I spent the weekend doing an aggressive early spring cleaning of our exhibitor database for New Media Expo. Over the last few months I’ve realized that although I’d like to have a large base of prospects to call on to have a booth at the show, quite honestly we’ve been spending too much time calling on prospects that just aren’t a good fit.

Like most everything else, the 80/20 rule applies very well to tradeshow sponsorship and exhibit sales. Roughly 80% of our revenue comes from 20% of the database and I’ve decided that sales needs to concentrate more on growing that 20% and less time calling those companies that have said “no thanks” for the past 4 years.

Could one of those “no thanks” turn into “OK we’ll give it a try” if we continued calling every few months? Sure, but the cold truth of the matter is that the time spent calling all those marginally applicable companies just doesn’t pay enough dividends to warrant the work.

So, as of Monday morning, any company that

a) is somewhat of a fit, but really is not a great target (example: iPod case companies - yes our attendees who create podcasts and online video are heavy iPod users, but accessories just aren’t the focus of our show)

or

b) we’ve been calling on for four years and have never had success in explaining the value of exhibiting

…are gone from the database. (I’ve made two or three exceptions for companies that are 100% perfectly on-target prospects whose target market is EXACTLY our attendees and for whatever reason we just haven’t been effective at communicating our value.)

But to the rest: Thanks and good-bye. Call us anytime if you’d like to look at a floor plan, but we won’t be reaching out to you anymore.

I’m feeling a bit guilty about it. I can hear hundreds of sales trainers who have written the hundreds of sales books I’ve read screaming, “Never give up! A “no” is just a request for more information!” and “Take a different tact - you haven’t done a good job of finding their pain!”

But as an owner of a small company in the real world, I think it’s important to focus our energies where we can provide the most value and generate the most revenue.