Small Business Builder: Trade Show Tips, Pt. I

Aug. 8, 2001 -- Booths and tables at trade shows, conventions, and other events offer great opportunities for networking, scoping out the competition, and showing off your high-dollar display panels.

In the bustle of making travel arrangements, printing fliers, gathering pretty pictures for the backdrop, and buying a new power suit for yourself, it's easy to lose sight of why you're going in the first place — to make sales and win new customers … not just any customers, but the kind you'll want to keep.

The trade-show success cycle has 12 parts: planning, preparing, making advance contact, staffing, setting up, attracting people to your display, making a good impression, engaging them once they show up, making friends, making sales, cleaning up, and following up.

(The suggestions given below apply chiefly to trade shows; the principles apply, on a smaller scale, to less elaborate events, such as local half-day meetings.)

Power Up With a Master Plan

"If you have a good plan, everything else falls into place." That's one of the things people always say and nobody believes, but it's true. Make one all-purpose "master plan" (you'll modify it with experience) and one event-specific plan, which will fill in the blanks on your master plan.

Plan backward from the event. A partial schedule for a May 3 regional conference might look like this:

May 1 — Final briefing.

April 23 — Send out second pre-event letter.

April 9 — Send out first pre-event letter.

April 1 — Develop mailing list of attendees you want to contact in advance.

March 1 — Brief your company's representatives.

Feb. 15 — Check supplies and equipment; arrange for necessary repairs, reprints, preparation of new materials.

Jan. 15 — Establish strategy, arrange for design and production of new brochures, giveaways, and other materials.

Jan. 1 — Start planning your strategy; brainstorm ideas for creating traffic; plan for ancillary marketing.

As soon as possible — Begin researching other attendees, location; decide who will attend; arrange for travel, lodging, courtesy suite, company-hosted event, etc.

In actual practice, these activities are often compressed into a week or two, but ideally they'll begin much earlier, especially for major industry events. If you want to advertise in or submit a feature story to a quarterly publication, for example, you might discover that you've missed the deadline by a couple of months.

Quack a Smile

QUESTION: Should we buy (or rent) fancy (and pricey) display panels?

You don't want to be invisible or look shabby. Simplicity, distinction, and a modicum of comfort are the necessities. Beyond that, everything depends on your product. An electric-blue drape behind you and a 10-foot rubber duck scrounged from a bath-and-kitchen retailer might make just the statement you want and cost you next to nothing.

QUESTION: Who should represent us? Should we send just our top salespeople?

It depends. Naturally location and duration make a difference, but the key factor might be the crowd. How much traffic do you anticipate? Even when attendance is light, try to send at least three people — one serious salesperson, someone to chat with visitors while the salesperson is engaged, and a third person to troubleshoot, run errands, snag lunch, and provide backup.

Everyone you send should reflect well on your company. Anyone who's gregarious and smiling, who's a good listener, and who understands and believes in your enterprise — whether that person is a file clerk or the CFO — is an excellent choice. Essential: Someone who has all those traits and can close a sale or clinch a relationship, plus a quick, observant type to circulate, direct visitors your way, and take notes.

Next: Trade-show savvy: Doodads, devices, and diligence

An editor since the age of 6, when she returned a love letter with corrections marked in red, Mary Campbell founded Zero Gravity in 1984 to provide writing, editing and marketing services. Small Business Builder is published on Wednesdays.