Let me ask you one important question: do your people know how to prepare, carry out and track a successful trade fair participation?
You can easily compare your participation at a trade fair with a football match: without proper preparation and training you will lose. What do we learn from football?
We have to focus not only on stand equipment but also on our clients. Who do we want to meet? How do we make them visit the trade fair? Which products do we want to present?
Goal
Participating at a trade fair is expensive. To be worth the effort we need to define a specific goal: more sales, new leads, etc.
Selection of the squad
The decision about personnel on site depends a lot of your defined goal. There will be no substitutes. Choose your people carefully.
Training
Many matches are decided on standard situations. You can train for these. Here are a few suggestions:
„Phone Partys“, so you can invite your clients to the trade fair
Aggressive selling tactics in all areas on other events
Maintaining contact – you are allowed to talk to your clients even though they have not checked “OK” for the privacy policy yet
Line-up
Discuss the defined goals and what has to be done to achieve them. Distribute roles and responsibilities.
Kick off
The trade fair has officially started. Now it’s time to talk to people, analyze situations, present solutions and reach agreements.
Half-time
The first day is over. What was good or bad, what do you have to pay attention to? Do you need to redistribute roles?
Extra time
On the afternoon of the last day the commitment of the personnel on site often decreases. Please take a moment to put yourself in your client’s shoes: maybe they could only come now and would like to take advantage of the remaining time to have some good conversations. Offer them the chance to do so!
Analysis
Afterwards, you have to analyze the conversations you had. This prepares your sales team to work through the contact list.
Next match
You start preparing for the next trade fair.
"It is interesting how you can explain and compare nearly everything with football. The big difference is this: in football it is all about goals and points – in sales it is about everything"
