May 7, 2010
How Not To Do A Trade Show
How Not To Do A Trade Show Cliff Ennico cennico@legalcareer.com There have been entire books written on how to survive your first trade show. My current two favorites are by marketing expert Steve Miller: #147;How to Get the Most Out of Trade Shows#148; and #147;How to Design a #145;Wow!#146; Trade Show Booth Without Spending a Fortune#148;, both of which should cost you less than $25.00 at your favorite bookstore. Sometimes, though, you can sweat the details of your trade show booth so much that you lose sight of the more important stuff. At a recent trade show I attended, one particular booth was generating huge crowds. The sponsor, an e-commerce company, had obviously spent a good part of their investors#146; money in reserving one of the best and most visible locations on the trade show floor, with lots of foot traffic. The exhibit was a knockout #150; a full scale replica of a beachcomber#146;s hut, surrounded by what looked like about 10 yards of trucked-in sand and imitation palm trees (with coconuts, no less). The staff of about 10 were all dressed in Hawaiian shirts and shorts (for the guys) and hula outfits (for the ladies). Most of the staff were nubile young men and women with buff figures who, it seemed, had been recruited from a modeling agency. The theme of the booth screamed at you: #147;if you use our service we make life really easy for you, so easy you can retire to Tahiti and forget you even run a business.#148; The booth was a winner, don#146;t you think? It certainly impressed the people running the trade show, who gave the booth its #147;best design#148; and #147;best overall effect#148; awards. And yet . . .Like a lot of folks, I was very impressed by the booth, and wanted to learn more about this company. I had to stand in a line five people deep to even get close to one of the staff. When I did, she said, in her best Valley Girl accent, #147;dude, you wanna portable fan?#148; (they were giving out portable fans, again a tie-in to the Tahiti image). I asked this young lady about the company and what it did, expecting to hear an #147;elevator pitch#148; about the company, its products and services. Instead, the lady stared at me blankly, and said coldly #147;I#146;m sorry, sir, I#146;m just working the booth. You have to speak to one of our engineers#148;. She pointed to one of the young men in the Hawaiian shirts, and went back to handing out portable fans. Strike One. I approached the engineer, who was sitting at a laptop computer explaining something really technical to a few people. All I could hear was #147;implementation#148;, #147;e-commerce solution,#148; #147;asynchronous#148;, and a few other words. When I finally got through to this fellow, I told him I was writing a column for small business owners and asked him to explain, in simple English, what his company#146;s service was all about. He launched again into his technical spiel about #147;unidimensional focus#148;. Strike Two. Now, I#146;m a forgiving guy. I work with a lot of tech companies, and sometimes you just have to see their product in action to really understand what it does and how it adds value to people#146;s lives. So I interrupted his spiel, and asked him to show me on the PC what it does. He looked at me with a little blush, and said, #147;I can#146;t do that right now. Our T-1 lines here aren#146;t very good, and we can#146;t get through to our Website.#148; Strike Three. I walked away, portable fan in hand. Now, here was a company that did everything #147;by the book#148; when it came to setting up a #147;must see#148; trade booth. Yet they totally blew the follow-up. Here are some lessons this company should have learned: your booth should be eye-catching, but the focus should be 100% on explaining to people what your products and services are all about, and how they improve people#146;s lives; always use your own employees to run the booth; if you must use #147;mannequins#148; or hired actors, train them in your company#146;s message so that they can communicate it; your staff should always be accessible, no matter how big the crowd; always have marketing people on hand (rather than engineers) to explain your product or service; and if you are demonstrating your product or service at the booth, make 100% sure the bloody thing works. Cliff Ennico ( cennico@legalcareer.com ) is a syndicated columnist, author and host of the PBS television series 'Money Hunt'. This column is no substitute for legal, tax or financial advice, which can be furnished only by a qualified professional licensed in your state. To find out more about Cliff Ennico and other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit our Web page at www.creators.com . COPYRIGHT 2004 CLIFFORD R. ENNICO. DISTRIBUTED BY CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC. Permission granted for use on DrLaura.com

Posted by Staff at 1:45 AM