Making an exhibition of yourself - the exhibitor

Further to my blog last week about making the most of your experience as a visitor to an exhibition, I promised you some top tips if you are taking a stand at a busy show.


Give people some space

When I arrived at Excel for the Business StartUp Show I felt like turning around again and going home. Bearing in mind the target audience for the show, people who, in a lot of cases are new to business, I can imagine many who did.

One bright spark among the exhibitors had the great idea of standing by the entrance with a batch of leaflets to entice new arrivals to visit their stand. Not a bad idea on its own, particularly if you haven't got a premium spot where no-one will be able to avoid you.

The trouble was that, once other stand-holders had seen this tactic, they also thought it was a great idea. By the time we arrived we had to run a gauntlet of people handing us leaflets, special offers and even free waffles before we could get into the exhibition. Anyone who has tried to walk through the busy streets of London in evening rush hour and avoid the people giving away free newspapers will understand what it was like.

To avoid the baying hordes of leaflet-thrusters, we took shelter in an empty stand the study the exhibition map and agree where we wanted to go. One over-enthusiastic exhibitor even followed us there to try to force their promotional literature on us. I perhaps had another suggestion for its use at that stage!

The lesson for exhibitors is to show respect to people visiting exhibitions. When they visit exhibitions, people are shopping. If you go to a shopping centre, you don't necessarily want to go into every store. You browse, see what catches your eye and go in to find out more when you are genuinely interested or curious. The same is the case at an exhibition.

Remember, the person who gets the most visitors to their stand isn't necessarily the winner.

Much like a shop's window display, make sure that your stand is attractive and clearly demonstrates what you have to offer. Your team should be approachable and friendly, ready to attend to anyone who wants to find out more. Hunting down passers-by, pursuing them around the exhibition hall until they listen to your pitch, will not win you friends.

Think about how you like to be treated when you shop. That should give you a strong idea of how to act at an exhibition.


No barriers

There is a balance to strike. You do have to make sure that you are 'out-there' at least to some degree, marketing yourself and making yourself approachable.

When I was with Business Referral Exchange, we ran a number of Business-to-Business exhibitions. One company exhibited with us on a number of occasions but rarely got any new business from the events.

There was a very simple reason for this, the person who looked after the stand created barriers between himself and the attendees. He would set up a table which he covered in literature, put a chair behind the table and would sit there, with his arms folded, for the duration of the event. When people walked past his stand, there was no warm smile and greeting, rather one man, sat behind a table full of leaflets, sat down with arms crossed. How likely would you be to approach him?

At the Business StartUp Show, I visited the stand run by a major national courier company. While I stood there waiting to speak to someone, one of the team on the stand was sat at a table, talking on his mobile phone and typing into his laptop. For someone waiting to be seen, this didn't create the right impression with me. Everyone on the stand should be focused on being approachable to potential customers, any other activity should always take place away from your stand.

It's not a place of day-to-day work, it's not somewhere to sit and have a rest. It's an advertisement for your company.



The personal experience

At a successful business exhibition, you will hopefully capture the data of a lot of people who visit your stand. Many exhibitors will run giveaways and prize draws to encourage people to part with their business cards to build a database for email follow-up.

Don't waste the individual connections you have made with people who have visited your stand and engaged in conversation. The temptation is to throw every business-card you collect into one collection and then mass-mail all of them together. After all, that's the most time-efficient way of following up, surely.

One golden rule of any networking, or indeed any sales approach, is to make every person you interact with feel unique. That doesn't mean that you can't mass-mail if people just drop their business card into a competition draw. However, if you have had a conversation with a genuinely interested party, keep their card seperately.

Keep a record of each conversation your team has with visitors to the stand, together with a note of what you have promised to do to follow up. Ideally, the person who had the conversation should also manage the follow up, even if it's just an email to pass them onto someone else. Maintain that personal connection.

Remember, most of the mass emails you send will be deleted without being read.


For an interesting take on making an exhibition a success from one of the exhibitors at the Business Start Up Show, read Fraser Hay's blog on Ecademy here.

Making an exhibition of yourself - the visitor

From 'Grow your own Business' to 'The Franchise Show'; from 'Ideal Business Show' to 'E Commerce 08', there are a wealth of business exhibitions to choose from. I recently attended the Business StartUp Show in London and its success was clear to see. The exhibition hall was buzzing all day, some of the bigger stands had swarms of people around them and queues for the business seminars snaked around the hall.

Among all of the activity there were some wonderful examples of how to, and how not to, network at an exhibition.

Events like this are, naturally, great ground for networking. Whether you are an exhibitor or a visitor, it's an opportunity to grasp with both hands.

In the first of two articles, here are some of my top tips for networking as a visitor to a business exhibition, based on what I observed on the day:


Know what you want to achieve from the day.

With the wealth of stands to visit and seminars to attend, there is only so much you can do. If your aim is to meet a number of new people, or forge contacts with particular companies, you will not best spend your time sitting in seminars.

With the number of seminars available (I think there were six stages at the Business StartUp show, all running sessions throughout the two days), it would be all too easy to jump from speaker to speaker and not actually make new contacts. Select the seminars you most want to attend before the event and make sure you get to the relevant seminar room in plenty of time, many people missed out because the rooms were full.

At Business StartUp, I decided that I wanted to connect with decision makers at national companies. I was looking to talk to businesses with national sales-forces who might be interested in partnering with us on Word of Mouse. That enabled me to focus on which exhibitors I wanted to approach and use my time as efficiently as possible. I only attended one seminar, and that was someone from my network whom I wanted to see speak.


Remember why other people are there.

If you want to connect with other people at an exhibition, be aware of why they are there and respect that.

In my case, I wanted to forge a connection with standholders to potentially do business with them. They, however, were looking to sell their services to attendees at the exhibition. I am sure that they wouldn't have appreciated me hogging their time when other people, potential buyers, were waiting around.

Having seen where the key exhibitors I wanted to speak to were based, I made sure that I only approached them when the stand wasn't too busy. I then asked to speak to a senior manager on the stand. Not only are they more likely to be the person you want to speak to, they also tend to stand back to ensure that everything is going well on the stand, rather than being the first person to speak to visitors.

On introducing myself to the senior manager, I reassured them that I wouldn't take up their time there, explained why I wanted to speak to them and asked for a card so that I could follow up after the exhibition. If they then wanted to speak some more, that was fine, but I remained aware of how busy their stand was and the time I was taking up.

Besides, I'd rather have the conversation with them after the event, one-to-one, when I have their undivided attention, than in a bustling exhibition hall with ever-changing activity on their stand. Wouldn't you?


Don't have lunch, or a cup of coffee on your own

If you're an active networker, you're probably struggling to fit all of the one-to-one meetings you promise people into your diary. Use business exhibitions to kill two birds with one stone and find out who else is going.

Tap into your network and ask who is attending the exhibition. Look through the list of exhibitors and see if there is anyone there whom you are due to meet.

No-one wants to stay on their feet all day at an exhibition. You need a break every now and then. Pre-arrange a couple of meetings for those breaks and meet fellow networkers for a coffee or a spot of lunch.


In the next article I'll look at how to approach exhibitions when you take a stand there.