Question 1

Are trade shows and events worth it?

Accepted Answer

Sometimes, and rarely for the reason budgets are justified — the value is almost never in leads scanned at the stand, and almost always in **conversations that would not otherwise happen**.

**Where the real value is:**

**Existing customers and pipeline.** The highest-return use of an event is meeting people you are already talking to, face to face, in a compressed period. **Booking those meetings in advance is what separates a successful event from an expensive one.**

**Partners and suppliers**, where an hour in person replaces months of email.

**Competitive and market intelligence**, gathered by walking the floor rather than standing behind a desk.

**Speaking slots**, which carry more credibility than any stand and frequently cost less.

**Recruitment**, which is an underused justification.

**Hallway conversations** — the consistent finding that the scheduled programme is not where the value concentrates.

**Where it is wasted:** scanning badges for volume, producing lists of people who wanted a free pen; an unstaffed or badly staffed stand; sending people who cannot have a substantive conversation; and treating it as a brand exercise with no measurement at all.

**The real cost**, which is routinely underestimated: stand space, design and build, shipping, electricity and connectivity charged at remarkable rates, staff time for several days including travel, opportunity cost of those people, accommodation, and giveaways.

**How to decide whether to go:** who attends, and is that genuinely your buyer or your competitors' salespeople; how many of your target accounts will be there; what a speaking slot costs relative to a stand; and what the same budget would produce in another channel.

**How to measure it honestly.** Not scans. Meetings booked and held; pipeline created and attributed with a reasonable window, since deals influenced at an event close months later; existing deals advanced; and cost per qualified conversation. **Set the measurement before you go**, because after the event everyone will claim it worked.

**Smaller, focused events** frequently outperform large ones on cost per meaningful conversation.

Question 2

Why do marketing and sales teams disagree about leads?

Accepted Answer

Because they are measured on different things and, almost always, have never agreed a written definition of what a qualified lead is — so each is optimising honestly against incompatible targets. The

Question 3

What is a north star metric, and how do you choose one?

Accepted Answer

A single measure a whole organisation aligns around — chosen because it captures the value customers actually receive, so that improving it necessarily means the business is working. The problem it

Question 4

What is customer lifetime value, and how is it actually calculated?

Accepted Answer

The total profit you expect from a customer over the whole relationship. It is the number that determines how much you can afford to pay to acquire one — and it is calculated wrongly more often than

Question 5

What is a customer journey map and is it actually useful?

Accepted Answer

A customer journey map is a visual representation of the stages a person goes through when interacting with a business — what they do, think and feel at each point, across every channel. What a map

Question 6

What is a value proposition?

Accepted Answer

A value proposition is a clear statement of what you offer, who it is for, and why it is better than the alternatives — including the alternative of doing nothing. The three components it must

Question 7

What is a media plan, and what does flighting mean?

Accepted Answer

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