Exhibit City News Article

Richard Erschik – Man on a Mission -- The Dean of Exhibitor Education -- Erudite Educator Teaches Trade Show Industry Exhibitors How to Turn “Trade show Leads to Sales.” By; Arthur Bloberger.

From coast to coast, and beyond, in-person and on-line, part teacher and part guru, the affable Richard Erschik truly has but one mission: to teach progressive exhibit managers his proven shortcuts to trade show exhibiting success.

“I hate to see them going through everything I went through, simply because no one is teaching them” says Erschik. “My objective is to help them prove to their boss that trade shows don’t just cost… they PAY!

I can statistically prove that trade shows are the most cost-effective form of marketing communications today, bar none. Unfortunately, they are also the most expensive and in the cross hairs of exhibiting company management looking to cut the budget. Everybody is looking for Return On Investment from trade show exhibiting and my contention is that ROI is in the leads that are ultimately being ignored by exhibitor’s sales forces after the show. So, if I can help them get the leads followed-up, and prove ROI, everybody wins—and that’s exactly what I do.”

But how did he get to the point where he is possibly the best exhibitor educator and trainer in the world today? And what motivates him to share his insights via his seminars, webinars, and workshops in an informative and entertaining manner?

?It Started in Chi-Town

Born on Chicago’s North Side, Erschik went to Lane Technical High School in the early ’60s. A tough school in which to even gain admission, he studied initially in the area of architectural drawing and design, then ultimately taking interest in mechanical drawing, design and engineering. Eventually, he became a machine designer in the foundry and metalworking industries.

Things looked good for the young Erschik, but life throws us curves. Alas, he lost a parent early in his life and soon thereafter found himself drafted into the Army, where he was off to serve during the Vietnam War. He served initially as a platoon leader and eventually as a senior assembly specialist and gunner for an air defense Honest John rocket artillery unit with top-secret clearance for nuclear weapons! After two tough years, he was honorably discharged as a non-commissioned officer NCO, sergeant E5. (Thank you for your service, Richard.)

Out of the military, he returned wide-eyed and in about 2-years got a job in the Northwestern Suburbs of Chicago designing machinery for the foundry industry. It was there that someone told him that he belonged in sales because of his ability to clearly communicate the complicated. Taking that advice, he ventured into the marketing communications world for a noted grinding wheel manufacturer. He didn’t know it then, but his career path of teaching and helping others succeed had begun to take shape.

To the Sales World!

“In 1978, I got what I would call my very first marketing and sales job in the trophy and awards industry,” recalls Erschik. “I was made General Manager of a company that supplied trophy components and engraving equipment to the awards industry. That’s when I was really first introduced to trade shows and face-to-face marketing. I wasn’t taught trade shows by any means. Like most people, I tripped and fell into them, stumbling headfirst and backwards.

From that job, I went on to an upper-level sales and marketing management job in the machine tool industry, and that’s what really catapulted me into the trade show world.”

Erschik eventually became their executive manager of sales and marketing. And under that powerful umbrella was a considerable trade show budget and exhibit management P&L, specifically in the second largest trade show in the country: the International Machine Tool Show, best known as IMTS. He had big custom booths, lots of operating equipment on display, lengthy and expensive I&D, lots of special services - drainage, water, air, electricity, scrap removal, etc. Exhibit builders and suppliers loved his budget.

It was during that time that he was introduced to the pervasive problem of poor lead follow-up after all of the trade show expense, the issue that unbeknownst to him, would become his professional passion. “When I realized that our company’s leads weren’t being followed-up,” notes Erschik, “I thought at the time that it was only in my company.”

Coincidentally, he was also then serving as the chair of the Marketing Communications Committee for the entire National Machine Tool Builders Association. So, he called a meeting of his peers and committee members to Washington DC where he introduced them to the process of sales lead response and management he had been developing. “During that meeting,” he explains, “lo and behold, I discovered that they too had the same poor lead follow-up problem – it wasn’t just me. The very day that I realized it, I was bound and determined to start a service company that would qualify, and process sales leads for companies. At that meeting, four of the people at the table told me they would give me their account if I started a sales lead response and management service business.”

So, He Did.

That was in 1986. His service company was profitable from day one, and he never looked back. Erschik turned the lead response ‘process’ that he developed into a national service organization that American Airlines named ‘One of the Most Innovative Companies in the Country’ and a ‘Best Practice’ in Trade show Marketing.’ His company ultimately generated more than $10 million dollars in sales as he provided his exclusive service to select companies including 3M, HP, IBM, GM, Whirlpool and Westinghouse, to name a few. A great success story, his company actually processed more than 1.5 million sales leads in 22-1/2 years, a lengthy period after which he decided to sell his still-burgeoning company – to one of its customers.

But he wasn’t done. Out of the ‘service’ business, he transformed his quest to a more instructive endeavor. And today, he teaches world-wide exhibitors all of the secrets behind the exclusive techniques he developed by means of his now most popular educational and training seminars, webinars, workshops, a private ZOOMinar, and/or video presentation.

Secrets? What Secrets?

“Well,” reveals Erschik, “the first thought people have about following-up sales leads is that a salesperson should pick up the telephone and try to call the leads. But it’s impossible to do that today considering the barriers to completing telephone calls like automated switchboards and personal voicemail. It’s impossible for salespeople to follow-up on sales leads today. It’s literally impossible. They all know it, and they are forced to lie about what they’re really (not) doing with the leads, which is usually nothing, because they can’t make the initial telephone contact to follow-up personally.” So, there’s one cat that’s been let out of the bag of Richard’s teaching.

“Lead follow-up after a trade show shouldn’t be a lone requirement of the salesforce,” Erschik continues. “Lead qualification should be done ‘initially’ by the marketing department. There’s a big difference here. Everybody thinks that you just put the leads into a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) software or a contact management program and send them to the salesforce - and they’re supposed to follow-up on all of the leads. Software doesn’t follow-up on leads. People do! “All software does is get all the leads to the sales force faster, so they can do nothing with them sooner.” The marketing department should be doing something with the leads initially to eliminate the non-prospects, so the salesforce ends up with only the qualified prospects. That way, the exhibit manager can control the entire trade show process.” That’s another cat out of the bag, followed by yet another. “Companies should never use e-mail to initially respond to their leads for reasons I teach them,” Richard went on to say.

“Turns out immediate sales prospects only represent about 3-6 percent of the overall number of leads generated at a trade show anyway. Most of the others are near future and future prospects to nurture and contact later. The objective is to get the best leads to the salesforce first which frees up about 90 percent of the salesforce’s time for other things like existing customer contact.” says Erschik, “Statistically today, less than 20 percent of leads generated at a trade show ever get followed-up, and 76 percent of salespeople view the value of a trade show lead as being no better than a cold call. Those staggering statistics are hurting everyone.”

Thus, the Burnout Factor

“Salespeople can’t reach anybody by phone and the burn out factor from trying is the reason why they develop a negative perception as to the value of the leads before they do anything with them.” That’s the serious problem to which Richard’s teach the solution.

“Inside of an exhibiting company,” he continues, “the marketing department is generally responsible for trade show activity and the sales department is responsible for the results. That’s how it’s always been, and no one is teaching them anything different. And when marketing simply relinquishes control of the leads from the show to the salesforce, measurement opportunity falls through the cracks of inefficiency. The marketing/exhibit manager should never relinquish control of the leads to the sales force until they know which ones are the good ones. I teach them how to find the good ones.”

Erschik’s popular exhibitor education and training online webinar presentation is all-inclusive and entitled ‘Get the MOST from PRE--DURING--POST trade show exhibiting.’ “Most exhibitors expect the trade show organizer to do all of the attendance promotion and fill the aisles with interested prospects and that, too, is an impossibility,” he states. “Exhibitors have better names and better prospects in their databases than the trade show organizer could ever muster. So, in the PRE show segment of my webinar I teach exhibitors how to use the names they already have to get more visitors to their booth and consequently more leads. The show organizer also gets more overall attendees in their show.” Everyone wins!

“Your webinar was a game changer for our company,” said Betty Chen, a recent webinar attendee and the sales manager of Waterson. “Thank you for the pre-show promotion and lead response templates. I’m even more excited now to exhibit.”

The DURING show segment of Richard’s webinar goes on to teach exhibitors a) The Do’s and Don’ts of effective booth-staffing. b) How to engage visitors in conversation and separate real sales prospects from tire-kickers. c) Research based booth visitor complaints, so exhibitors don’t repeat their cause.

The POST show segment of the webinar is where the real magic happens. Because since less than 20% of sales leads generated at trade shows ever get followed-up, this is where exhibitors are shown how to implement Richard’s proven lead qualification, response, and management process that assures 100% lead follow-up and how to prove a positive ROI from exhibiting.

Trade show owners and organizers sponsor and host Richard’s webinar for their exhibitors and get a recording for their exhibitors who were not able to attend the live event. "You are very easy to work with. I love how you did your research and branded your webinar for our show" said Julie Walter, Exhibits Director, DHI.

Trade show suppliers invite Richard in to speak at their sales meetings to learn his statistics and lead management methodology. “We highly recommend your presentation to other trade show suppliers that are looking for an introduction to the ‘real-world’ of the trade show manager and exhibiting,” said Chuck Michel, VP Trade show Services, EliteXpo.

And many individual companies exhibit managers consider Richard their personal tutor."I feel empowered with what I learn from you," said Paul Golevicz, Product Manager, Kobelco.

The 2 Million Mile Man

Besides the on-line webinars he conducts from his home office, most recently for the exhibitors of trade show organizers and Associations like DHI, CEDIA, the Northwest Food Processors Association, BOMA, the Texas Library Association, the American Water Works Association and Pittcon, to name a few, Erschik regularly travels the globe delivering his Workshops in-person. Along the way, he has flown more than 2 million miles with American Airlines alone, teaching exhibitors and coaching booth-staff sales teams in locales as far away as South Africa, India, Belgium, Mexico, and Canada.

According to Erschik, “There is a lot of engagement from my seminar, webinar, and workshop attendees. I ask them a series of questions and get them interactive. I give them active-learning templates and 30-days of FREE telephone support after my presentations in case they need additional help. I’ve been evaluated as ‘the best exhibitor educator on the planet.’ I even have one guy from a Fortune 100 company – and I quote this all over – who said he ‘learned more from me in an hour than he did in four years of college and 12 years on the job!’

“This is how I differentiate myself,” Richard describes. “Every other exhibitor educator and trainer teaches exhibitors what they should do to be effective at a trade show, and why. I show them how. I do it with more than 3-decades of experience of actually having been a successful exhibitor. I do it with the experience of having walked in their shoes and felt their pain. I know their problems, because I had them myself as an exhibit manager just like they are. And I teach them Do It Yourself (DIY) industry proven solutions they can implement immediately and without spending any more money. Most have everything they need already in place. They just need to make a few changes to their existing process.

Man, on a Mission

In reply to the question as to how much longer he’ll be sharing his exclusive experience and knowledge, Erschik replied with a laugh: “Until I fall out of my chair. Really, I had the opportunity to retire and walk away from all of this, but it’s kind of in my blood. I just understand it so well, I’m so close to it, I’m so knowledgeable about the problem to which I personally created the solution that works, I just want to tell the trade show world about it. I have the industry-proven path to positive trade show ROI and I enjoy giving back. Progressive exhibit managers want to learn, and I want to teach. What’s better than that?”

About Richard

Richard Erschik is among the highest rated exhibitor educators and trainers in the world. He gained his unique knowledge and unprecedented statistics from the company he founded and actually having made 1,600,000 outbound telephone calls, to contact and qualify more than 1,000,000 sales leads, for 147 various industry companies. His expertise has been sought from trade show owners, organizers, exhibitors, and industry suppliers in the USA, Canada, Mexico, Belgium, India and South Africa. He has been a Round-table moderator, FastTrak instructor, and featured speaker and presenter at the EXHIBITOR Show in Las Vegas for 18-years and has been given the appropriately named moniker of - The Voice of Trade Show ROI. Reference his website www.ExhibitorTrainingWebinar.com Contact him by email at [email protected] or Phone/Test him directly at 630-642-6500