Turning exhibitions into sales opportunities

And that experience, that exposure that you have to those different types of events, because although they're all within a kind of identifiable area of activity, they must be very different.

So is there a kind of rule that when you walk onto that exhibition floor and you see some of the stands and you go, that's a brilliant stand, or, oh my words, what on earth are they doing? What are they thinking? Are there things that just kind of hit you when you walk onto the stand and you go, that's going to be great?

Yes.

There are some real signs of organizations that are going to run that stand and work that show like clockwork.

And you guys have probably seen this as well, but the sales team that gets in early familiarizes themselves with the show.

Where are the visitors going to be? Where are the delegates going to be? What parts of the show do I need to be in addition to the stand? And then they're on site and they make sure all their sales tools are working.

and are up and ready to go.

You know, the demos work.

You know, you don't want to be starting the show and opening and logging in, finding that your demo's not quite doing what it's meant to be doing.

Most important tool, that scanner.

That's all working.

They know how to use it.

And then you'll see those salespeople having that pre-show meeting.

Everybody in that team knows exactly what they're doing and what their role is and how they're going to work the stand and how they're going to integrate with other people on the stand.

So the non-salespeople, maybe that's subject matter experts or... an ambassador that they brought onto the sound, how do they link him with them? So they'll have that really important pre-show meeting and when you walk past you realise it's quite a serious meeting that you should not be interrupting.

So they start the show like that.

And then you'll see that that runs through the show as well.

Right up until the end where they'll have the debrief meeting, which is equally important, right? So talking about how that day has gone, who they've been speaking to, because, you know, your salesperson in the corner over there may have spoken to somebody that's really important and you've spoken to someone from the same organization.

You need to collaborate and connect and talk about that and refine your pitch as well.

So you've got to think about what's working and what's not working, and that can have a real impact on day two.

So just as an example, thinking about what might be a trend.

So in the school leaver market at the moment, there is a lot of discussion about employability post graduation.

So one of the questions that might come up more frequently is, well, what happens after university? How much help do I get? In terms of sourcing that job, what are your employability statistics? So if that comes up as a common thread of a question that's being asked, you then feed that back into day two and maybe you're more proactive in putting forward those kind of numbers.

So that kind of operation of a stand, that's the kind of thing I walk past and go, yeah, they're really nailing it.

Yeah, rather than the ones who turned up because they were in the pub because they're away from home for a couple of days.