Know-How Exchange : Other

I’d also agree with Peter and BARQ. Let’s face it, most trade shows are a face saving exercise where your CEO can show off in front of his competitors. Most of the visitors are spies sent in by the competition in the disguise of a consultant and the few who have a genuine interest will want to talk, see a presentation and then be sent comprehensive literature in the post or by email. They might benefit from a flyer, but it is unlikely.

Capturing the rest of the attendees does require a proactive approach and you must choose between scatter-gun (High volume, low quality all the initiative on the attendee) and the targeted approach.

If you have on person working the stand and the floor for 8 hours, and doing so aggressively, they could conceivably hand out, without discussion 6 leaflets a minute. That’s 2880 a day, and by the end of play, they will be knackered and bad tempered – not exactly the spirit of a decent brand ambassador should he / she need to man the stand! For a 2 day show you’d need approximately 6000 leaflets to give you a contingency reserve. It is my beliefs that you could avoid this back breaking effort by simply flushing the things down the loo – it would be quicker and equally effective.

The targeted approach is a bit of a misnomer, because to do it, you must target everyone you can catch in the aisles and on other stands who could be customers. I get about 50 leads for CRM by attending a Process Control Show because all the exhibitors are interested and half the visitors are sales managers in disguise, snooping around. (Look for their inability to look you in the eye!) It takes me very little effort to get them to open up about their problems and to hand over their business card.

The aim of this approach is to strive for a short, meaningful discussion with anyone who you meet (Anyone you grab really!) and terminate it with a flyer, an exchange of business cards and an offer to put more comprehensive information in the post or send it by email. Doing this, there’s no way that you can mange more than 6 contacts an hour and thus, your need for literature is for around 50 flyers and 50 of your business cards a day. Don’t hand out full literature unless you have had a qualifying chat and offer to follow up with a phone call, appointment and a demo on their site. Try to get them to visit your stand if at all possible to re-enforce their experience. Don’t sell anything apart from the opportunity for them to learn something to their benefit from you for free.

The latter approach produces real leads with a possibility of business but uses very few flyers which might be anathema to the boss! If he / she thinks that distributing thousands of things which will be thrown away and is not responsive to your arguments about targeted prospecting, then hire a stand gopher to go around all day handing out your flyers and your business card to all and sundry. It’s a waste of time, money and paper but it will keep the boss happy without tying up you when you could be having meaningful conversations.

I hope that I don’t come over as being too cynical about trade shows – you can make them work for you, but the old model is dead.

Steve Alker