Involve your tradeshow staff for better results
Published on 03/01/1999 under Potpourri
I'm sure you've wandered endless tradeshow aisles, noticing along the way how bored and unproductive many people in the booths appear to be. Salespersons tend to hate tradeshow duty because the selling experience is so different from what they're used to. And our chances to change that are limited.
In a perfect world, you'd conduct pre-show training sessions with their full, undivided and enthusiastic cooperation. Top management would stop by, make an inspiring speech, and pat everyone on the back for doing such a fine job.
Unfortunately the business world doesn't operate that way often enough, so we're stuck with a motley group of untrained, undisciplined and unmotivated booth staffers flying in at the last possible minute expecting to wing it when the tradeshow curtain goes up.
Here are a few tips to maximize and enhance the booth duty experiences of your assigned salespersons:
1. Pre-show information
You may not have the luxury of actually meeting with your booth team before the show, but you can at least send them some basic information to think about en route. Things like a show schedule, booth map, list of featured products and duty roster are essential. Include flyers, teaser ads and other promotional items to give them a flavor for what they'll encounter upon arrival. And have extra copies to pass out at your briefing each morning just before the show opens.
2. Booth set-up
Unless you've got a large, island-type booth with conference areas, don't include chairs. It just encourages your booth staff to sit down. Orient your salespeople as to what products and features are being featured in other areas of your booth. Nothing's worse than, "Gee, I dunno. That's not my area," when a visitor inquires about something made by another division or group in your company.
3. Product demonstrations
Sales reps love to make product demos, so try to include one or several in your booth. It serves as a natural conversation starter and helps overcome shyness. If your product's most important features can't be demonstrated easily in a tradeshow environment, produce a video or CD-ROM presentation that will serve the same purpose.
DON'T force customers to watch your standard 12-minute capabilities video. That's for another time and place. Edit segments out that demonstrate the product's advantages and show those on a continuous loop. That way, sales reps know the part they want to talk about is coming right up again.
4. Interactive displays
In the old days (1990?), the best we could hope for was a back-lit graphic panel with a crudely animated schematic showing how the process worked. Now you can do three-dimensional CD-ROM's with navigational buttons allowing the salesperson to go wherever the customer's interests are. With diaphanous views and the ability to strip away one layer of the product at a time. It's truly amazing.
5. Giveaways
I learned many years ago that the impact of specialty giveaways can be greatly enhanced if you can tie the item to a primary product or service benefit. If your product is faster or more flexible, pick something that bends or emphasizes speed.
Giveaways are often selected according to the sales manager's personal preferences or prejudices. Everyone would like a nice ball cap or pen because Mr. Bigshot wants one, right? Better stick to emphasizing key points; you can't go wrong even if the giveaway seems hokey or impractical. (Tradeshow booth visitors aren't looking for practicality. They're trying to remember why they should care about your product or service.)
6. Customer contests
These are popular and fairly obvious, but they really do give booth staffers a meaningful task that aids conversation. "Have you signed up for our free gift? Here, let me get you started." Who knows where the conversation might go from there?
In my experience, it's better to give away less expensive items several times each day than one gigantic item at the end of the show. This makes more people happy. Besides, if the gift is too valuable, the winner may not be able to accept it.
7. Sales rep contests
There are numerous things you can do to make things interesting for your sales staff during a show by creating competitions. Have them fill out "new contact" forms for qualified prospects they've never met. The winner gets dinner for two at a fancy restaurant. This is especially good because sales reps naturally gravitate to persons they already know and tend to fill up their booth time talking to people they see all the time. Kind of defeats the whole purpose of tradeshows, doesn't it?
8. Customer audits
Salespeople know how to conduct customer needs analyses, and they enjoy doing this. So make their assignment filling out a simple form for every "real one" that comes in the booth. Even if you don't like the idea of awarding prizes for turning in the most forms, it's still a satisfying task and it makes the salesperson feel like he or she is doing something of value.
9. Product research
Our many research firm readers will jump all over this one, but you really can use tradeshows to gauge market opinion about new products and services. Provide a standard form, and require booth staff members to fill it out as completely as possible for each customer or prospect. Tabulate the results after the show and see if you've gained some significant, new insight. Then share the results with all sales reps, including those not at the show.
10. Literature requests
Create a form allowing booth staffers to fulfill customer literature requests by checking boxes and easily transfer ship-to information by swiping name badges or stapling business cards. Then have someone back at Headquarters ready to follow through quickly so that the requested information arrives home about the same time the customer does.
There are many other activities you can use to keep salespeople productively involved during tradeshows. Use your imagination.
I like to think of it as an exercise in herding cats. Works a lot better if you bring some catnip.