How important are your event & conference inquiries?

There are two schools of thought when it comes to event & conference booking. Some organizations forego the inquiry stage, choosing to wait until the booking has reached the tentative stage before entering any information into Kx. The reasons are varied, from not wanting to clutter up the database to having enough business that inquiries are not worth the time to log. For those who do log inquiries as they come in or shortly thereafter, Kx has a number of tools to help maximize their value.

First there is the inquiry screen itself. Gathering the basic information about the person inquiring and their company is an excellent way to understand who your potential customers may be. What industry are they in? What site are they interested in and why? How did they hear about your facilities? Even if the inquiry turns out to be a request for one of your brochures, you now have a target to market to in the future. By recording the date of the request along with its potential value, you also have a way to manage the potential sales when it comes to following up on the inquiries later. For example, you would be more inclined to chase one inquiry over another if it fits into the schedule better or had equal dates but more people attending, thus more value to your organization. As an added bonus, if an inquiry is entered at the time it is taken, you are likely to gather the pertinent information about the event and avoid errors or forget important details during the phone call or meeting.

The existing inquiry screen is a great tool for managing your follow up more effeciently as well. Perhaps you have one member of the staff who manages all the brochure requests or does the event pricing. He or she can easily filter the existing inquiries by type and see all of the brochure requests together while eliminating the other requests they are not responsible for. Filter further by week or day and the task becomes that much simpler to accomplish. For analytical purposes, the inquiry screen can be used to help understand what types of events & conferences you are able to advance to the next booking stage, which ones you don’t and some of the reasons why. By understanding where the inquiry originated, you can track which marketing efforts are working for you and which ones are not. It is also important to note that though an inquiry did not result in a booking it still has value. You now have a contact to market to for any future events or conference types that match the criteria of the original inquiry.

The Kx products were designed to help you run more efficiently from inquiry to invoice. By taking advantage of the many ways to use the inquiry functionality, you will not only increase productivity, but also be able to clearly understand where your business is coming from when you are ready to increase revenue.