{"id":229,"date":"2012-11-08T23:50:17","date_gmt":"2012-11-08T23:50:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.brandme.com.au\/blog\/?p=229"},"modified":"2013-01-30T02:44:23","modified_gmt":"2013-01-30T02:44:23","slug":"trade-show-boot-camp","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.brandme.com.au\/blog\/2012\/11\/trade-show-boot-camp\/","title":{"rendered":"Trade Show Boot Camp"},"content":{"rendered":"

Trade shows can be profitable, educational and entertaining, but trade show survival is vastly different than your routine around the office. Here are some tips to make the trade show experience valuable and pain-free as possible.<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Prepare<\/strong> as much as you can before you leave for the show. Have your talking points and schedule laid out for you to reduce hassles.<\/li>\n
  2. Prepare the one \u201cengaging\u201d question<\/strong> for your booth attendees. \u201cAre you enjoying the show?\u201d is OK, but trite. \u201cHave you seen our latest promotion?\u201d is better.<\/li>\n
  3. Leave your new shoes at home<\/strong>. Ah, but you bought new shoes for the show. Leave them. Most large trade shows are housed in convention centers or other airplane hangers where you can expect to be walking on lightly padded concrete. Plus, you might be standing all day. Wear layered clothing, the hall heats up later in the day.<\/li>\n
  4. Try not to drink, sit or eat in the booth<\/strong>. It\u2019s hard to believe, because there may be 100,000 people at the show, but you really are on display all day. If it\u2019s time for lunch, leave the booth and see the rest of the show, but try not to leave the booth unattended.<\/li>\n
  5. Rotate<\/strong> booth personnel. No matter how friendly, or outgoing your staff is, it\u2019s hard to be effective as a knowledgable greeter 8 hours a day. If you don\u2019t do this kind of thing regularly, it\u2019s harder still.<\/li>\n
  6. Always be qualifying<\/strong>. From the opening greeting, you should be trying to qualify your potential customer with every question. If you\u2019re giving away promotional items, make sure you\u2019re getting valuable information in return.<\/li>\n
  7. When engaging visitors to your booth, listen<\/strong> 80% of the time, and talk 20%.<\/li>\n
  8. Set achievable goals<\/strong> for the show. If it\u2019s your first time, chalk it up to getting your feet wet, if it\u2019s trade show number 500, don\u2019t forget what you\u2019ve learned.<\/li>\n
  9. Get a few six packs of water<\/strong> and keep them in the booth. I know, you\u2019re in the middle of Sydney or Las Vegas and there\u2019s no water. But it\u2019s true. At a Las Vegas Consumer Electronics Show, you have to leave the hall to get water and then it\u2019s $5 for the small bottle. If you\u2019re talking all day, you\u2019ll likely be hoarse by the third day, so the water will come in handy.<\/li>\n
  10. While you\u2019re at it, make sure you\u2019ve got a booth \u201cfirst aid kit<\/strong>,\u201d there\u2019s never a Band Aid, a screwdriver, or a piece of rope around when you need it, and believe it or not, you might need all three at the trade show.<\/li>\n
  11. Bring your sense of humor<\/strong>–it\u2019s the stories attendees tell after hours that make for an enjoyable and successful show.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Trade shows can be profitable, educational and entertaining, but trade show survival is vastly different than your routine around the office. Here are some tips to make the trade show experience valuable and pain-free as possible. Prepare as much as you can before you leave for the show. Have your talking points and schedule laid out for you to reduce hassles. Prepare the one \u201cengaging\u201d question for your booth attendees. \u201cAre you enjoying the show?\u201d is OK, but trite. \u201cHave you seen our latest promotion?\u201d is better. Leave your new shoes at home. Ah, but you bought new shoes for the show. Leave them. Most large trade shows are housed in convention centers or other airplane hangers where you can expect to be walking on …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_s2mail":"yes","footnotes":""},"categories":[69],"tags":[75,70],"class_list":["post-229","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-trade-show-tips","tag-trade-show-advice","tag-trade-show-tips-2"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brandme.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brandme.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brandme.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brandme.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brandme.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=229"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.brandme.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brandme.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=229"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brandme.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=229"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brandme.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=229"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}