to building the close relationships we seek. That’s why you see us spending so much time and effort (and money) attending trade shows, openings, etc., where we can network with others in our industry and hopefully with future clients.
Topping our list of “must attend” events are those hosted by Connecting Point Marketing. Connecting Point organizes trade events for executives in the retail, restaurant, healthcare and hotel industries for innovation. The two events you will hear us discussing most are StorePoint Fresh, the event that attracts senior-level executives from grocery and supermarket chains among the top 25 in annual gross sales, and BuildPoint, an event that connects retail professionals with supplier companies to discover innovations in architecture and engineering, construction and renovation, and facilities maintenance of physical stores. These events include opportunities to give executive boardroom presentations to a minimum of two to four executive groups. Each group has seven to nine executives in it, private one-on-one follow-up appointments with those who want more information, insightful content sessions, and first-class networking events. These provide for unprecedented facetime. If we aren’t talking to the right people, they offer to connect us. It would take years – yes, years, to get in front of each client separately, so these events are incredibly important to Flō.
Our sales cycle is a few months to a few years, so this is future facing for us – planting seeds – and we have seen fruit grow from it. Years of pursuing Harris Teeter (and it took a few years) is how we met our Grocery Outlet contacts. It worked in two ways with Vallarta through StorePoint Fresh. Justin Pratt remembered Barb and the boardroom presentation, and when he changed companies, moving to Vallarta, he asked her to redo the presentation for his team. Carlos was also in our boardroom, and we followed up with a 1-on-1. He liked our concept, as well as Barb (when Alex and Barb attended Vallarta’s Grand opening, Carlos’ boss, Sandy, let on that Carlos had come home from the event and stated in his Spanish accent, “I have met a woman. Her name is Barb. And I love her!” (Who wouldn’t love Barb!) These events are all part of the success. You are all together, mingling, spending time, and getting to know people. The irony is not lost that they are called Connecting Point events – you are making connections. You just can’t get the same result from an office meeting.
This year Peter will be presenting, together with Hillphoenix, to ATMO and FMI E&SD. The shows we are doing demonstrates our innovation with others, and that we know refrigeration – we’re first in talking about initiatives, before others in the industry do. These events are baked into our marketing strategy. They offer much more than an opportunity to meet potential new clients. We also get to update our existing clients on our latest innovations and market updates.
