Dear Mr. Hill:
I am the VP of Marketing for a company in the healthcare field. I need help with my trade shows. Recently, our trade show consultant told us that we would get more prospects to our booth if we invested in a larger booth. Well, we made the investment, and the number of sales leads that we got at the shows did not improve.  In fact if anything, our cost of doing trade shows has gone up dramatically with the bigger booth, the need for more people etc.  Got any suggestions so I can justify this additional expense to my President?
I look forward to your comments.
Bob, Vice President Marketing
Long Branch, NJ

Dear Bob:
You are not the first person who had been “talked” into a bigger booth by some sweet talking trade show consultant. What that person did was sell the obvious. Did you really need a bigger booth? Were the attendees standing on line to get into your booth?  Were your booth people able to handle the traffic effectively?  Did the people doing booth duty say that they needed a bigger booth? I have clients that have the same booth for over eight years. They have upgraded the graphics, and changed their “tag” line but that was it.  I would rather have a small booth that is always over crowded at a trade show that a large one where your booth people spend more time talking to each other than to prospects.

Now that you have a larger booth, you should invite more people to visit your booth.   The only way you can justify the cost of the larger booth is by having a larger list of qualified prospects that your sales force can close.  It will be your Pre-show effort that will make the difference.
To your continued trade show success
John Hill, Trade Show Coach