In my experience trade shows are well worth the time; however, as a sales organization, they are not necessarily about selling specific products.
This post is for owners, managers, and sales associates.
Having visited many trade shows in Canada and the United States, I would not be lying if I said that 75% of businesses who attend trade shows as exhibitors are wasting there time. Why, because they do not realize that it is a different kind of selling and they must adapt for their environment. Please take a few minutes and read the following, if you are doing all of these then, great, if you aren’t please feel free to take advantage of our lessons (learned the hard way). If you have any that have been missed, please feel free to comment and offer them to our readers.
15 THINGS TO KNOW ABOUT SUCCESSFULLY DOING A TRADE SHOW
- It’s about introducing and selling your company and you. Unlike a store or website where people come to you, you are going to a place where people may not know they want your products, they don’t know you, and you are competing for their attention with every other exhibitor.
- If you are staffing a booth, never sit down and always put your phone away. Trade shows are all about engaging your customer, say “hello” to everyone, smile, be outgoing, if you are sitting in your booth waiting for customers to approach you, you might as well have stayed home because you are wasting your time.
- Give away free things with your logo emblazened on them. If children are attending the show, multi-coloured helium balloons with your logo are very effective. For adults, re-usable carry bags in bright colours that can carry all of the other swag items that they might receive at the show are excellent.
- Tying in with the give-away, spend the money to make the giveaway worthwhile, people are forming opinions about you and your company, handing out cheap, disposable gifts is worse than not doing it at all. There are websites dedicated to making gifts, use them, ask your associates about what they like, and have lots, you don’t want to run out on the first day of a 3 day trade show.
- Demonstrate your products that will “wow” people walking by. We were a furniture company, but we never showed sofas, we always had the biggest and most featured flat panel televisions with a sound system on display. We picked fast moving colourful images and when XBOX’s first came out, we allowed our visitors to try gaming on a 75 inch TV screen.
- Don’t have too many products. Trade shows are about introductions and education with some demonstration. It is not to say that you don’t try to sell, but if you have a 10 x 10 or 10 x 20 booth and you have too many products you may not sell anything. Try to have a sampling of new things or your best sellers, whet your customer’s appetite and give them a reason to want to see more.
- Have a hook to get them back to the store. If you are a retailer or wholesaler, what is your show discount? You might run a sale on what you are showing, but it might be more effective to offer a limited discount on your entire product and service line if they bring a voucher from the store to your location. That is also a good way to see if the show was worth all of the time and effort to put it together.
- As a sales person make sure you benefit from attending, shows are about leads. Whether it is vouchers with an invitation, make sure you get prospect information from each person who visits your booth, while you may not sell them today, the goal is to eventually sell them and collecting their contact information is vital. HAVE LOTS OF BUSINESS CARDS
- Have a draw for a prize at the end of the show and get everyone to fill in a ballot, hand written is better than electronic … you want to talk to them! Make it easy to enter, be generous with the prize, and make sure when the winner collects the prize that you make a big deal about it in social media and other media forms as well.
- Be early to set up. Being one of the first exhibitors to set up is always better than being one of the last, if there are issues, you have time to get things right, the show trades people are fresher and more helpful, and then it is done.
- Have lots of name tags for your associates, if the show is in the same town or city as your location, stagger your associates so that they are fresh and also don’t miss selling time at your store during the trade show. To meet and greet hundreds of people in a short time can be exhausting no matter how energetic you are, so having your people work in shifts if possible always worked well for us.
- Attend the exhibitor’s dinner. This is something we didn’t do enough, but any time you can meet with other exhibitors and business people is a great opportunity to learn new things so take advantage of every chance.
- Provide meals and snacks for your associates. This is just a given, trade shows don’t allow normal breaks and meals, make sure you take care of your people.
- Provide tasty bite-size treats for your visitors. There are lots of ideas, chocolate is always popular, look on-line, there are many choices, but something local with signing will score you points with your visitors.
- Involve as many of your associates as possible idea-storming before the show and then have another meeting afterwards to discuss what worked, what didn’t, and what they think we should do differently next time
- Spend time looking at other booths for new ideas. As with the dinner and talking to fellow exhibitors and sales people, there are a wealth of good ideas out there, make notes and try to execute them as good as or preferably better than them next time.
- Follow up on all of the leads that you get. Each contact that you can convert is like gold, it makes all of the effort worthwhile, make sure you and your company do this, that’s why you are there.
Good luck and good selling.
Paul.