If you have a 10 foot booth, you have approximately 3 seconds to make an impression on an attendee passing your booth. If your company name does not spark an interest, or your “tag” line does not give the person any hope of finding out what your company does, then you are the person that is going to make it happen!
Be prepared with a number of great lines that can be used on a myriad of attendees that will be passing your booth.
You have to be aggressive; you have to want to do business you have to be “on”. If you have no intention of taking an aggressive and positive attitude while you are in your booth, why are you there in the first place?
Technical Trade Shows and the people that stand booth duty are frustrating to work with. They usually talk in a language, using, letters, and buzz words that only another person, in the same industry will understand.
What these technical companies have a tendency to forget is that not everyone that works for, or buys technical products or services, knows the technical language. Therefore, companies selling technical products should be able to speak in a language that will be understood by the general public, not get the technical literate. I was once given the task to sell a digital voltmeter to a maitre’d in a restaurant.
If you want to generate business you had best be able to speak the language that will be understand by the person you are trying to sell.
Many companies still make decisions to invest thousands of dollars in a major trade show and do not leave themselves sufficient time to plan and coordinate this effort. Under these conditions they end up making decisions in a panic, and managing in crisis. A company needs to investigate, discuss, plan, coordinate and commit to all the facets of a trade show if they expect to have a successful trade show experience. Considering that only 15% of the exhibitors at any trade show are successful, it is important that a company has sufficient time and that everyone within the organization is aware of the importance of this effort.
You cannot and should not consider doing a trade show and not giving yourself and other members of the company sufficient time to get their act together. What I mean by this is, if you have products to display, you need to get with manufacturing, production or engineering so that you can put on display the best possible product that really shows the true capabilities of your company. Just displaying any old thing that you had in the back room certainly does not give a positive message to either the company employees, or the attendees at the trade show that will be looking at equipment. How will the presentation of the company person in the booth go? “Well, this is not our latest equipment, this is what we had available.” What are you telling the prospect that has stopped to look at your products? This company has so much business, they really are not interested in new clients, or they really don’t care. What type of effort, and how does your company approach going to a trade show?
You have commented about what not to do when you stand booth duty. Since I will be doing a few trade shows in my territory, please give me some pointers of what I should look for when I am asking/requesting people for stand booth duty.
Jim, Sales Manager
Akron, OH
Dear Jim:
Standing booth duty is hard work, but the return on your effort can be tremendous. The opportunity to generate more sales opportunities in a three day show that you can in 6 months to a year working from your office, should be enough to get anyone interested. But the problem is most sales types don’t look at it like that. They only see that they are going to be away from their family, friends and clients for three days. You want someone who is a good listener, a person that can ask the qualifying questions without jumping to conclusions. A good person in the booth is enthusiastic, positive, dressed to do business, qualifies rather than sells, and gives the attendees the impression that he or she is happy to be here and able to serve you. When you have people like that in your booth, you will come away with a number of qualified sales opportunities.
So you’ve made a quality contact at your tradeshow booth? What next? Do you write their information on the back of a business card? NO! Everyone should use a qualification form. Not sure what a tradeshow qualification form is? Watch this video to learn more.
Does your company have a descriptive tagline? If notwatch this video to further understand the importance of a descriptive company name and tagline. Enjoy this excerpt from an interview with Trade Show Expert John Hill – Topic: Develop A Solid Tagline
Does your company have a booth script? Are different attendees getting different stories from different booth staffers? Enjoy this excerpt from an interview with Trade Show Expert John Hill – Topic: Develop A Booth Script
Not allocating sufficient time to exhibit