DO YOU HAVE A PRODUCT WE SHOULD KNOW ABOUT?
Mr. Checkout is a national association of independent wagon-jobbers and full-line distributors. We distribute product to approximately 35,000 independent stores around the country and are always seeking the next hot new product. If you have a product, we want to hear from you!
Double your trade show sales by using these 3 simple tricks
1) EXHIBIT WITHOUT BORDERS
Staff in the aisle where the attendees are walking by. It seems like where the booth carpet meets the aisle carpet, often becomes an impenetrable “line in the sand” that staffers rarely venture past. We all want to be “out of the box” in the way we think, so consider the exhibit space as “in the box,” and the aisle as “out of the box.” This is where it gets a little uncomfortable, but if we can get out there and engage people as they come by, this will result in remarkably higher lead counts. I staffed an exhibit yesterday where an attendee was going to walk by the exhibit without stopping and I engaged him, only to find out that he has operations on 3 continents and represents about a 5 million dollar sales opportunity for our client. This guy was going to walk right by the tradeshow booth! The only reason I pulled him in was because I was in the aisle. The business is there and we need to be in the aisle to get it. Sometimes the show may ask you don’t staff in the aisle, but go ahead and do it until they tell you otherwise.
2) DIVIDE AND CONQUER
Having a game or some type of entertainment is a tremendous method for generating high traffic in your exhibit booth space and at your hospitality suite. The key to any attraction is to engage and qualify the attendees while they are waiting for the attraction or when the attraction is completed. Many organizations pay a tremendous amount of dollars for a great in-booth attraction, only to have attendees escape with no interaction with the booth staff. We need to surround the attendees and make sure that we get an opportunity with them. Another method to insure interaction is to tie the in-booth activity to the qualifying process. We should work with the magician, trick shot pool guy, robot, or game organizer to make sure they can work into their script a qualifying question that we can see. Not that this is any of us, but when it comes to in-booth activities, it seems that the norm in the trade show industry is to attract attendees, only to have the staff not participate in their role of interacting with the attendees.
3) HAVE A HUDDLE EVERY MORNING
Each morning, of each day of the show, have a booth staff meeting. Before the chaos of the show begins, gather your staff and have a pre-show meeting (roughly 1 hour prior to the start of each day). At this meeting you can give an update on the quality of leads coming in, kudos to the best performers, announce any mid-stream adjustments, timing of activities, and update everyone on how well you are doing against the goals that have been set. On an individual level, set specific target goals for each staffer so they have something to shoot for and compete against. This can be given prior to the event or can be handed out at the event. Also, this is a great opportunity to discuss the “best practices” in exhibit staffing, along with the 10 deadly sins of staffing (this may have some variation by company depending on your goals).
There is no better teacher than our experiences and observation. These top 10 secrets are derived from both sources and if we are able to learn and use these top 10 behaviors and attitudes, we will surely double our lead count at our next event.