How can you stay motivated when your trade show plans fall through?

Remember, you are not alone... Reach out to colleagues or industry peers who have gone through similar experiences and can offer guidance and support. Sharing your frustrations, challenges, and successes with others who understand can provide a much-needed outlet and perspective. Managing a trade show requires a delicate balance of organisation, creativity, and self-care. By acknowledging the overwhelming nature of the task and implementing strategies to cope with the demands, you can navigate the planning process more effectively and ensure a successful and fulfilling trade show experience. My number one advice in life is to prioritise taking care of yourself before you take care of others.

One thing I've found helpful is to give myself a time-limit to feel and process your emotions before brainstorming ideas to move forward.

This is a big question, but why have they fallen through? Firstly move on, do not dwell on what you cannot change, a brief evaluation for the purposes for recording information, reasons and outcomes. Start planning for the next show, adjust the budgets and sales lead generations plans accordingly. Look to see if there is another show, look horizontally and vertically in different sectors, think outside the box, try something different. You should adapt to the changing circumstances and look for alternative options and solutions, maybe partnering with someone or a different market sector where your customer go and hang out. In my experience when there is a change outside of your control is when you should try something different.

Think accurately. It's easy to let your emotions blow a "failure" into something far worse. A huge part of marketing is testing. Plans don't work sometimes. Blindspots reveal themselves. Sometimes that ugly "control" that you hate really is a winner with your customers. Just because a plan didn't work doesn't mean that the whole thing was "failure" or there's even "fault" involved. Check out Thinking in Bets by Annie Duke. Did you have a good reason to think it would work? Were you making a high-percentage choice, or were you hoping for a Hail Mary? Sometimes you can make all the right calls, and things just don't fall your way.

Marketing is testing. Sometimes the thing you learn from the test is "don't do that again." The best tests don't show you a 3% gain over the control. They show you a 30% gain/loss vs control. You want to see the changes that make the biggest difference, even if that difference is a loss on this particular project.

Reach out to your network for support. Engage with your community on platforms like LinkedIn to share experiences and gain insights from others who have faced similar challenges.

Success at Trade Shows is not all about sale and revenue, it`s about setting 3 clear objectives and achieving at least one of them. Very often the other 2 will be achieved post event so celebrating small wins is critical to business success as it motivates you even more.

If you're doing the real work, you're creating marketing assets that you can use over and over. Question sets, pain stories, ideal prospect profiles, systems for attracting prospects, systems for converting aisle traffic to booth traffic, follow-up sequences/processes, the math on how much you can afford to spend on a prospect... that's all stuff that can be used at other shows, templated to be used at other events, and used as a "control" to A/B test with later.

It`s critical to have a real and smart plan for exhibiting. It`s about not focusing on ROI but rather look at ROO(Return on Objectives) There are so many more things you can achieve if you move your sole focus away from revenue and sales.

So many sales teams do not prepare properly when they're exhibiting or attending a trade show. At least 2 weeks before the event (3 is even better) you should be regularly sending personal messages to your network about whether they're available to meet at the event. Even if they're not going it's a good reason to reach out. I cannot tell you the number of clients that are unprepared for a trade show and they leave money on the table because of it: "failing to prepare is preparing to fail."

When facing unforeseen challenges or changes in trade show plans, maintaining motivation involves embracing adaptability and focusing on alternative opportunities. Reassessing goals, seeking inspiration from successful past experiences, and maintaining a positive outlook contribute to overcoming setbacks and staying motivated throughout the planning process.

How about repurposing booth content online to engage your audience remotely? Use analysis of what went wrong to improve your pitch and prepare for the next show. I would also share insights with the event organizers. Last, but not least, you can think of donating a part of your future sales to a cause linked to your product/service.

The question is why does your plan fail? Is it because you don't have a real gameplan, you expect a certain result, but it is not happening, your booth stays empty, your crew only mingles together, and you focus too much on capturing leads and less on your existing customers? There can be all types of reasons why you are not happy with the show. However, if you follow the key steps in successful trade show marketing, with a clear strategy and plan aligned with all your stakeholders the risk of failing is close to zero.