Only One Chance For First Impression at Expos

Part 5 of 6
You only get one chance to make a good first impression. Same holds true when you are at the trade show. You only have a few seconds to attract someone to your booth. The following tips may seem obvious, but from my experience at the expos, they are often overlooked.

The people who are staffing your space should dress as they would for any other business situation. Their clothes and footwear should be appropriate, no jeans or tennis shoes, and be neat and wrinkle-free.

Staff should be approachable and friendly. Standing with arms crossed with a scowl on their face won’t make visitors feel welcome and will give the impression that you don’t even want to be there.

The purpose of being at the trade show is to gather leads and interact with the visitors to the event. That means that the staff isn’t on the cell phone, texting, “tweeting”, eating, conversing with other staff, or doing anything else but greeting visitors.

They should greet the visitor with a smile and a good solid handshake. Maintaining consistent eye contact shows you are interested in the visitor and what they have to say.

This isn’t a selling opportunity so staff should not sell your products or services to the attendees. Their job is to simply answer questions from the visitor and determine if they are a potential customer. You could have a card or form in the display that the visitor could fill out requesting a sales person to contact them after the show or the staff person could make note of the level of interest of the visitor on the back of one of their business cards.

Don’t let staff crowd your exhibit. Have them stand just outside its boundary or a bit in the aisle so as not to block the display.

Next post: Show’s over. Now what do you do as follow-up?