Hi John:
My company is big on give-a-ways at all of our trade shows. We have a lot of people coming to the booth but all they do is grab the stuff we have on our table. When we have a prospect come up to our booth, I have a hard time qualifying this person because of everyone stopping and asking if they can take a pen, cup or some other thing our marketing department has come up with. Is there anything I can do to make my time at these trade shows more business productive and less give-a-way time consuming? I would appreciate your input on this. Thanks.
Tom in NJ.

Dear Tom:
Let me start off by saying I don’t believe in give-a-ways. If you are going to give something to the attendee who comes to your booth, let him or her do something for it. For example, if you use a Qualification form when speaking with a prospect, when you are finished give the person the pen you complete the form with, and say, “Thank you for stopping by our booth, here is something to remember us by” They did something, you made it more important and personal.
I always ask my clients who insist on give-a-ways, “Are they coming to your booth for information on your products or services or are they there for your give-a-ways?”
Let me tell you a story about a client who manufactures baking ovens. They went to a major food and beverage show and made bread as a give-a-way at the trade show. The company collected over 4,000 business cards, gave away a lot of bread, but they did not sell one oven. The following year, they decided not to offer anything to the attendees. They had over 1,000 people come up to the booth and ask, “When were they going to bake the bread?” The company would have done much better selling bread at the trade show, then ovens. The year they didn’t offer bread and concentrated and the fine points of the oven, they sold nine ovens at the trade show. Hope this answers your question for you.
To your continued trade show success
John Hill, Trade Show Coach