TradeShowSecretsDownload

iTrade Show Secrets

From Trade Show Experts

Mike Montague Sandler Training

John DeLeon Motivation Through Incentive

Todd Diskin Embroid Me

Don Jalbert Exhibit Associates

Trade Show Secrets

Being veterans of countless business meetings of various types, trade shows and conventions, we are often struck by the significant expense in time and money that participating companies incur and the typical disappointing results in terms of new business for most of them. This is despite the fact that these events usually provided an excellent venue to meet many of your best prospects and customers, all in one place in a short period of time.

Often it seems that participants are unable to meet as many prospects as they wanted, and, making matters worse, the contacts they are making are often little more than superficial social dialogues, not significant business meetings.

Let’s look at a typical trade show scenario:The company registers for the show, books plane tickets and

rooms, ships out the booth and associated promotions. They assign the cheapest or closest salespeople depending on the impor-tance of the event or location. The booths are manned by hung-over or jetlagged salespeople awaiting the arrival of prospects that might be drawn in by the creative displays, giveaways and free drawings. Small talk is initiated with anyone who happens to walk into the booth.

If the visitor asks about a product, the salespeople, if even paying attention, typically launch into a feature and benefit pitch, assuming they’ve got a “live one.” Often it sounds like this: “Our company is the largest supplier of widgets in the country. Our quality is outstanding, our prices competitive and our service levels are the envy of the industry. ”

This approach frequently concludes with the prospect taking a few brochures, dropping a business card into the free drawing fish-bowl or scanning their badge and departing. No one really knows what the potential is, and nothing really happens. Maybe, they get added to an email newsletter when they get back or a couple follow up calls get made. But usually, the show ends and everyone is eager to get back home to get back to their usual business.

Could your company be more prospect-centered and proactive?

Trade shows, conventions and other business meetings are wonderful opportunities to develop new business relationships and strengthen current ones. Our clients who have adopted proactive and prospect centered strategies, like the ones outlined in this report, have found that these events become very effective for generating new business.

Getting More Business from Trade Shows

Contents

2 Failing to Plan is Like Planning to Fail

4 Are Your Fish Bowls Full... and Your Cash Registers Empty?

6 Tales from the Trade Show Floor

8 Maximizing Your Trade Show Investment

10 Nine Neglects that Kill Sales at Trade Shows

© 2015 Sandler Systems, Inc. All rights reserved. No portion of this publication may be reprinted or used without the express written permission of Sandler Systems, Inc. For permission, contact [email protected].

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2 Trade Show Secrets

By John DeLeon

Of all the steps involved in organizing, planning and executing a trade show, none is as important as planning the show and the ability to lead your employees and prospects through the process.

Pre-Event Preparations

The time between registration and the event is your only opportunity to make a great first impression with your prospects. Utilize the registration list or survey your clients and prospects prior to the event to gather all of the information you are going to need to make it

a success.

Does your prospect or employee:• Have a preferred restaurant?• Go by a name other than their legal

name on the registration?• Have any medical and or dietary

issues?• Want to extend before or after the

event for a one-on-one meeting?• How could you make it special for

each person?

This is just some of the information you can gather that will help turn

a good event into a great one. Never think of your prospects as a group. Each of them is expecting and deserves individual attention.

Adding value to sales team’s travel plans

Your team will need to feel the importance of attending your event. The team members have other

obligations, many of them away

from work. How do you make their sacrifice of personal time memorable, smooth, efficient and worthwhile?

The first step is to not leave your employees with a destination and a couple reservations and no other assistance in getting there. Always, work with a professional to arrange travel plans. Many IATTA-licensed travel agents will monitor individual flights and con-nections, often knowing about misconnects prior to the airline announcements. Imagine your sales team landing and finding out that it won’t be making its connecting flight and will therefore be late to your event. Now, imagine your attendees opening a text message when they land telling them that their new con-nection has already been handled. Whether you’re a seasoned traveler or making a rare appearance in a TSA, line this service is a true benefit and should be part of every travel agent’s booking costs.

Airport transfers are much easier to handle if flight coordination is centralized. You may be able to combine multiple flights into one pickup, adding up to a huge savings. Whatever you do, do not assume your team will handle airport and hotel transfers on its own. The value of your team and the event goes to the next level when your attendees are met at the airport by uniformed staff holding a company logo.

Lodging opportunities

Most travelers have heard of discount travel sites like Travelocity or Hotels.com and rating sites such as TripAdvisor. Most people don’t know that licensed travel agents have hotel and venue reviews that are written by travel agents for travel agents. Nowhere will you find a more honest and informative evaluation

Failing to Plan is Like Planning to Fail

3Trade Show Secrets

of a hotel. No hotel or venue is perfect, but starred rating systems are deceiving and input is coming from largely non-experienced travelers. Make sure you get a true feel for your venue and lodging, as well as a great deal, by talking to a professional.

Creating a room block with a Marriott, Hyatt or any other chain is easy. Hotels love when the end user creates a room block because they are virtually off the hook for any issues that might—and often do—arise. What hotels don’t tell you is that a licensed travel agent can—and often does—secure a better rate with better attrition and can-cellation policies. Most hotels will also offer a commission to an IATTA-certified travel agent, which can lower your costs. Imagine a representative handling your room block and booking issues, such as the attendee who wanted a non-smoking king room and was booked in a smoking double. Your team’s job is to be in front of your prospects, not dealing with hotel issues. Attendees will remember the bad things about a hotel, but they will rarely talk about the good things. Don’t put your people or your prospects in this situa-tion. Don’t let a bad hotel ruin a good trade show.

Have you ever thought about booking a suite to host private meetings with your target prospects and current clients? Where and how you do that can make a big difference in the results.

Catering & Food Considerations

No expo, trade show or group gathering is complete without food and beverage service. Most venues will dictate which caterer you use, or at least provide you with a list of approved caterers. Choose wisely and always consider costs and quality. Hopefully your registration process has included questions regarding food allergies and special dietary concerns, such as vegetarian, kosher and gluten-free options. Missing these options is a sure way to put a prospect or team member on the outside looking in. Make sure your caterer can meet these needs within budget. Make sure your staff is aware of any special

dietary needs and have someone observe the plate placement. This is especially important in the case of allergies.

Does your caterer offer packages on con-sumption, or is it strictly by head count? You may see huge savings if you pursue the consumption option. Bar packages based on consumption are often available as well, but are not advertised. Be careful, bar packages come in several varieties based on liquor quality. Know your attendees and their level of exposure to quality liquor. Sometimes no wine is better than a bad wine.

A little-known industry secret is that venues will often waive room rental fees if a group can hit a food and beverage minimum. Your event planner should look closely at this option. In some cases, you can increase the quality and costs of food and drink service in order to eliminate a room fee to save money.

Conclusion

Trade shows and other cus-tomer-facing events are great ways to get ideas, products and concepts in front of your target market. Make sure that your employees know—through your effort in planning—the difference between attending yet another trade show and making the most of a great one. Many of the things that can take your event to the next level have very little to do with the event itself.

Keep you and your staff focused on the finish line. Time, busi-ness issues and sales opportuni-ties don’t wait for you to finish planning your event. Think about it this way: Will you lose more business by floundering at the trade show or by taking a few hours away from daily activities now in order to plan a great event?

Trade Show Secrets

By Mike Montague

As I approach a booth, one of two things happens—either an attendant walks up to me and silently hands me an expensive brochure, I get an energetic “Can I help you?” or I get one who asks if I would at least like to sign up for the free gift they are offering.

For now, let’s not concentrate on the person who hands out expensive literature to unqualified suspects. That is clearly a waste of you print budget. Instead, we will take a closer look at the salesperson who gets a business card or scans a badge by way of an entry into a contest and thinks they are doing well at the show.

Collector’s Issues

There are two problems with this common practice. A fish bowl filled with business cards contains no more informa-tion—in fact less information—than what you can get from a business directory. The business card was received for the wrong reason, with no qualification to back it up, thus making the name on the card no more than a cold call and an unqualified suspect. You could have found that information in the registration list.

It would certainly be more profitable to obtain few cards containing information about a prospect’s need for your product or service than to determine the success of a show by the quantity of names collected.

With the appropriate focus and approach, pre-qualifying a prospect takes no more time than the patronizing “get their card for a drawing” approach that many companies presently use.

The second problem with the card collection approach crops up after the show, when it comes time to follow-up with all these suspects in the fish bowl. At a previous trade show, I dropped my card into every fishbowl

I could find and gave my card to at least one person in each booth. I also

noted the names of each company where I did

this. Over 80 percent of those companies never followed-up after the show. The companies that did follow-up called to tell me I did not win

their prize. They wanted to know if I

would be interested in receiving some literature

or making an appointment to see them. To say the least,

their premise and approach was weak, and it certainly didn’t stimulate my interest in their product or service.

If a company didn’t call on the telephone they sent me an email with a form letter that thanked me for stopping by their booth and requested more information. Literature col-lectors probably love this—it saves them from carrying the papers around at the show, and saves their secretaries from having something else to file. Some emails also stated that a representative would be contacting me soon. I must say, they never called.

Are Your Fish Bowls Full... and Your Cash Registers Empty?

“Can I help you?”

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Trade Show Secrets

Cold Leads Make Salespeople Sweat

After a trade show, the “leads” are distrib-uted among the salespeople. Management wants these leads to be contacted, and it is the intention of the salespeople to make these calls as soon as they get the time. There’s only one problem: they usually don’t find the time to make cold calls. Cold calls are not fun. They are tough to do, and they often do not produce business. Those salespeople who do start the follow-up process become quickly discouraged after the first few prospects do not receive them with open arms. What happens to the other hundred contacts? All too often, nothing. They become stale.

It might appear that the salespeople are not doing their job. That is not the problem; that’s what we call the symptom. The problem started long before the trade show opened. In most cases, the only preparation on the part of the salespeople is to find out when they have to be in the booth. There is never any discussion on the goals for the show or how those goals are to be attained and what adjustments must be made for the trade show selling. Is it any wonder that salespeople don’t understand their roles at a trade show and do nothing more than “put their time” at the booth?

If you want a better return on investment from your trade show experience, and we assume you do at this point, you have two options. First, save the cost of the show and buy a cold call list. Second, figure out your execution with specific objectives, the ability to differentiate suspects from prospects, and the knowledge of how to adjust outside selling skills to trade show selling. The people who work in the booths at trade shows will enjoy it more and produce more business and profits for the company and themselves.

Creating Qualified Opportunities

So, if your “fish bowls are full, but your cash registers empty” and you want to do something better with your trade show team, consider these questions to qualify or disqual-ify your prospects before you scan the badge or take the card.

• Are they truly in the market for what you sell?

• Do they have a current or impending project?

• Is that product funded or does it have a have a budget?

• When will they be making a decision?• What specific information do they need

in order to consider you? (Hint: not the generic brochure…)

• How high on the priority list is this?

Instead of “Can I help you?” or “May I scan your badge?”,

try these questions:

• What brings you to the show?• Do you currently

use ________ ?• Would new ________ be of any

interest to you?• We help people who

are concerned about ________. Is that the case

with you?

Finally, when you find someone inter-ested, close for a next step. Ask them how and when you should follow up. Can you set an appointment on your phones right now? If they can’t, make sure you do immediately afterward. Have an electronic system to enter the appointments or write them down on a leads list to mark hot prospects. Also, literature doesn’t close or set appointments; you and your people do. Leaving them with literature can do the heavy lifting on product knowledge, but you have to do the selling and the follow up. You can’t afford to sit around waiting for them to call you. Good luck and good selling!

“Can I scan your badge?”

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6 Trade Show Secrets

By Don Jalbert

Here I am, writing you from Las Vegas—the Center of the Trade show Universe. This particular show where

I am has 140,000 attendees. That means I have 139,999 individuals between me and getting out of the show what I need.

I’m the attendee; I have free reign to come and go as I please. There should be no barriers, but there are. Besides the other attendees, the exhib-its can insert barriers as well.

I mean, how else do I find out what is going on in my industry?

Exhibit Associates is an exhibit house. And guess how we find out about the latest in our industry? Trade shows! Exhibit Associates attends “trade shows for trade show people.” As an attendee, I expect to learn the latest and

greatest about my industry at a trade show—and you should expect

the same!

Barriers

The issue is that exhibitors sometimes put up barriers that prevent attendees from learning about their company and their products. They get in their own way! What are their mistakes? There are several they could be making. In the chronological order of an attendee’s interaction with a trade show, the top four are as follows:

1 They didn’t tell me they would be exhibiting.

2. They don’t have enough of the right staff to handle the attendees.

3. The booth layout is wrong for their product or service.

4. After the show, after I have been scanned and dropped off my card, but I never get a phone call or a visit.

Where Are You?

Let’s say your company has done the pre-event marketing. I’ve received the direct mail and email pieces, I know your booth number, I know the events you are sponsoring, and I know your marketing tag line. (This is also known as brand awareness.) If you and your company have done this pre-event market-ing—congratulations! You have avoided mistake number one.

Who Is There?

When I approach the booth, what do I see? Do I see three sales people discussing their 4 a.m. wild night in Vegas and how much they hurt right now, or do I see a team of professionals ready to engage me? I am here to learn and be engaged—I don’t care about your pain! If I am already a customer, do I see my salesman in the booth? I am a decision-maker. Are their decision-makers in the booth? In other words, I do not need the marketing intern to ask me about my business. This is mistake number two. I need my sales point of contact to discuss improve-ments to the products and services that I am getting from your company. Otherwise, I am taking the free pen and moving on. You get the point.

What Do You Do?

Mistake number three is sometimes the hardest to overcome. I find your booth at the trade show. Can I look at your booth and see the product or service your company sells?

Tales from the Trade Show Floor

7Trade Show Secrets

Do you have a new booth with the company’s name all over the place, but when looking at it an attendee could not tell you the product you sell? Even Apple puts product front and center. There are not many brands bigger than Apple—but it’s their product that’s always front and center. The trade show floor is not a place to be subtle. As an attendee, my goals are to learn new information and not waste my time. If I don’t know what you sell, why would I even entertain spending time in your booth when your competitors are around the corner? As an attendee, I want you to make it simple for me.

A subset of this mistake (we are still on mistake number three) is, “Why should I enter a booth?” The first thing I do not want is to get trapped. If I walk in, I want to see an exit. Is the booth inviting in its layout? Is the booth’s staff inviting? Or are they still taking about last night—or worse, having lunch?

As the attendee, I don’t want to waste my time. I want to learn! At the end of the day, I want to make sure I know what is going on in my industry without wasting time. I may be in Vegas for five days, but I will remember the booths I went into that were a waste of my time. As an attendee, the waste-of-time booths were those that I wanted to learn something from but there were barriers. Either too many attendees in the booth, I didn’t know where the booth was, it was staffed with the wrong people, or they were busy with hangover stories. (Hey, this is Vegas after all.) So were my five days a waste? It depends on my vendors. My current, future and potentially-former vendors.

When Will You Follow Up?

The fourth and final mistake is the largest mistake companies make. Let’s say you and your company

avoided mistakes one, two and three. I was told you were going to be there, I spoke with my sales person at the booth, and I got to see up-close the new product line. Congratulations. Mistake number four is not making a follow-up call to close the business we discussed on the trade show floor. Yes, I get the follow-up emails and direct mail pieces, but out of the eight booths I visited, I only get a call from two of those companies. If you are one of the 75 percent of companies that can’t follow up, how can I trust you with my business? And at the end of the day, the vendor-client relationship is about trust.

I may be an unusual attendee, because I look at all these components. However, it is my job to guide my customers so they remove the barriers to doing business with attendees. Whether the trade show has 1,400 or 140,000 attendees, companies need to do what they can to remove barriers and to get business done. Tell your current and future customers your booth number, have sales people and decision-makers at the booth, have a good booth, and then follow up. Based on what I am seeing on this trade show floor, a lot of companies need my help. Time to walk the floor!

8 Trade Show Secrets

By Todd Diskin

With marketing budgets constantly under scrutiny, the importance of maximizing the return on your trade show investment is more important than ever. Here are some tips for getting the most bang for your exhibiting buck.

As with any other marketing program, the basis for exhibiting success rests on how well you

plan. “A major reason exhibitors fail is that they are inadequately prepared,” says Steven Hacker, president of the

International Association of Exhibitions and Events (IAEE)

based in Dallas. “There is an absolute need to do pre-show,

on-site, and follow-up promotion. Those who do it right get good results, and those who don’t, get bad results. That’s not to say you can’t get lucky, but why rely on luck when you can do it right?”

Exhibitions are buyers’ number-one source for making purchase decisions. Exhibitions are more effective in generating leads and orders, introducing new products, promoting brands, promoting company awareness, and entering new markets than advertising, direct mail, or public relations.

Plan for Giveaways

Including a promotional product offering in a pre-show mailing can help build booth traffic. This increases the likelihood that an attendee will make a point to stop by your booth. Did you know that 80 percent of trade show attendees pre-plan their top-10 lists of exhibitors to visit?

Here’s a great case study example. A pre-show

mailer went out to a pre-qualified list of 1,000 registered trade show attendees. Over 30 percent of those who received the mailing visited the booth. The format was simple. It was an invitation for attendees to come into the booth and match their playing card to a display to see what prize they won.

Everyone was a winner, and the client won big

with sales that were generated after the show. Most importantly, they were able to prove that it worked by measuring the number of attendees who played the game.

Keep in mind that prizes and giveaways should reinforce your brand and competitive edge. As a general rule, promotional products of greater value generate more sales leads than products of lower value. Also consider customized apparel for your booth workers to wear. Present a visually unified team so potential customers know who’s part of your booth and where they can direct questions.

Maximizing Your Trade Show Investment

80%of trade show

attendees pre-plan their top-10 lists of exhibitors to visit.

9Trade Show Secrets

Do Giveaways Really Increase Traffic?

Yes, according to a 2009, two-part study designed by Promotional Products Association International (PPAI) and fielded through independent research company MarketTools, Inc., that evaluated a cross-section of the American consumer population about television, print, online and promotional products advertising. The study surveyed more than 1,000 consumers who recalled receiving a promotional product in the past 24 months.

The first part of the study, titled “Effectiveness of Promotional Products as an Advertising Medium,” focused solely on promotional products and evaluated the action, reaction and relationship of products and their recipients. The study found that:

• 94 percent could recall a promo-tional product they had received in the past two years.

• 89 percent could also recall the advertiser.

• 83 percent reported that they liked receiving promotional products.

• 48 percent would like to receive promo-tional products more often.

• 69 percent generally keep the promo-tional product.

• 52 percent are more likely to stop by the exhibit if there’s a giveaway.

• 20 percent are more likely to remember the booth.

Promotional products—compared to TV, print and online advertising—consistently deliver higher recall rates of the brand, and the product or service.

Return on Investment

Define your objectives before you exhibit at a trade show so you can measure your ROI after the show. With a little effort and a few giveaways, you

can separate yourself from

your competition in your pre-show

mailings, booth interac-tions, and post-show follow ups. The true measure of a trade show is what you

get out of it, but there are

many ways to measure ROI, and it varies for each company. What needs to be analyzed is whether the achieved results of the show match your objectives.

94%of trade show

attendees could recall a promotional product

they had received in the past two years.

83%of trade show attendees reported that they liked receiving promotional

products

Trade Show Secrets

Nine Neglects that Kill Sales at Trade ShowsBy Mike Montague

Studies have shown that the following prob-lems are being faced regularly by the people who work the booths at trade shows:

1Neglecting to commit to specific objectives.

Thousands of companies participate in trade shows every year. Many of those companies spend days, weeks, months and even years planning the display. However, they neglect to invest appropriate amounts of time and money to properly prepare their personnel with the methodology and technique to be applied at the show. Defining specific objectives in advance only starts the process to determine the strategies involved in providing effective and efficient coverage at a trade show. Are your trade show objectives to sell, gather leads, qualify leads, expose your product, service and company, or some other goal that you are looking to achieve? Prioritizing your objectives will help to define what has to be done.

2Neglecting to draw people into the booth.

Gimmicks may be great—an eye-catching display, drawings and contests, a demonstra-tion that allows the visitor to participate—and they will get people to stop. But people do business with people, which means your personnel have to communicate with others. Are your personnel prepared to deal with the attendees who come into the booth? Or are they chasing attendees away by lingering in the back of the booth like vultures waiting for prey? Perhaps they are grabbing attendees in front of the booth with some version of the

old retail store opening: “Can I help you?” Training your personnel to be as strong and different as the eye-catching display is worth much towards getting people to stop by your booth.

3Neglecting to separate suspects from prospects.

Part of prioritizing your leads is qualifying the people who come into your booth. Far too many people who work at trade shows believe that they have to tell everybody their story. Not every person has an interest in your product or service, nor do they qualify to hear your presentation. Being able to differentiate the suspects from the prospects will certainly increase sales.

4Neglecting to ask questions.

Too many people make presumptions and then provide solutions prematurely. Developing a format for questioning the suspects to see if they become prospects will help in determining which people warrant your time and efforts.

5 Neglecting to get a decision, even if that means getting a “no.”

The person at the trade show should not be serving as an educator. There is a definite need to get a commitment and learn the priority which the prospect places on a certain type of product or service. Lack of such a decision, or avoiding the “no” that so many people fear, results in not knowing which prospects require follow-up. Too many leads, especially

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Trade Show Secrets

unqualified or mis-qualified ones, can be worse than too few leads and produce unproductive sales time after the show. Learn to do trade show by quickly qualifying the attendees.

6 Neglecting to adjust outside selling styles to trade show selling.

The pace of a good trade show is generally fast-moving. The people in attendance are in a mode to see a lot in a short period of time. Ad-libbing and working your way through the detail of a typical sale doesn’t work in the trade show environment. While one is being sold, 10 are getting away. The truth is that you need to apply a strategy that gets prospects to show or tell you what they need and identifies when they see themselves doing something about that need. The difference between the outside selling strategy and the trade show style is similar to the difference between an airplane taking off from an aircraft carrier instead of the standard airport runway.

7Neglecting to do more than just “put in their time.”

Many people are not motivated to work at the show. They spend their time chatting with other exhibitors (lots of time about how they hate having booth duty), looking to take coffee breaks or walking around and making small talk. Management never dedicated the time that is necessary to develop the motivated person to work at the trade show. More often than not, it is dictated that certain individuals will have to “put in their time” at an upcoming show. There is no attempt made to arouse interest in the show. Time is not allowed to prepare the people for the show (lack of understanding objectives), thus the people are not in a goal-oriented mode. Working the show is not presented as a privilege, and the people are not included

in the planning and decision-making stage of how to accomplish certain objectives. With any or all of these ingredients missing, how can we expect people to do more than just “put in their time?”

8 Neglecting to understand the role of the person working the trade show.

Along with lack of motivation comes the inappropriate role of the person at the trade shows—that of being subservient, even to the degree of being a “beggar.” The trade show should be viewed as that Broadway play in which you are the star. Do you take control? Or do you fail to use the talent and ability necessary to investigate, examine and under-stand the prospect’s situation? The solution is then either inappropriate or, more often, misunderstood by the prospect who doesn’t convert to a customer.

9Neglecting to plan for the follow-up after the show.

The trade show ends and there is a sigh of relief from everyone involved. The problem is that now the work should begin—the work of bringing in the return on investment. Even those companies that have planned on sending out thank you letters, literature, gifts or some other sort of advertisement, often find themselves failing to make that person-to-person contact so necessary to close the sale. Be it lack of personnel, technique, goals, qualified prospects or planning, without the sales call for follow-up, person-to-person contact is neglected. Remember, it is your responsibility to take the ball the last three feet to get the score.

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12 Trade Show Secrets

If you have been neglecting your trade show plans, booth, promotions, or sales skills to maximize your results, please contact one of our experts for additional assistance.

Mike MontagueSandler TrainingSales & Management Developmentmichael@effectivesales.net816-505-2500www.effectivesales.sandler.com

John DeLeonMotivation Through IncentiveTravel & Event [email protected]

Todd DiskinEmbroid MePromotional Products & Appareltdiskin@embroidmelenexa.com913-451-4500www.embroidmelenexa.com

Don JalbertExhibit AssociatesTrade Show Booths & Permanent [email protected] 816-474-5333www.exhibitassociates.com

Cami Travis-GrovesKU Edwards CampusGraphic Design & Event [email protected]

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