Making Trade Shows Work – Part 3

by | Jan 7, 2019 | More business

In our last article we discussed the ways you might make visiting your stand irresistible to the people, the target market, you want to attract. And it’s best to aim to attract genuine, quality prospects if you can; better to have few visitors who are the type of prospect for your offerings rather than huge numbers of visitors who have no real interest in your product or service.

Now, when you get them to your stand you have three options depending on who they are and what you want to do with them.

 

  1. They are existing clients and you want to renew acquaintances and show them your latest offerings- If that’s what you have in mind you’ve wasted your money because you have their details and you could do that without having to go to the expense of exhibiting at a trade show. (You can, of course, have some hospitality arrangements set up somewhere for clients but not at your stand. The stand is for winning business.)

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  1. They look like potential purchasers of your products and services so you want to sell them at the stand- Nope, that’s not a great idea either. You’ll find that you can waste lots of time trying to sell wood ducks and people filling in time whilst potential purchasers walk past and don’t stop because you’ve got your hands full with timewasters.
  2. They are potential purchasers of your products and services so you want to get their details for post-show follow up- And that’s the best approach. What you need to do is qualify them by “chatting them up”, finding out their problems, reminding them of those problems and exacerbating them so you can tantalise them with the promise of a solution. You do that so well and agree to follow them up after the show so they give you their business card. That evening you send them a smidgen of interesting information with an email, or better still a letter, letting them know you’ll be in touch.

More on how to make this happen in our next article.

If you missed the first two instalments, you can find them at Part 1 and Part 2.