Most businesses take a stand at an exhibition and cock it up – fact.
Quite often, they don’t even know they’ve cocked it up, but trust me, lots of business owners have been to an exhibition and have come away disappointed with the results – either immediately or, more likely, when they look back two months down the line and realise that they haven’t had the sales that the post-expo euphoria led them to believe were coming their way.
My team and I have done over 80 separate expos and shows over the last ten years and we’ve learned a lot about what works and what doesn’t. Rather than give you a long, dry article that preaches about how to exhibit, here are 5 and a half warning signs of a less than successful exhibition…
1. You’ve spent over a week designing your stand…
The graphics on your stand will only make a 3.5 % difference to the success of the show. The other 96.5 % is down to something else, whether that’s your people, your processes or your follow up, so your preparation time should be spent with that ratio in mind.
Now, whilst it’s almost true that your stand doesn’t matter, it still does account for that 3.5%, so you want it to be bold and different. However, when you’re designing your stand (or are briefing the person who will!), it’s important not to forget that once it’s up and full of people, all you will actually see is the top 80cm, because the rest will be hidden by bodies and furniture.
2. There are only two of you in the car…
A big mistake people often make when exhibiting is that they don’t do their numbers. If you’ve got a two day show and its organisers have told you that 10,000 people are expected to attend then fag packet maths tells you that there’s going to be 5,000 people there each day. So, if the show is open for 7 hours a day then, dividing 5,000 by 7, you’ll have 714 people per hour coming past your stand, assuming an even flow of course– that’s 12 people per minute.
But people don’t do these calculations and so they don’t realise how many staff they need to have on their stand in order to be able to talk to a large amount of people.
They go undermanned, with two or three staff, and throw away a lot of the benefit of being at the show at all because they simply don’t have the manpower. If those two or three staff can only have a 5 minute conversation with 36 people an hour, then that’s only 252 delegates who talk to your people per day. That means, then, that there are 4748 delegates at the show who you haven’t spoken to – and you can bet that there are some sales in those!
If it’s a big show then you’ll want to hire some promo staff – this is a big thing. Promo staff will cost you around £150 -£200 a day, which is really cheap compared to the cost of the exhibition, but that comes down to knowing your numbers again.
When our audience is predominantly male, I’ve always found that attractive women, who are over the age of 25 and are dressed smartly in jeans and a white blouse work best – they’re not threatening, they’re not sexy, but you’d like to talk to them!
3. You’re talking to absolutely everyone…
Not everyone who’s attending the exhibition will want what you’ve got. Obviously, if you’ve got the market part of your Market, Message, Media right then a large percentage of them should, but there will of course be people who aren’t right to become your customer. It’s up to you to filter them out, though.
This is where hiring promo staff comes into play, again, as their job will be to disqualify people. Give them two or three questions, in the morning brief, which they should ask everyone they talk to, the purpose being to see if they’re people who are worth a five minute conversation with one of your team.
So, at the EC, we would ask – “Do you own a business?” If they answered no, then we’d give them a big smile and tell them to have a nice day. If they answer yes, then we might then go on to ask whether they currently have any help with their marketing. If not, then we’ll ask whether they’re looking to grow next year. If the answer is yes then ding ding! They’re through to the next round and they get to talk to Mike.
Now, Mike can have one of his 36 chats – at least it’s with someone he knows is looking for what we’ve got.
This is all about acquiring quality leads. Something I learned a long time ago, after we’d come back from a franchise show, was that it really is a case of quality over quantity when it comes to exhibition leads. We came back with loads of leads, which turned out to be a disaster – we couldn’t follow up with 300 leads in anywhere near the same way that we could follow up with 24. Now, we focus on getting really high quality leads. Using the disqualification process we might only get 24, but at least we know that half of them are hot to trot.
4. You’ve got no plan…
The second biggest success factor when it comes to exhibiting, the first being the people on your stand, is your follow up once the mania of the show has died down.
Mastermind member James Wilson pioneered a great strategy for following up at expos. At one particular show, James was able to get a list of delegates before the show itself. He then looked through that list, identified the people that he wanted to have a conversation with and got in touch with them to ask their favourite chocolate bar, telling them that he’d have one waiting for them at his stand.
This is a great example of really working this whole disqualification process through. That’s quite an unusual situation, though, to be given the delegate list beforehand, so you have to do other things – which is why you need your promo staff to disqualify.
5. You’ve given out all of your business cards, and haven’t gotten any in return…
Don’t give out your business cards or literature, or at least don’t give it out willy nilly. Focus, instead, on collecting the information of people who you want to do business with.
Don’t kid yourself that when you give them something they’re going to do something with it – if you think they’re going to call you then you’re in La La Land.
If you’ve qualified them, then you want their contact details.
A system that we’ve implemented at the EC is, when collecting leads using forms on clipboards, we use a simple, but effective, code. After we’ve filled in the form, we write one of the following at the bottom of the page –
RHLMC – Red Hot Lead Must Call
GSL – Good Strong Lead (You’re going to do stuff with them, but they’re not as important as the red hot leads.)
SS – So So (Probably nothing will come of it but we’ll stick them in the funnel and see.)
WOT – Waste Of Time (You got stuck in a conversation with someone and the only way to get out of it was to take their details.)
…and finally…
51/2. You’ve got no chocolate…
If you really want to suck people into your stand then a massive goldfish bowl of Quality Street or Roses works really well, but you need to set it back on your stand.
If you have it at the front then you will just get loads of people eating your chocolate, rather than talking to you.
It’s fairly crude and it’s not disqualifying people, but it does act as the best broad bait to attract people to your stand.
