What Are The Costs Associated With Not Training Your Exhibit Staff?

Training exhibit staff is costly, time consuming and a difficult task to achieve especially when the trainer is an outsider. In most cases the outside trainer is very often regarded as an outcast who doesn’t understand the organisation nor the product whilst the in-house trainer is regarded as a friend or colleague and is not given the deserved attention for the task. The best exhibit staff at a trade show are the ones who understand the differences between their work in the “field” and what is required to succeed in the unique environment of a trade show. In the field you can spend an hour with a prospect without loosing out on other opportunities. At a Trade Show, with so many potential clients, you can not afford to waste an hour on a prospect only to discover that he has no intention of committing for the next couple of years. Important Trade Shows can welcome 20 to 30,000 visitors over 3 to 4 days. Well trained Exhibit staff will be able to qualify prospects within 3 minutes, making sure that they see as many prospects as possible over the 3 days.

Up to date CEIR (Centre for Exhibitions Industry Research) information about attendees’ behaviour, their needs and their wish-list when visiting a professional event is making exhibitors prepare their exhibit staff to respond accordingly. Exhibiting companies have to examine the skill set of exhibit staff to ensure they have what it takes to meet the challenge.

Attendees’ needs are more complex than simply learning about a new product or service to purchase. Their search for a new product includes their ability to interact with the product, to talk with the experts behind the product, to get answers on the spot, to generate new ideas and solutions and to compare one brand against another. 57% of attendees rank Trade Shows as the most valuable resource when looking for a new product, supplier, distributor or comparing items and services. The importance of face-to-face is in the customer’s awareness of new products in their pre-purchase stage. Face to face interaction with vendors at a Trade Show will increase the sales close rate by 20% in the post-purchase stage.

Trade Shows are no longer seen as a place to sale but a place to make contacts and nurture relations. The actual sale of the products or service now takes second place. This change of attitude is coupled with the demographic impact of the change in the people who visit the trade show floor. Five separate generations, all walk the floor, with their own perspectives, needs, wish-lists and very distinct likes and dislikes.

The reality is that exhibiting companies need to take the education of their exhibit staff a lot more seriously. To be successful, exhibit managers will have to be pro-active and move beyond old and overused excuses such as, “We don’t have the time” , “We haven’t got any budget for training,” or “My Exhibit Staff has been doing shows for such a long time that they don’t need any training.”

I am a firm believer that the success of any exhibitor is in the proficiency of their front-line Exhibit Staff, and it all comes down to giving them the appropriate training for this very specific setting.

So, if you are an exhibitor, are you staffing your booth purposefully? Do you have a booth-staff training program, and does it offer training to help them successfully answer questions, ‘on the spot?’ Make sure you are positioning your organization’s exhibit program for success!

After thirty years and tons of research, I believe it is so important to ensure that trade exhibitions are understood and used to leverage long terms client’s relations and ultimately business growth.

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