trade show - Wilson Printing USA

Now it is the day of the home show, are you ready? The following is a final checklist for your home show booth:

1. Neatness counts. Make sure your display is organized and tidy; customers will be turned off by messiness or by having to do too much searching to find what they want. Have all your prices clearly marked.

2) Have a stock of promotion items that you can use as giveaways at your booth. Small items that people can take away and use (while being reminded about your business) are best. Wilson Printing has catalogs with thousands of give away trinkets everything from coffee mugs, pens and note pads to even golf balls, you name it we can get it printed with your logo on it. Be sure you place these items in a location where people will have to walk into or through your trade show display to get them.

3) A prize draw or contest is a great way to collect contact information from booth visitors. You can give away promotion items to encourage people to participate.

4) Plenty of full color product brochures, pamphlets and booklets to hand out. Custom designed sales materials are better than factory supplied materials because you want to brand your company not necessarily the manufacture. Wilson Printing USA can design professional brochures and pamphlets for your business that will help you sell more products and services.

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5) Make it easy for booth visitors to get information. Use signs in your trade show display to give information about prices, minimum orders, shipping costs, or any other basic information they might need to know in order to save them the trouble of having to wait to ask when you’re not busy with another potential customer. Wilson Printing USA can help you with any size banners and signs you will need for your booth.

6) Be ready to do business. Be sure you have a good supply of order forms, pens, credit card slips, or anything else you need to conduct sales and keep track of people’s orders.

7) Have your trade show booth manned at all times. Work out the schedule and make sure all employees have a copy. Someone has to be there to greet browsers, engage them in conversation, and take their questions. If you can’t be there every minute the trade show is open, you’ll need to have at least one other person help man your booth.

8) Follow up promptly. Who is responsible for following up with leads from the show? Put all leads from show on an excel spreadsheet so they are in one place. The faster you follow up, the more your business will stand out from the rest and the more business you will get. Wilson printing USA can help you with turn key, follow up direct mail pieces. Some trade shows will give you a list of attendees. If you can get the list, then get it. Sending a follow up mailer is extremely effective.

9) Incentivize your employees. Often they will be on their feet all day, sometimes working overtime. What incentive will motive them? Is it a bonus, time off, a night on the town? It is important to tie the incentive to a specific sales or production target. The idea is to make it fun and reward them for their production at the show.

Home shows and trade shows usually represent a big investment of your time and money. Are you getting enough business from your participation in home shows or trade shows to justify the amount of time and money you invest in them?

There are lots of ways to improve the success of your trade show participation, for instance, you can increase your returns from buying a snazzy display or by offering product discounts and employee incentives. But many of home shows and trade shows improvement methods come with hefty price tags.

The follow are 20 ideas you can use to pump up your trade show sales performance without breaking the bank:

1. Research the trade show before you commit:

Does it attract a large number of people from your target audience?
What type of audience does the show attract?
How are the organizers promoting the show?

This seems pretty basic, but the more information you can get about the show in advance will help you tailor your display and offers to the attendees.

2. Give yourself enough time – planning and preparation for a major trade show can take four to six months, for a home show or small trade show you can pull together in four to six weeks if you have a plan:

What types of full color printed sales flyers, brochures and catalogs do you need for the show?
Do any of your printed sales materials need to be updated?
Do the people going to the show need business cards?
Do any of the panels in your booth need updated?
What type of promotional products do you need for giveaways?

Looking at this in advance will save you last minute headaches and stress.

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3. Send e-mail reminders to loyal customers and strong prospects before the show, urging them to stop by your booth. The more self-promotion you do in advance, the better.

4. Define and write down your goals and objectives for your home show participation. Goals give you something to shoot for and without them you have no direction.

5. Share these goals and objectives with your booth staff. They can’t help you achieve your goals and objectives if they do not know what they are.

6. Make sure you have enough manpower to work the booth. Ask organizers what the peak days and times are for traffic. You do not want hundreds of prospects walking by and you have one or two people in your booth.

7. Give each person you have manning your booth a specific role, with job expectations clearly spelled out. It is also a good idea to give each person a specific quota.

8. Drill the traffic flow through the booth; everything from how to greet people, polite manners, appropriate body language and how to get a person interested in your product or service. Manners and body language are extremely important. Have you ever walked past a company’s booth and the personnel in the booth are sitting there slouched, looking bored and totally uninterested in what’s going on around them. What kind of impression does this give of your business? Are people more likely to stop or walk by?

9. Take the time to familiarize your team with the lead collection technology you’ll be using before the trade show. Is it a simple enter to win fish bowl? What type of information do you want to get from prospects?

10. Make sure at least some of the people going to the show are prepared to answer technical questions. (This is part of step 8)

11. Send friendly, personable people with a genuine enthusiasm for your company, its products and its services. These may not be your most senior people; make your choices based on effectiveness, not seniority.

12. Check in with your team throughout the trade show to assess performance, reward positive behaviors, and stop negative trends before they get out of hand.

13. Establish a dress code for your staffers: They’ll look more professional and act as better ambassadors for your company.

14. Don’t forget the shoes, hair, and accessories: people notice the details.

15. Two words: Breath Mints. I don’t think I need to say more on this.

16. Drill asking qualifying questions with your booth staffers. The more information and the better you qualify the prospects, the better your returns will be.

17. Product demonstrations are a great way to draw a crowd. Make sure your team knows how to give an effective, engaging presentation by having them practice before the trade show.

18. If you are sponsoring entertainment, a speaker, or other event, make sure your team knows what to do during this time. From working the crowd to collecting leads, there’s plenty they should be doing to promote your company’s name and image.

19. Put someone in charge of the booth. This person is the “go-to” person to act as a liaison for trade shows management. The better your relationship with management is, the better your show experience will be.

20. Establish a follow up protocol for hot leads, promising prospects, and likely customers. Use this protocol to turn leads into sales.