Mash Media chairman Julian Agostini offers some thoughts on shaping up to help get your exhibitors in the best form possible for showtime:
Have you ever joined a club and then not used the membership?
Don’t beat yourself up; this seems to be quite a common trait. Certainly, most people I know have done it and I’m a serial offender.
But whose fault is it and why don’t we learn from our previous mistakes of signing up in the first place?
A gym membership is the classic example. We all join up with the best intentions but soon days, weeks and eventually months drift past without a single visit, or so occasional that it’s a pointless exercise (see what I’ve done there!).
At this point, reality kicks in that this isn’t going to be part of your schedule and the investment has been wasted.
So, what happens next?
Futile attempts to extricate oneself from the contract which ends in ‘the computer says no’ and frustration all round but the rules of engagement were clear so there is no-one else to blame… or is there?
The gym representative will recite that all the facilities are available for you all year; we can’t make you attend. This is true of course but, with this attitude, everyone loses because the member is never coming back, won’t have a good word to say and will feel ripped off, even though that’s not technically the case.
So what’s the alternative?
Here’s a quick, ‘how to keep a member’ guide:
- Identify what the member most wants to achieve from joining at the outset
- Set out a programme for them to follow
- Ensure regular check ups to monitor progress; reset each time if nothing achieved
- You must get them to the gym so if they are not attending, give them an incentive; free coffee, free tuition, special offer on a particular item, masterclass in what they wanted to achieve etc.
- Upgrade the membership for a week if they bring a guest to look around
- One month extra membership if they use the gym 15 times in a month.
Add in here, your own ideas but the principle is straightforward. To keep the membership for the following year, the member must use the gym… if they don’t, they are not coming back.
The same principle applies to exhibitors.
An exhibitor signs up for a show in good faith. The organiser fulfils all the promises of delivering a fantastic show and a relevant audience. What could go wrong?
Well this is a situation where you can lead a horse to water but your job is not done… you have to make them drink if you want to re-book.
Telling a disgruntled exhibitor, after the event, that all the right buyers were in the room; that their competitors had a very good show, that re-book is strong and testimonials are flying in is all a waste of time. You know it, they know it… we all know it; it’s irrelevant whose fault it is, they’re not coming back.
Exhibitions are a simple and powerful solution; would you like to be in the same room as x000 of your buyers for a couple of days? Who says no to that?
But it only works if the exhibitors engage and that can often be the trickiest part and, worst of all, the part where the organiser has no control…or do they?
What can an organiser do to ensure that an exhibitors don’t spend the week ‘picking their noses’?
Some ideas:
- Use a show app to create meetings with pre-reg. Employ an exhibitor liaison officer to go through objectives with every client
- Create an objectives form for each client which is signed off before the show
- Incentivise the completion of this form and make sure that objectives are tangible and realistic
- Make sure each exhibitor has a realistic daily target
- Hold an exhibitor meeting at the end of each day or host a breakfast each morning
- Ensure your staff are genuinely checking on progress throughout the show; ‘how’s it going?’ and a nod isn’t enough.
- If it’s not working, you may have to take a couple of visitors over to an exhibitor’s stand to prove that the audience they want is in the room
I’m sure there are a multitude of more sensible ideas that you can implement. Ultimately, you can’t make the sales for your exhibitors but just delivering the audience to the door will not be enough for a percentage of them. You know this from the outset, so you either let them fail and blame you or help facilitate engagement. A little uncomfortable but easier than finding a whole set of replacement exhibitors each year.
There is, after all, an art to exhibiting and a deep well of experience to draw from. Just as gym-goers can hire personal trainers or join a class, or even get a digitalised programme of guidance, so trade show exhibitors can not only be led to water, but handed a water bottle to make it far easier to drink deeply from that spring of potential leads and buyers. So shape up for that membership, whether it be for your local gym or for your visit to that professional community on the show floor – and remember, if the spirit or flesh is unwilling, there is plenty of help available, provided organisers don’t just sit on the sidelines but get involved and up the pace. We all stand to gain when we do get in shape for showtime.
Source: www.exhibitionworld.co.uk
Comments are closed.