Make the Most of Your Next Trade Show September 24, 2007
By Mark Kolier
You have been chosen to represent your company at the big fall industry trade show. Congratulations, you've got booth duty! Imagine the set-up day(s) before: lugging equipment and material, long hours standing on a thinly covered cement floor and the mind-numbing presentation at the booth across the aisle.
Maybe you're wondering why your company exhibits at trade shows in the first place? It must work to some degree since they have been exhibiting for years. Or perhaps they feel that by not exhibiting, potential clients and competitors might begin to question the company's health. So while you think about your wardrobe for the conference (sensible shoes and all), the flight and hotel arrangements and breakfasts, lunches and dinners, think about what you can do in the weeks—or even months—prior to the event that can make the difference between generating quality leads versus returning home empty-handed.
Five Ways to Make the Most of Your Next Trade Show
1. Know Your Targets. Before the show, decide who your best target types will be and where they are likely to be—both in and out of the conference hall. There will be association meetings, breakfasts and after-hours events. If you see someone on the exhibition floor that you have already met outside the conference, you stand an infinitely better chance to connect at your booth.
2. Make Your List (and Check it Twice). Compile a prospect list of potential booth visitors BEFORE the conference. A list of attendees and their companies is often available several weeks prior to the event. Get it. Study it. Identify who you want to meet.
3. Send Personal Invitations to Your Booth. Create a postcard or simple letter to your prospective visitors (mail is best, but e-mail is good if you're short on time). Include a PURL (personal URL) that will drive recipients to their own unique web pages that speak to them exclusively. This is not as difficult as you may think and highly effective for connecting with prospects and measuring the reach of your effort. Invite prospects to your booth for a presentation created just for them that is pertinent to the challenges you feel they may be facing. You could also create and send a short business card DVD highlighting what will be going on at your booth during the conference and suggest setting up a meeting time.
4. Pay attention. You could be sitting next to your new hot prospect on the plane ride into the host city or sharing a cab with them on the way to the hotel. Opportunities come in many forms. Attitude will go a long way toward making something good happen. During big events in Vegas, one friend of mine starts at the front of a long taxi line and asks who is heading to the convention center and offers to pay for a shared taxi. He always meets someone new—plus he gets to cut the line without upsetting everyone else.
5. Keep Busy. When your shift in the booth is over—or before it begins—you're still "on duty." Set up meetings with prospects and vendors, attend breakfasts and luncheons, walk the floor to see what your competition is doing and find out what is new and exciting in your industry. Try hard to not be a "conference snob"—someone who tries hard to avoid eye contact while walking past your booth after strategically obscuring their name badge.
Conferences can be exhausting. But the opportunity to connect face-to-face with a few key prospects is never better. If you do it correctly you can end up with solid trove of targeted business prospects that you can mine all year long.
Mark Kolier is President of CGSM, a privately held direct-marketing agency specializing in the marketing strategy, design and production of direct mail-packages and inserts. For more information, please visit www.cgsm.com.
Sales & Marketing Management Magazine
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