A Baker’s Dozen Trade Tips

A tradeshow is like a meal. It can be so-so or you can sing praises about it to the chief. For example, try canned chicken noodle soup and saltine crackers without well-known brand names. OK, it might curb your hunger like a casual tradeshow where you managed to turn up a couple of leads.

Now go to grandma’s house (or someone who cooks well) and feast on her homemade noodles in her just-oh-so-right seasoned chicken soup and crusted, fresh-out-of-the-over baked bread. Ummm! Now we’re talking. This is like the having your fishbowl overflow with leads from constantly filled booth presentations at a tradeshow.

Well just as a delicious, homemade soup with all the trimmings can benefit by being prepared according to instructions passed down through generations of experienced cooks, a successful tradeshow can benefit from instructions handed down by experienced professionals. Here are a baker’s dozen tips for trade show success.

1. Accounts – Accounting and accountability are important. For every 10x10 booth size, your company should have at least 2 representatives on hand at all times.

And always fill out the show services information sheets and send them in before the deadline. This will save you money. If your company is paying for the services by check, copy the check and the files and bring them to show site. If all possible ask your accounting office when the check was sent out. And call the decorators and show vendors at least 2 weeks before the show and make sure they received payment for the specific services you ordered.

Note: When I first started out in event planning, I would show up at a show and find that they didn’t place down my carpet or the electrical was not in my booth. It was a big mess. I would call the accounting office and they would say, “Yes, we sent the check in a month ago.” But the vendors would argue that they didn’t receive payment. So I would have to tell the accounting office to photocopy the check that had been deposited by the vendor and have it faxed to me at my hotel. Or, I would place the order again on my credit card and pay double the fees. Then I would go back to the office, obtain the deposited check, fax it to the vendor, and the vendor would credit my account.

So save time and stress. Call ahead and make sure they received payment and go over your order over the phone with the vendor. It only takes a few minutes for piece of mind.

2. Training - Train your booth staff. Before the tradeshow, send out an information sheet regarding booth expectations. Include information on how they should dress and conduct themselves when they are on the show floor. Include information regarding conversations between colleagues, competitors and vendors. And discuss body language and how to engage attendees etc.

3. Space - Your booth should be open. And don’t place tables or obstacles in the booth. If you need a table in the booth, have it placed along a side, instead of front and center. This is more inviting for prospects to come in and take reading materials.

4. Giveaways - Place your giveaways towards the back of the table. This will force them to come in your booth and talk to you. And don’t buy cheap trinkets. If you can’t afford good giveaways, don’t bother wasting your money.

5. Visitor Forms - Create a lead form to fill out to qualify prospects instead of the traditional collecting business cards. If they prefer to swipe their card or hand you their business card, make sure you ask them qualifying questions. Later when the prospect leaves write notes down about what the prospect is looking for and if they qualify for your sales process.

6. Magnetic Attraction - Nothing creates a crowd like a crowd. How can you do this? If all possible, create a theme. Or if a theme is out of the question, you can play educational games.

For instance, one client had a 20x20 booth and was looking for a fun interactive idea on how to attract attendees to their booth. I suggested that they play some educational games to win cash and prizes. The attendees had to sit through a presentation and learn about the product. They filled out a lead card placed on a clipboard on the chair (make sure you place qualifying questions on those cards) and placed it in for the drawing. At specific times about once an hour, the company had a drawing for two people to go face to face for $100.00 cash or to sweeten the deal have 3 games a day to win a much larger amount of money or prizes. At any given time, the host had between 50 and 100 people swarming their booth.

Popular TV games that are renamed also work well, like Who Wants to be a Thousand Arie, Wheel of XYZ Company Fortune, XYZ Company Squares, XYZ Concentration, XYZ Company Jeopardy or any other game you can think of. One of these at a past event created a lot of buzz and the client was the talk of the tradeshow floor. His company was even written up in an article and voted the best booth on the tradeshow floor. Now that’s great branding - - capturing sales leads in the process!

7. Presentations - Do not set a specific time you will be giving presentation throughout the day. Give the presentation one after the other until they go back to there sessions. And make sure the domo or presentation is no more than 5-minutes long. Prospects are more than likely on information overload. The last thing they want to do is sit through a presentation that is long.

Once you get the first person to sit down, people are more likely to join in. So have the booth staff step a foot in the isle and when prospects walk up, say, “We are just about to show a 3- to 5- minute presentation (or demo) on the benefits of XYZ Company.”

When one or two prospects sit down, start the presentation. Then after the presentation starts, have booth staff continue to tell prospects, “We just started the presentation and its only 3- to 5-minutes long. Would you be interested in learning about the benefits of XYZ Company? The presentation area will fill up very fast.”

8. Shipping - Finding the right shipping company is key. First, look for a shipping company that only specializes in shipping tradeshow booths and materials. This is very important. There are three types of shipping, FedEx or UPS, common carrier and freight forwarding. Using FedEx or UPS has its advantages but it outweighs the disadvantages. The advantages are that it is much cheaper to ship your tradeshow booth. But the disadvantages are that show decorators consider FedEx special handling. The fee can be almost double that of crated or skidded equipment. If the exhibit floor ends after the FedEx deadline, often times you have to find a drop off center. If the FedEx truck doesn’t arrive onetime, the show decorator can force your materials and that is very expensive.

Using a common carrier is also cheaper, but that is not always the case. You often pay extra charges for shipping your equipment for tradeshows. Extra charges are also in effect if you need your shipment to arrive on the tradeshow floor at a specific time and day. The trucks are owned by the common carriers but they also ship other types of materials, not tradeshow specific. Sometimes all the extra charges that are tacked on end up being more than freight-forwarding.

Freight-forwarding companies are, in my opinion, the way to go. I use a company called NorthStar Express who specializes in tradeshow shipping. I get a call from a customer service representative when my shipment arrives and when they are picking up the equipment and who signed for it. The extra money is worth the piece of mind. If there is a piece of freight missing, I place a call to a live person and they track it for me. I don’t spend an hour on the phone trying to figure out where my freight is and who to speak to. And if my booth equipment is not in my booth when I arrive for setup, I give Northstar a call for piece of mind. And most of the time, the truck is usually waiting in line to unload the freight.

Shipping to show site verses shipping to the decorators warehouse. When shipping your tradeshow equipment to show site, often times when you arrive for setup your equipment is not in your booth its still on the truck waiting in line. This can cause you to waste many hours and money sometimes waiting for the freight depending on the show size. Also, if you are using union labor to setup your booth, they get paid regardless if your freight is in the booth or not.

Although it is sometimes cheaper to get your equipment to arrive on show site, I prefer to send my shipment to the decorators warehouse.

When you send your freight to the warehouse, your shipment is almost always in your booth when you arrive to setup because they use their own trucks sometimes the night before or early morning to make room for the other trucks. And by using the forwarding freight company you already got the call of proof of delivery to the warehouse. So all is left to do is setup. The price difference between the warehouse and show site is minimal.

Plan Ahead - - - save time by filling out the outbound shipping information in your show services manual.

9. Test - Test your equipment before it’s shipped to the tradeshow and again before the show opens. Testing it before you leave the office is a good way for your IT person to fix any computer problem that may arise. This can save you a lot of money renting computers or monitors.

10. – Demos / Presentations - Using a demo or presentation that is web based. Don’t rely on Internet connectivity at the show site. Even when getting an ISDN line or DSL, the connectivity is often slow in the convention center or hotel. They might think your product is slow. Bring a static demo, maybe a PowerPoint presentation or a video, to present to prospects in your booth.

11. – ROI - Create a lead process to document return on investment (ROI). Tradeshows are very expensive and you want to or have to be able to justify spending your budgeting dollars. Make sure the leads do not go home with the sales force even if the leads are hot. Have one colleague in charge of all the leads to take back to the office and place them in your CRM system with coding so you can track where the tradeshow leads are in the sales process. Than you can justify your expenses, depending upon how many sales you get from a tradeshow to spend more money on tradeshows.

12. – Questionnaire - When the show ends, email your booth staff a questionnaire on their thoughts about the show, what they would do differently and get there recommendation on weather you should attend the same show the following year. Then send out an information sheet to management about the show, how many leads did you obtain, how many are considered hot, how many exhibitors were there, how may attendees showed up, what competitors were at the tradeshow. This will get management to feel more involved and to know how much they are spending per lead.

13. – Installation & Display (I&D) - When using I & D services, if your booth is larger than a 10x10, in most cases you will be required to hire union labor. In some cities across the US, it is not required to hire union but you need to hire an exhibitor appointed contractor. The question is, do you want to hire the show decorator union or do you want to find a contractor in the particular city to setup and dismantle your booth? Often times the best route to go is to use the company that built your booth. And if they do not provide I & D services, they can contract with a company that is familiar with your booth style. If they know the style it will be setup and dismantled faster saving you money.

Either way, always have a backup plan incase something is missing or something is broken. Working in the tradeshow industry is a very stressful. We have a saying, “What can go wrong, will go wrong at a tradeshow.”

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