Trade Shows - how long before you cut bait?
This week I attended two small trade shows that were hosted onsite at military bases that were withing driving distance of my house. These are short tabletop events, scheduled generally to go 830-1PM and are very common for folks that sell into US Federal to attend. The two shows I attended were at very large and significant military installations with thousands of employees and dozens of tenant commands at each. My expectations for these shows are always low to begin with, but this weeks shows were unparalleled in my experience in terms of lack of traffic. The first show had a good VIP group and I would guess 20-25 attendees that came in after that group, with a max total visitor list of 50 but I think less. The second show had a smaller VIP group that did make a point to talk to everyone for an extended time, and we had bout 10-15 folks come in after that. The second show was so slow the first exhibitor to pack up did so at 1030AM... and they turned out to be wise as there were maybe 5 folks max that came in after they left.
So here is my question for you to ponder - when do you cut bait and decide I can be doing better things than talking to my fellow exhibitors (which is always done early before attendees arrive or during slow periods at any show). Are you one of the first to leave or do you feel cowed into not leaving by some sort of guilt for the folks that put on this show and did a poor job of getting any traffic to it? This is a tough one for me, because I am an optimist and I always have this firm belief that opportunity can strike out of the blue - because it has for me dozens of times. Improbable conversations or someone who actually, truly, brought a paper brochure to a colleague and someone called me... yes that's not a fairy tale it has happened to me... more than once. But not often... this is the mental gymnastics I wrestled with and ended up packing out 30 mins early at both shows because I live near DC and traffic gets exponentially worse the later you are and I had some miles to get home. I think about that company that left at 1030 and realize that their two hours of extra work time for sure was more valuable then the time I spent this week... but how do you play those odds?
I would love others perspective on this... When do we get past the sunk cost of the show and recapture our valuable time? For many of us, our hourly rate is pretty high if you tally in the commissions... but the unicorn may be the next person that walks past the booth. What about pulling out the laptop and working during open floor hours? Is this bad form or just what we do these days of everything in a hurry with fury screaming down our necks all the time.
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Cheers and happy Friday my friends - drop some comments below if you feel inspired. Plus send a prayer to the trade show gods for me, I apparently have angered them this week.
Control Room Console, Control Room Furniture, Revolution console, Synergy console, 24/7 console, Control room design
2 个月The cost of exhibiting at shows is getting out of control. I agree with quality over quantity but how do you choose? $10,000 is a hard pill to swallow if you aren't sure about the audience.
Business Development and Sales Leader with Extensive ProAV Design Engineering Experience
2 个月As an AV manufacturer, we tend to focus on global and national shows rather than regional or local events. Given the sophistication of our gear, table top shows just aren’t that helpful.
Serving at the intersection of people & mission critical technology.
2 个月Shows are becoming wildly expensive, too, driving up the cost per lead.
Senior Design Engineer
2 个月I think the dilemma is not the foot traffic of the people but the types of people that attend these events. Typically, you will have mostly military and GS civilians attend when the shows are on a base. In 99% of the cases, these military and GS civilians don't have authority to procure/install. They would have to find an engineering/design firm to design what they want and hopefully they call out your equipment. I was the manager of a government engineering team that did this kind of work and never did any of our customers request a specific vendor they saw at a trade show. Like Gabriel mentions you really need to vet the show better to determine if there are any government engineering teams or embedded contracting engineering teams. When I was with the government, my team and I never went to these types of events but we always showed up at InfoComm and maybe NAB. Just my $0.02....