Best way to manage Exhibition/Conference attendees

Great question Thomas Rei! One option that you may want to investigate is loading these conference attendees into the Targets module and using the Target > Lead > Contact flow. We have a help article on this, which explains Targets as:

A target, sometimes called a suspect or prospect in other CRM systems, represents an individual about whom you know little. Targets are transitory and can be mopped up, deleted, and scrubbed to no lasting effect. This is because there is virtually nothing of importance that can be associated to a target-no cases, quotes, etc.

You can also modify the Targets module in Studio to include extra fields (like "Type of Interaction") to track those meetings/demos/quotes, and possibly Target Lists to consolidate these individuals into "buckets" based on the exhibitions, conferences, or other criteria. Using Tags could be another way to segment these individuals.

A few helpful resources may be:

• Introduction to Contacts, Leads, and Targets (mentioned above)
• Copying Fields Automatically in Lead Conversion 
• SugarU Podcast: What's the difference between Targets, Leads, and Contacts in Sugar? 
• Targets User Guide
• Target Lists User Guide
• Also, because you mentioned you were using Salesforce at your previous company, we have two SugarU courses to help understand the differences in Sugar
  • Sugar for Salesforce Users
  • Quick Start for Salesforce Administrators

I hope this helps!

We went the custom route.

We do not use Targets, anyone who contacts us/we contact becomes a new Lead.

I built an Events module to track Events that we host or that our people attended, it has a unique Event Code and minimal information about the event online/in person, location, dates etc...

I have a 1:M between Events and Leads.
Many Leads can be related to an Event, but only one Event per Leads. So the Event appears as a related field on the Lead but the visibility is set to be only when Lead Source is Event.

For events our people attend:

- they collect information about the people they talked to and notes in whatever format they like.

- they bring back that information to our Leads Management team who cleans them up, adds information as needed, and formats everything in a Leads Import spreadsheet which they then upload to the Leads module as linked to the Event record.

For events we host

- signup is online via a web form which creates a Lead related to the Event

For events that we host, I then have additional triggers and scheduled processes that allow the Event to have counts for how many people signed up and how many attended.
The attendee count is based on our Leads Management team marking the Leads who attended in another field, that is visible for Lead Source = Events, which is a 2 value dropdown: Attended/No Show.

I built additional links between Leads and a custom Survey module to allow the storage of Question/Answer for additional form fields that change event by event. Things like chicken or steak or vegetarian if we offer meals etc... it's flexible enough to allow different questions for different events without any programming. Dropdown, radio, free text are all allowed but free text does not allow for aggregate reporting.

The Survey questions/answers are linked to the Lead and displayed in a subpanel on the Lead. No one really looks at those. A Mathematica Notebook I wrote, retrieves the Attendee and Survey questions via a custom SugarAPI and presents the information in a way that is useful to the Event Coordinator. It gives a count of attendees, a tally answers to questions,  and more.
They rerun the Notebook with the appropriate parameter passed for the Event Code so I don't have to build specific ones.

FrancescaS

on Premise, Sugar Professional 11.0.3 working on Enterprise conversion soon...

Hello,

Thanks Alex your quick answer!

I had looked at the target list solution, but unfortunately I don't see a way to give a unique status to a contact/lead.
I'll give you an example:

My contact "Contact 1" participates in "Exhibition A", we make him a "demo". I would like to link "Contact 1" to my target list "Exhibition A" and set his status (via a new field) to "Demo".
I don't think this is possible.

My contact "Contact 2" participates in "Exhibition A", we just do a "Quick Chat". I would like to link "Contact 2" to my target list "Exhibition A" and set his status (via a new field) to "Demo".

At the end of the day, I will be able to draft a report showing the number of quick "chats"/"demos" for "Exhibition A"

Thanks Francesca for your detailed answer!

I also wondered about making a custom module. I see two limitations for our need:
1. I want a CSR to be able to see from the Lead/Contact page all the events attended by his Lead/Contact (this is a useful information for the follow-up of the customer relationship).
2. We do not have a Leads Management Team. The idea is that a SDR on a show can enter all the information quickly at the end of the day.

I may turn to Custom if nothing meets our needs, with a MtM relationship. 

Thanks to you guys!

Hi Thomas Rei,

we have done it with two custom modules (all by ourself with the Module Builder in Sugar): One is called Touchpoints and contains just like Francesca's module all Events and contact forms etc. The second is called Interactions. It contains the specific visits or, well, interactions of contacts with the Touchpoint. The Interaction is related to contacts, leads and targets, and when leads are converted, we convert the Interactions with it. So on the contact/lead page you have a detailed list of all Interactions of this contact/lead where you can exactly see the timestamp of the visit, the event, if the contact was completely new or already known etc. Also, the cool thing is, that even if you convert a lead, the interaction counts only once. When reporting directly on contacts or leads you would need two separate reports - for us, we can only do one report on Interactions and can exactly see how well the event or other Touchpoint performed.

In the description there is a lot of space for all additional info and via the Assigned to field and a status field just like in Tasks we can assign those Interactions after events back to a specific person, if someone else entered them. With the Sugar mobile app, you would also be able to create them right at the event. If you'd like, you could for example define standard values for the desciption with the most important questions, so that your Sales Reps only need to add the answers ... there are a lot of possibilities.

So, our construct consists of the two modules and several 1-to-many relationships, where the M-side always is the Interactions module -  as I said, to Touchpoints, Contacts, Leads and Targets.

Maybe that helps. :)

Thank you Julia for your detailed answer,

I will create two custom modules in this case.

It's a pity that SugarCRM does not include a basic module for events (like the one you just described).
Participation in trade shows is one of the basis of the SDR job, I would have liked a very simple module to track the activity. Thanks!