Sink or Swim at Your Tradeshow

As I mentioned the other day, I attended a tradeshow last week. Now, most tradeshows are arranged so that you can look out over the floor and see a bunch of vendors at the same time. This means your (potential) customers or competitors can watch you; and you can watch them. Just like a predator can tell that its prey is weak, others at the tradeshow will be able to tell whether you’ll sink or swim. How you perform at tradeshow is indicative of how you run your business. I said in my last post that with everyone offering virtually the same product will make price easily the defining factor that separates you from your competition. But it’s really service that should be the big indicator. Taking it even further, in a word, what makes you a winner or a loser in business—or sports; or music; or life—is preparation.

When you show up to a trade show do you have all of your materials? Do you have samples or a demonstration model? Do you know your new products cold? If not, you’re in trouble. Someone will surely ask what makes the ’08 version better than the previous. Or they will think your spiel is great, but if only they could try one or take one with them to show the person who makes the decisions. If people stop by and you don’t have even some literature to show them, you’re just plain out of luck.

On Friday, everyone I met was knowledgeable about their product. That’s obviously a minimum requirement. Past that, there were some people who had a table full of samples; some who had a stack of catalogs and other information; some who had a big presentation setup. In a few cases, the company’s representative had all of these things. I bumped into many of my suppliers and it was easy to tell which ones would get an increase in business from me.

I’ve had one supplier that’s gone through the fire to get one of my jobs done and make my client happy. He was there. And you can bet he was prepared. We’ll call him “Adam;” because that’s his name. My coworker, Traci, came in with me to check out Adam’s setup. He had a giant presentation board with multiple samples of everything his company makes. And when Traci wanted to know if Adam made headphone clips, he filled her hands with samples for her to use. Adam knows it’s a two-for. If he’s prepared and does an excellent job, Traci and I will work with him again. But he also knows if Traci and I are knowledgeable and have samples of his product, we’ll get him even more business because we’ll be prepared.

So the next time you need to go to a tradeshow or send someone to a tradeshow, remember that you can’t fool people if you’re unprepared. Alex Rodriguez couldn’t succeed in the playoffs if he didn’t go to batting practice. And you can’t succeed in business if you aren’t prepared.

Insights From A Trade Show

On Friday I attended a trade show for those of us in the promotional products industry. It was here in Indianapolis, actually just a stone’s throw away from PDA. My fellow colleagues and I headed over, put on the obligatory name tag and began to circulate. Below are the take home messages from my latest trade show experience:

• Hosting a trade show in rooms of a hotel is incredibly aggravating. The rooms are too small to allow adequate flow in, around, and out of the set up.
• The promotional products industry is full of copy cats. Everyone seems to offer the same product, making the only thing that differentiates one company from another is price or service. Some clients will choose price, but in my experience service should be the clear winner. There isn’t enough money in the world to make you look good when you deliver an empty promise of a promotional product the day after an event.
• Despite what it seems like, there is more to the success of a promotion than just buying pens. There are lots of options; you just have to make sure your supplier isn’t lazy and will work to find the right solution for you. For example, there are lots of new and innovative products and ways of making products that might work for you. It just might be worth it for you to spend the extra x% and get your product sublimated.
• The trend in 2008, as I’ve mentioned before, is green promotional products. Pens made out of corn, travel mugs made out of potatoes, tote bags made with organic cotton, 100% biodegradable plastic Frisbees; eco is everywhere this year. I saw each of these items at the show on Friday and even got to take a few of them back to the office. Think about going green so that you’re seen as a leader in your industry and not just the next guy to jump on the bandwagon. You’ll then be able to say, you were green before green was cool.