A Great Southern Press Site
 

Top 10 Tips for Exhibitors

  1. Decide your objectives and identify your target market for the expo
    Do you want to take orders on the spot, build your brand awareness, introduce a new product, or gather leads? Whatever your goals are this needs to be decided before any other preparation of the exhibition stand takes place. Once you’ve decided what you hope to achieve by attending the expo and who you would like to attract to your business you can then move onto the next step of designing your booth.
     
  2. Design your booth
    What are your functional needs for the booth?
    • Do you need seating so you can sit and discuss at length with prospects the great benefits of your services or products? If your product or service is more complicated or technical, this functionality might work well for you.
    • Do you need shelving for books or product displays, video capability, or storage?
    • What kind of traffic flow do you need through your booth?

    What are your aesthetic needs?
    • Do you need a display with movement to illustrate your product?
    • Does it need to be backlit to illustrate the detail of your product?
    • Does your corporate image necessitate a certain "look" that would require curves, sharp/crisp lines, or colours?

    What are your marketing needs?
    • What is the message you need to communicate?
    • Do you have strong name/logo recognition already?
    • Are you a start-up trying to make a name for yourself?

    Behind the scenes…
    • If you have a portable booth, make sure the transport cases that your booth ships in are very durable, as well as replaceable.
    • Know the size and weight limitations of your shippers, as well as the conference locations for the trade shows you are attending.
    • Find out the tools you will need to put the booth together, as well as the muscle required to do it.
    • Obtain Public Liability Insurance for any trade show you attend
       
  3. The Look
    How do you get your exhibit booth to communicate who you are, what you do, and what your product or service is -- all in three seconds?

    Sounds impossible, but it isn't. 

    Think about the billboards that you pass on the highway. They have the exact same job. They have to tell you who the company is and what it's selling as you zoom past at 80 km/hour. Some work and some don't. The key is usually in the graphics.

    Graphics can communicate a whole host of impressions at a single glance. Think of your booth in the same way. To make your booth graphics have impact and work for you rather than against you, remember:
    • Focus on your products or service's "benefits" rather than "services."
    • Use text very sparingly. You want your booth to look more like a billboard than a brochure.
    • Make sure there is a single focal point. Find the essence of your business and make sure everything revolves around that central idea.
    • Make sure your name and your positioning statement are very prominent in the design. Remember, if you're a new company, you have to create an impression, and if you're an existing company you have to maintain and build on that impression.

    The trends these days in booth graphics are large visual backdrops with only the most concise, key text statements to communicate a message or theme. For example, a company that manufactures scissors or chainsaws could use a single, larger-than-life photograph of its product as the background for the booth. The message is immediately obvious, as opposed to the booth that posts several small photos of its products with descriptive text along side them that can only be read at a distance of 2 feet (0.6 m). Now, if your company is a service-oriented company, you may have more difficulty posting a single image, but think hard about it. You can usually come up with an image or simple montage that can communicate the essence of your business.
     
  4. Staff preparation
    Your staff should:
    • Be people orientated
    • Know a lot about your company
    • Be enthusiastic, high energy and positive
    • Take initiative and be confident
    • Be good listeners
    • Look and act professionally

    They should be informed of the following before attending the expo:
    • Your objectives
    • Your target audience
    • Your message to the target audience
    • Your products and services (including stories of examples rather than abstract ideas)
    • Competitors products and services
    • The benefits of your products and services
       
  5. Promote your exhibit before and at the Expo
    So far you’ve spent time and money on the details of your exhibition stand for it to convey the best possible message to your target audience. Now you need to create interest in your investment through promotion in the lead up to the event. Try the following forms of advertising:
    • The Expo’s website
    • In a newsletter you send to your database of contacts letting them now you will be attending the expo
    • The Expo’s event manual
    • At other industry events prior to the expo
    • Industry magazines
       
  6. Fulfilment information - Company Literature, Giveaway Items, etc.
    Fact: About 90% of all literature pick up by people at trade shows never makes it back to their office.
    • Design material that is simple and gets your message across effectively
    • Find out how many brochures/give away items will be required. It all depends on how many people you expect to see. If you expect to see 12 visitors per hour, then estimate how much literature you'll need based on that number. This can also be done by asking the event organisers how many people they expect at the trade show.
    • For an economical point of view ensure you can also use any leftover marketing materials for either pre- or post-show mailings, as well as for a simple informational packs.
    • Don’t overload visitors with information that they may not want, offer to send it to them after the show either by post or electronically.
    • Be innovative; offer them a gift that they can use. For example a USB key with your company logo and information already downloaded onto it about your company. This way they can continue to the use the key at the rest of the trade show with your company at the forefront of their minds
       
  7. The Trade Show Tool Kit
    This kit includes all of the incidental things you never remember and always need.

    It should include:
    • packing tape
    • scissors
    • Band-Aids
    • extra extension cords or double adaptors
    • phone chargers
    • business cards of various staff members
    • marketing material
    • pens
    • paper
    • highlighters
    • a stapler and staple remover
    • shipping labels filled out for the return shipment
    • extra lead forms
    • a camera
    • expo manual
    • your diary (for appointment setting)

    This is a basic list, and you may need to add items such as a prize draw barrel, laptop, USB key etc. Whatever it is that you need to take with you its important to remember that making a list will help you be organised and efficient during that ‘last minute’ rush!
     
  8. At the Expo - Asking the right questions
    There are four phases in trade show selling:
    • Engagement
    • Qualification
    • Presentation
    • Closing
       

    Engagement
    First, as we mentioned above, engaging the show attendee is not as simple as you might think. Assuming you don't have a magic show, a live animal promo, or other crowd magnet, the burden of getting people to stop at your booth is on your booth staff. The first rule of engagement is: Don't ask a question that will allow the attendee to simply give you a one word answer and keep on walking. Ask them what product they are looking for at the show, whether this show has been as helpful for them as another show, if they are familiar with your company, etc. Be creative -- this is a critical step, and the goal is to get them to stop and talk to you.

    Qualification
    Phase two is the qualifying phase. You certainly don't want to waste your time on someone who isn't really interested in your product, so it pays to ask some qualifying questions right off the bat. There's nothing worse than seeing six good prospects walk by while you're politely listening to someone who you suspect doesn't even need your product. (Yes, this can happen, especially if you have cool giveaways at your booth.)

    So to qualify your prospect, take one to two minutes to ask some specific questions like, "Tell me about what you're looking for at the show." "Tell me about how your company does ______." Essentially, just ask them whatever you need to ask to identify whether or not they need your product or service. 

    Presentation
    Phase three is show time! Time to do your tap dance and dazzle the prospect with the many benefits of using your product as opposed to the other guys'. Remember to limit your presentation to about five minutes or less and make your message as memorable as possible. If you've done a good job identifying your show goals, product message and competitive advantages, then this phase should be a cake walk. It's typically the easiest phase for your staff because, if they're sales reps, it's basically a condensed version of what they do every day.

    Closing
    The final phase is probably the most important of all, and the key to a successful closing is making sure you and your prospects are in common agreement about the next step. Ask them how they would like for you to follow up. That puts the ball in their court and forces them to say, "Yes, send me a package of information" or "Yes, call me on Tuesday about a quote." And yes, you do want to get specific with call back times. The more specific you can get, the more likely they will remember who you are when you call.

    So those are the basic steps involved in trade show presentations. Go through the process with your booth staff and rehearse with each other. Pull in office mates to play the role of the trade show attendees and assign them personality types to make it more fun and challenging for your booth staffers. Having prepared booth staffers can make the difference between a very successful show and a not-so-successful show.
     
  9. Follow up leads
    The Lead Sheet
    To address one of the complaints of sales reps about the contact information not being complete, you can develop a lead sheet that includes spaces for all of the specific information your reps need in order to make a sales call. These sheets should be small enough to fit in a coat pocket, and typically work best in a notepad form. One critical piece of information to add to the sheet is the priority code (or lead assessment). Come up with a simple 3-to-5 level rating system to assess how "hot" this lead really is. Make sure your booth staffers understand and use this rating system when they talk with show attendees.

    Make sure you have a schedule in place for lead follow-up. This means:
    • Getting fulfilment packages out within five days after the end of the show
    • Allowing two to five days for lead qualification (if you have that option)
    • Allowing no more than two weeks to pass before phone contact is made by your sales reps
    • Getting an initial sales report on the likeliness of a sale
    • Closing the sale
    • Getting the final report of closed sales for the show report
       


    Assign a lead manager to who should be responsible for:
    • Writing/editing lead response letters
    • Determining the fulfilment package contents
    • Making sure the fulfilment packages are sent out in a timely manner - not a month after the show, but a week after the show
    • Distributing leads among sales reps
    • Developing a lead form to collect exactly the information your company needs
       
  10. Writing Response Letters
    Writing a lead response letter is usually a much less painful process than writing letters for direct response mailings or other media. In the case of response letters, you know the people have shown interest in your product or service, and now you just have to make sure you answer all of their questions and give them the desire to act on your offer.

    A few quick tips include:
    • making the letter short
    • your voice and verbs active
    • making the closing compelling
    • speak specifically about the success of the show
    • make sure you include an offer in the letter to encourage the reader to act.
    • specifically address any requests made at the expo
    • personalise the package
    • state that a representative will be contacting the person by phone, and provide a range of dates for the contact time.