Seven Things You Should NEVER Do at Your Trade Show Booth

A trade show is a tremendous opportunity to increase your exposure, acquire new leads and even close sales. But when I see the behavior of too many of the people staffing trade show booths, I wonder why the companies bother exhibiting at all.

At show after show after show, I see the same behaviors over and over again. Behaviors that cost sales. Here are seven things you and your salespeople should never do at your booth:

1. Talk on your phone
2. Work or play games on your phone, tablet or laptop
3. Eat
4. Look bored
5. Talk with each other in the booth
6. Read
7. Leave it unattended

All of these things make visitors feel unwelcome and unimportant. If you can’t be bothered to treat me with enthusiasm and respect at a trade show, why should I think you’d treat me any better as a customer?

In fact, all of these behaviors are worse than not exhibiting in the first place, because if I see any of them, I now have a negative view of your company. Which means I’m less likely to do business with you.

How can you prevent these behaviors?

1. Staff appropriately
Schedule enough people to attend the show so that everyone has ample time for breaks. And select people who are enthusiastic about going.

2. Train your staff
A trade show is a unique sales environment. Bring in an outside expert to conduct a training seminar for your people so they can make the most of it.

3. Incentivize them
Behaviors that are rewarded get repeated. So what do you want them to do? Create incentives to encourage those behaviors.

A trade show is a huge investment of time, effort and money. If you want to achieve more sales from that investment, make sure you’re staffing, training and incentivizing effectively. That way your people can sell to the visitors that were ignored at all the other booths.