According to RAE, Success (from the Latin "exitus", exit) is the happy result of a business or performance. Well, it doesn't seem much to me. I want your next fair to be the best, a turning point, absolutely unforgettable! And in order to achieve it, I invite you to:
1. Set your goals
- Alice: Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?
- The Cheshire Cat: That depends a good deal on where you want to get to.
- Alice: I don't much care where.
- The Cheshire Cat: Then it doesn't much matter which way you go.Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland
What starts well, ends well! Setting your goals is essential in order to reach them. If we don't set some goals and hope to achieve them, maybe it's because:
- we settle for any goal and we don't care about each
- we got hit in the head and got stupid
Here we have compiled some tricks in order to set goals for your next trade show.
2. Make your team participate
The best way to make your team help you achieving your goals is to make them feel part of it.
Your sales team is a fundamental part of the fair, and not listening to their opinions is, to say the least, a recklessness.
You can find some ideas regarding this topic in this post: Motivate your sales team. They're essential to achieve your goals.
3. Strategy is the way
Let's get down to work, and prepare a concrete strategy that will allow us to reach each specific goal. Let's write it all down, every step we need to take in order to achieve success.
The only part where "success appears before "work" is in the dictionary Vidal Sasoon
If having goals is your goal, then strategy is the way. Strategy is the roadmap that we must follow with the goals in mind.
4. And... how much will it cost me?
Setting a budget is essential for getting an adequate ROI (Return On Investment) on our trade shows.
The exercise of defining the budget should help us quantifying the return of the fair.
We should always invest with our minds set on the return we want to obtain from such investment.
5. Previous administrative arrangements
From the selection of the space at the fair to the necessary permissions to exhibit, make a check list with all the steps you must take and a calendar, so that you don't run out of time!
6. The stand deserves a chapter for itself!
How can you choose the perfect stand for your next trade show or event? Well, that's our speciality: we manage more than 3,000 stands per month, and we will be delighted to get you the best possible booth for your upcoming fair: How to get the right booth design.
7. Commercial tasks before the show
A good pre-tradeshow management is essential if you want to get the right results.
Therefore, before the fair, it is important to:
- send invitations by email
- notify all customers of the location of the booth and the innovations we'll be presenting
- give them a concrete reason to stop by the stand
- personally call large accounts
- Are you coming to the fair? Seeing you again is one of the reasons to come back
8. And on the first day of the event...
I love this Chinese proverb:
A Man Without a Smiling Face Should Never Open a Shop
Apply this saying at the fair! You are the host. Your booth is your house, your visitors your guests, treat them good!
Receiving visitors reluctantly, sitting at your booth, commenting on some soccer match with your teammates, is like receiving your home visitors in underpants while watching TV: it doesn't look good.
The attitude is the mental position that leads you to success; therefore, your attitude at the fair must be winning and it requires concentration.
9. The fair doesn't end when the stand is disassembled
The event is over, we know it, you feel exhausted and you need some resting. However, you have generated many new business opportunities and you must make a proper follow up.
Some things you really must do:
- Send emails thanking your visitors for stoping by;
- Make calls with concrete business responses;
- Send an email with some booth pictures, reinforcing the novelties that were presented;
- Cite us for next year, ...
10. Now: conclusions and analysis
We have defined our goals, motivated our team, built a strategy and implemented it... we have exhibited at the fair, left our skin and heart in it, now we must find out if it was profitable!
Reflect on how the fair went and decide if you should exhibit again; this is the right moment to decide, not in 6 months, when the next edition is about to happen. Keep in mind that the only thing that justifies participating in a fair is:
- that exhibiting in it is profitable
- that it hasn't been so profitable because we made some mistakes in the planning or execution
With this exercise, you'll surely find some mistakes: write them down and be creative at your next fairs, committing new mistakes (but not the same!).
I hope these tips help you making your next fair successful and, if you think we can help you, please let us know: we are at your disposal!