Evalutaing How You Reach Prospects

CEO of Thomas Nelson Publishers, Michael Hyatt recently outlined his reasons for why Thomas Nelson has stopped attending trade shows.

Trade shows made sense when the industry was more fragmented. It was one of the few ways to connect face-to-face with retailers. But things have changed. The industry is largely consolidated.

Because of this, we meet face-to-face with our top 600 or so customers in Christian retail channel at least four times a year. These customers account for 95% of our revenue in this channel. Our telephone reps call on another 600 customers. These account for an additional 3% of our business. So that only leaves the stores that account for 2% of our total volume in this channel. We simply cannot justify the enormous expense of a trade show to reach these 2%. It’s not cost-effective for us. The same could be said of the general market as well.

I am not suggesting that this strategy is right for every publisher. For some, it may make great sense. It just doesn’t work for us.

Here are some questions for you to consider.

1. How is it the majority of your Sunday morning guests find out about your church? (If you don't know the answer to this question, get busy and figure it out. It is too important to guess.)
   
2. What are you doing to help increase this percentage?
3. Are you wasting money trying to bolster up other means of attracting guests that have largely proven ineffective?

If most of our guests come to church through personal invitation it seems to me that we should be investing most of our time, energy, creativity and money helping more members get in on the fun. What do you think?