14 Quick Tips to Get Better Results From Your Trade Show Investment!

Best booth behaviors by your staff should be obvious and come natural to anyone with a name badge and opposable thumbs, but so many mistakes (big and small) are made on the trade show floor. With expenses approaching a half a million dollars for 3 short days, it is amazing that no one (I mean REALLY no one) takes 30 minutes to write a few opening lines, memorize the elevator pitch, and rehearse 3 case studies. I lead workshops for Fortune 500 companies on best practices for the staff to improve their efficacy. If you are not going to hire an experienced trade show expert (like me) to train your staff, then take these 14 quick tips and share them with your booth staff. If your staff commits to just number one, then (sadly) they will be doing better than 90% of the exhibitors on the trade show floor. After reading the below tips, think about how many times you've walked by a booth and had an unbelievably positive experience at a booth you didn't already know (if they are even capable of getting you to stop...).

1. Remove bad behaviors: No eating, drinking, cell phones, sitting, booth huddles, etc. in the booth. Even when you are back at the hotel, be on best behavior because you are a brand ambassador for your company.

2. Add good behaviors: Stand, face the aisles, smile, make eye contact, initiate conversation, etc.

3. If you are not getting rejected a hundred times an hour, you are not initiating enough conversations. Every person who walks by without an attempt to engage is likely lost revenue.

4. Have a strong opener: What do you do at your company? What is the most interesting thing you have seen at this show? What is your (companies) biggest pain point? This starts a conversation, people love sharing their opinions.

5. Make the current attendee you are talking with the most popular person at the show. If you show that you care about the engagement, they will care too.

6. Be able to do the overview (elevator pitch) in 10 seconds, 30 seconds, and 90 seconds. Read their body language to help you choose which version they get.

7. Understand and communicate concisely the giveaways and raffles. It is such a big waste of everyone's time when the staff has to ask other staff to explain the rules. Giveaways and raffles is not rocket surgery!

8. Be able to scan badges and do it quickly. Imagine being an interested customer, and the staff has to find a scanner and then find the booth manager to operate the device. If you don't know how to operate a scanner, why would the customer trust you with a $100,000 contract.

9. Qualify leads quickly, make introductions, and end conversations quickly. When you spend more than a few minutes with a lead, you are letting other potential leads walk by the booth without engagement.

10. Have three case studies (success stories) rehearsed and ready to go.

11. When doing a demo, scale. When you see someone else starting a demo, help them scale. If you are going to tell the story of the product to one person, you might as well tell 5 people at the same time. It is a much better use of your time.

12. When you are in the booth, you are on stage. High five each other, fist bump each other, enthusiastically cheer for your fellow booth staff, and let the attendees see that you really like each other and really enjoy working at your company. Enthusiasm is contagious.

13. Make a follow-up plan and take notes.

14. Treat the attendees exactly how you would want to be treated if you were in someone else’s booth.

You can't just email this list to the staff, you have to rehearse and role-play if you want to see behaviors change and stay changed for the entire 3 or 4 days.

Here is a short video case study of my work with Magnet Productions for Lenovo.

More information about hiring a trade show expert to train your booth staff here: https://strongtradeshows.com/

Add me on LinkedIn, I'd love to connect! Here: https://www.dhirubhai.net/in/robertstrong/