How to Avoid Looking and Feeling Like A Spider

“Welcome to my parlour said the spider to the fly”. That pretty much sums up how many attendees and those manning stands feel about the dynamics of Trade Shows and Exhibitions. Whether your event is internal or external, big or small, it doesn’t have to feel like that.

Attendance at Trade Shows can be a big investment. Ideally, your Stand is complemented by a speaking slot to give people a specific reason to come and seek you out. That’s not always possible, so whether you are speaking or not, you need to be able to really make the most of your business investment in having a Stand.

My Recent Experience

Last year I attended a conference on the latest technology for growing SME businesses. Over two days, eight stages gave a wide variety of talks around the edge of a supporting trade show of about 100 companies, supporting sevices and educational organisations. 

I am genuinely interested in what is out there. After all, productivity is cited as one of the big challenges for businesses.  There were some excellent talks. I was however truly shocked at the lack of preparedness of many of the people manning stands. What was my experience?

• Some people didn’t know how to start and progress a conversation that would allow me and them to decide quickly if a longer conversation would be worthwhile.
• Some people could not answer simple questions about claims made on the stand. e.g. One had a large banner saying that their product ‘Closed the Sales and Marketing Gap’. I asked what the gap was. The representative could not tell me.   
• Some people talked at me giving lots of information about their business before they had any idea why I had approached their stand.

Ignoring other costs, just the time of the people attending can be significant. So why do so many businesses seem to think a good plan is to just turn up, maybe with whoever is available, and see what happens?

What’s Your Goal?

Like going to any networking event people will often say their goal from a Trade Show is “To be better known” or “To spread the message about their services” or maybe “To speak to possible clients”. This is far too nebulous for taking a decision about whether to attend, and certainly provides little basis for choosing who will represent your business or how they should prepare. 

If you are considering such an event, you must at least know what will make it worthwhile. Even if you only need to secure one new customer to make it worthwhile, there still needs to be a plan for how to make this happen – otherwise it probably won’t. A more substantial target is worth striving for, with individuals on the stand knowing what is explicitly expected of them. Without this, the likelihood is that the stand members will spend much of the day talking to each other and avoiding eye contact with people near their Stand. That’s exactly what was happening a lot at the event I attended recently.

Let’s say that you know your goal and the people manning your Stand know what it is and why it is important and how their contribution will be judged. Let’s assume you need to secure at least 5 new clients as a direct result of the Show and that this needs to happen within one month of the Show. 

Will the Right People Be There?

It is a basic question. Who do you expect to be at the Show that could reasonably become your clients? Is it the attendees? Is it the speakers? If you are paying for your place at the Show, the organisers should be able to give you useful information on delegates, sponsors, speakers. Do your homework and decide where your most likely new clients could come from. Do you still want to go? If so, do the basic prep with your attendees.

How to Prepare

As an absolute minimum the people on the Stand need to be able to do three things:

1. Be unafraid to say hello and get a confortable conversation going with people near the Stand.
2. Have at the ready a small number of examples of issues real clients have had, and what you enabled them to achieve through your services. 
3. Understand what questions to ask and the types of answers that mean someone could get real benefit from your offering.

If you don’t talk to people you can’t know what they want or need.

If you can’t bring the impact of your service to life, potential customers won’t find it easy to see why they should talk to you.

If you don’t know what a good client looks like, and don’t ask the questions that reveal this, you will probably waste time on people who just want the free chocolates, pens or fluffy toys on your Stand.

The Basic Preparation Made Easy

1.   Practice an open and reasonable question that you can ask someone on or near your stand. e.g. “What brings you here today?”. Listen to the answer, clarify/delve as appropriate and start to understand the person. Your conversation has begun.

2.   Practice at least 2 or 3 examples in 2 or 3 sentences of things you’ve achieved for your clients. e.g. “Typically we halve the cost of marketing for our clients and double its impact. For example one client was spending a fortune on Google Ad Words but had no real sense of which ones drove sales. They now understand and their campaigns are being much more successful and at a lower cost”.

This is an informative and easily understandable style of answer to “What does your company do?”. Detail can follow later in the conversation.

3.   Practise the questions that will tell you whether a conversation is a good use of time for both of you. To formulate these questions, you need to know the business conditions that make your offering relevant. In my business, when people recognise two or more of the following situations, then a conversation makes sense:

a.   Long term productive relationships are absolutely critical to the success of the business

b.   Much business has to be won by business professionals, rather than by a dedicated team of career sales professionals.

c.   There is a business development or business relationship issue that needs tackling e.g. more from existing clients, over dependence on a few clients, selling at the wrong level, few new clients being secured etc.

d.   Someone is accountable for tackling the above issue.

When you know the equivalent for your business, you can have good questions ready. Please use open, not closed, questions.

Don’t Waste the Information You Discover

Write down what you learn. The number of business cards collected is just a vanity statistic. The real kudos should come from having those five names of genuine potential clients alongside the information from the conversation, and agreement to a follow up conversation.

The Right People and the Right Conversations

Let’s assume that there probably won’t be that many people at the event who have the potential to become clients imminently. If you’ve chosen the show well, there are probably quite a few who could become clients over time. Your task is to understand which is which, paint a simple, memorable picture in the minds of all those you speak to and engage more deeply with the ones that need you now. 

For that, do your preparation and please, please, please smile and make eye contact. That will immediately put you streets ahead of most of your competitors based on what I experienced the other day.

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Carole is the Author of Flying Start - How to Make Your Own Luck at Work. It is the first book in the Relationship Code series.

More info and to order: https://www.peoplebuyfrompeople.co.uk

The book is available in print and digital through all major online retailers in the UK, US, Canada, Australia, and selected retailers in other territories.

If you enjoyed this post please do click LIKE, and SHARE to share it with your network. Thank you.

? Carole Gillespie 2019

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To work with Carole on getting prepared to make the most of any networking situation, and having conversations that really enhance relationships and the quality of business you do together, call her on +44 7990 542 122 or email [email protected] .

More generally, her business enables services organisations to achieve good business, more easily, more often by the way business relationships are created and sustained. Or to put it another way, that's how to win business without selling and and create a balanced, enduring and productive portfolio of clients that will reduce your business risk and increase the value of your business. 

Carole Gillespie is the founder of People buy from People and the creator of the Results through Relationships Framework and the Relationship Code.

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