Article written by Mike Timmesch from Skyline Exhibits Inc.
The difference between a good booth staffer and a bad one can make the difference between a trade show that profitably boosts your brand and sales, and a tragic waste of your company’s time and money. What can you do to ensure that you assemble a team of booth staff that will get the job done right?
To help you find and prepare a winning trade show team, here are the 10 best ideas on booth staffing that I’ve collected over the years, and now share with you:
- Choose staff who actually want to man your trade show booth and have the right attitude. Then, train your chosen team for product, company, and customer knowledge as needed.
- Your booth staffers will be more motivated when they understand clearly just how much you are investing at each show, what are the company’s goals and your goals for them at the show.
- A staffer that is able to stay focused on aisle traffic, watch attendees walking down the aisle for the right moment, and engage with them can double or triple your leads.
- Your booth team doesn’t have time to tell your entire company history. So train staffers to ask what matters most to your booth visitors and then share only the relevant part of your story.
- Tell your booth staffers it’s essential they take a minute after each visitor conversation to write down a few sentences about what that visitor said and want, before going on to the next lead.
- Spend enough time training your booth staffers to give them the chance to succeed. A half hour just before the show starts is not nearly enough. For example, can staffers all smoothly demonstrate your newest products?
- New booth staffers benefit enormously by doing practice role playing before the trade show. It gets them over their fears and engrains the training in a memorable way.
- Invest in bringing enough booth staff so they can maximise the investment you’ve already spent in booth space, trade show displays, show expenses and services, and promotions.
- Surprisingly, introverted booth staffers can outperform extroverted booth staffers, because they can be more focused on engaging attendees and may listen more to your booth visitors’ needs.
- Offer prizes and/or recognition for the staff who gather the highest quantity of qualified leads.
Your booth staffers are the ambassadors of your brand. What they say and do matters. Use these 10 tips to ensure that your staff perform at the highest level and get the most return from your trade show investment.
Will these tips help with your trade show strategy? Have you any booth staffing tips that you would like to share? Post your comments below.
