Think Customers: The 1to1 Blog

About two weeks ago I attended The Motivation Show, one of the largest events for engagement strategies, including incentives, recognition awards, and motivational meetings and events. During my three days of immersion in presentations, press conferences, meetings, and time in our meeting room on the show floor, I heard three distinct and dissonant voices.

• "It ain't what it used to be when aisles were packed and orders were written on the show floor."


• "This is great, highly qualified buyers are spending quality time with vendors and building meaningful relationships regarding real business."


• "What just happened?"

In the past we were able to look at crowded aisles and measured feet on the floor. We knew that sticking our brand into the mass of people was a good thing and we knew intuitively that the relationships we created or reenergized was a good thing. Then along came rule changers in the form of a tough economy, reduced budgets, and, heaven forbid, fewer exhibitors and participants at trade shows. This year everybody's intent on knowing their ROI is much more so than in the past. And this is where the problem begins.

You see, ROI has been improperly used to mean everything from the results of smiley face surveys to anecdotal references about contacts made and more. But today that doesn't fly. ROI is actually a financial term and is calculated by dividing net benefit by total costs times 100.

And this is about the point that everybody gets all crossed up, because we can't measure ROI of engagement initiatives easily. One needs to be very deliberate with establishing objectives, determining the metrics, measuring the benefits, and converting them to monetary value. Then you need to add up all the costs, run the math, and use an isolation technique to eliminate the static and the influence of other forces.
Don't get me wrong. It's doable and should be done for our largest and most important projects. (For help, check out all the resources, books, and workshops available from The ROI Institute.)

But for other projects that don't warrant the investment of time or money required to measure ROI, let's not try to measure it. Instead, let's be content proving value by delivering measurable results. For trade shows, this may indeed be number of leads generated, new contacts made, proposals generated, knowledge gained, etc. The benefit would be less confusion about "what just happened" and greater contentment in a world with new rules.

To hear more on this, view Don Peppers live from The Motivation Show.

About the Author: Todd M. Hanson is president and founder of Catalyst Performance Group, Inc. and the ROI of Engagement Partnership. He speaks, writes a blog called ROI of Engagement and is measuring ROI for participants of The Motivation Show.