BOOTH STAFF
t’s a fact of trade show life: A lot of salespeople don’t like to work trade show booths, and some aren’t shy about broadcasting it. Case in point: While exhibiting at the 2002 Jewelers Circular Keystone Show in Las Vegas, an irate member of Carol Levey’s sales team confronted her about a scheduling conflict while she was trying to help a customer. “In front of the booth, with hundreds of people walking past, he screamed at me and called me awful names because I wasn’t able to sit in on an appointment he had with a customer,” says Levey, a senior director of marketing at Maurice Lacroix Swiss Watches based in Encino, CA. This salesperson was clearly out of line, but the story illustrates the challenge of fulfilling show objectives without the cooperation of sales staff. You can put all your ducks in a row with booth training, show-reference guides, and rah-rah meetings to educate your staff, but to get them fully committed to meeting trade show goals you have to understand their needs and offer what’s-in-it-for-them solutions. Here are seven common grumblings from salespeople about staffing a booth, with solutions to resolve their issues.
Issue One: Lost Compensation For many sales reps, working a trade show means one thing: lost sales. That means lost commission, missed quotas, and even, in the worst-case scenario, a lost job. “When you take sales reps out of their territory, they are losing a week toward making that monthly or quarterly goal,” says Mike Cammarata, president of Piscataway, NJ,-based Cammarata and Associates Inc., a sales- and marketing-consulting firm. “The leads from the show do not mean as much when it could take three or even 18 months for leads to become sales. They might lose their job before the sales come in.” The stakes are even higher when the salesperson works on commission only. “If a person doesn’t make a base salary and all of his income comes from commission earnings, sending him to Chicago for a week is like sending him a bill for $1,000,” Cammarata says. Solution: Pay Them If your sales staff is worried about lost compensation, figure out how to pay them. To determine the best solution to make up for their lost income, find out how your sales staff is compensated. Unless you have wiggle room in your budget to pay each staffer $1,000, Cammarata suggests that you work with the sales manager to provide a finder’s fee for each lead that closes by some set point after the show. “This has to be an amount over and beyond the percentage received by the person who closes the sale,” Cammarata says. “You can’t take away from the person who made the sale, but the salesperson who landed the lead can get 0.5 percent.” For example, if the sale is worth $50,000, the salesperson in the booth would make $250 commission. If salespeople generate four or five solid leads at the show, they can make back more than what they lost by being out of the office.
Issue Two: Schedule Conflicts Every responsible salesperson faces two persistent distractions when working a trade show: 1) the home office, and 2) other clients at the show. No matter how much traffic your booth has, salespeople will still want to call the home office to catch up on work, or to respond to e-mail messages that are piling up. They’ll also want time to meet with their clients at the show, and time to scope out the show floor. Solution: Give Them a Break Recognize how valuable time is to a salesperson by scheduling sufficient breaks. Give salespeople time out of the booth to have meetings and to take prospects to coffee or lunch, or to simply visit other booths where their customers are exhibiting. Andrea Nierenberg, president of The Nierenberg Group, a New York-based sales consultancy, recommends giving salespeople a break after about 90 minutes of booth duty. And some of those breaks should be for 30 to 45 minutes so they have time to meet with clients. Providing a space where they can meet with prospects away from the noise and competition is a bonus. Be sensitive to time-zone issues. Cammarata suggests scheduling salespeople based on the territories they cover. If the trade show is in New York, schedule your California salespeople to work the first shift, while their customers are still asleep, and let salespeople with East Coast territories take a second shift, so they can catch their clients in the morning. Or you can simply allow the sales team to determine its own schedule. That’s what Cosentino S. A., makers of Silestone countertop slab stones did for its reps at the International Builders’ Show in Orlando, FL, last January. “Cosentino allowed us to pick and choose when we wanted to work,” says Ken Cornine, president of Corson, which handles Cosentino’s sales and distribution out of Daytona, FL. “I worked all day Thursday at the show. It made better sense, as my office is an hour from the convention center. Once I’m there, I’m all geared up.”
Issue Three: Feeling Enlisted There is a good chance the sales team views being at a show as an obligation, despite your assurances that working the show benefits the company and even them personally. They want to feel comfortable and taken care of, not like they are on a tour of duty, says David Morrison, executive vice president of sales for Evigna, a promotional-merchandise distributor in Troy, MI. They don’t want to be bogged down with the small stuff, such as tracking down your cell-phone number or extra materials. Solution: Star Treatment After your pitch on how valuable the show is to the company and what you expect from booth staff, let your team know what you will have in place to make their booth experience run smoothly. For example, show them where the marketing materials are stored in the booth and where they can find a list of cell-phone numbers. Then offer sales staff a catered lunch so they can avoid the long concession-stand lines. Basically, make sure salespeople are prepared to sell, not to take care of planning details. “I’ve been to so many shows where materials aren’t there because they didn’t arrive or they ran out and the salespeople didn’t know how to reach the planners,” Nierenberg says. “Have an administrative person to make copies, check that the notepads are still there, and do other administrative stuff.” Giving them an extra benefit for being at the show also helps. “Include a little travel as an incentive,” says Bill Cooke, group president of VNU Expositions Inc. in Chantilly, VA. “If the show is in an interesting location like New York, Orlando, New Orleans, or San Francisco, give them two or three days before the show to go downtown and enjoy the city. Or arrange for them to stay a few days post show and perhaps have their spouses come in.” Cooke also suggests a per diem that’s large enough for them to enjoy their time away from the office.
Issue Four: Boredom Rigor Mortis Salespeople sometimes get bored at trade shows and feel that they are wasting time just standing around. For some, it’s because they don’t really want to be there. But if you don’t create a dynamic environment or provide proper training, it’s often a legitimate complaint. According to Bill Brooks, CEO of the Brooks Group, a sales and sales-management training company based in Greensboro, NC, “lots of salespeople just don’t know what to do in a trade show environment because they lack the right training.” Solution: Mix It Up At AccuWeather Inc., which provides weather feeds to various TV networks, the sales team helps to plan the trade show and develop the video materials that will be used in the exhibit. “It’s important for the sales force to feel a sense of ownership and comfort with the materials in the booth. They are then more enthusiastic about talking to customers about it,” says Leigh Rainey, who heads AccuWeather’s team of three sales professionals at shows such as the National Association of Television Program Executives (NATPE) in Las Vegas. “At other companies I’ve worked for we weren’t involved in planning and were just given a script to memorize before the show,” Rainey says. “As a result, the sales team wasn’t as interested or was not able to explain the nuances the demo was trying to emphasize.” To break up the monotony of booth duty, Brooks suggests a system that rotates salespeople through various roles. “Have someone who is a greeter, someone who presents materials to prospects, and someone who makes sure the booth is well stocked, so that they keep moving and keep changing different roles,” Brooks says. “They need diversification — otherwise it is an awfully long day.” Also, take advantage of the fact that most salespeople are naturally competitive by offering contests and incentives. Nierenberg recommends holding a contest for the best interaction of the day with a prospect. “Have them share their success stories at the morning meeting or with the whole team over dinner,” she says. “The person with the top story gets a small prize, such as a gift certificate, a new day planner, or a palm organizer. But at the end of the show, the three people with the best contact stories get an additional reward, such as a travel voucher for two, or a dinner or lunch with the president or VP of sales.” Instead of individual competitions, you can also hold group competitions. “One of the best incentives I have seen was everyone who worked the booth got a certificate for themselves and a guest for a high-end restaurant if the group obtained a certain number of leads,” Brooks says. “So now you’re working as a group, not as an individual.” And find a way to make the competition visible. Bill Gager of Chester, CT,-based consulting firm Bill Gager International, which helps companies improve new business, suggests, “If your booth is set up with a backroom area, have someone post ongoing results of the contest so everyone can see them. Update it as frequently as possible.”
Issue Five: Quality of Leads When it comes to show attendees, salespeople have two main concerns: 1) the quality of prospects — are they really interested in the products and do they have the money to buy them? — and 2) how to find prospects from their territories. According to Rodger Roeser, a sales coordinator for Field Master Industries, a Sandusky, OH, pavement-maintenance company, “it is marketing’s job to make the function of sales easier and the sales process more efficient. We need to know that the marketing team has done its due diligence through direct-mail marketing and other functions.” Solution: Show Them the Numbers Demonstrate to the sales force that you have a plan for attracting qualified leads to the booth. Prove that you have done an adequate number of mailings, or have created a unique hook to drive people to the booth. One way to do this, Roeser says, is to put the sales team on the mailing list for the marketing materials. “You need to be able to sell your strategy to the sales staff as much as you do to the attendees.” To match up salespeople with the appropriate customers, Chris Consorte, managing partner at Integrated Direct, a direct- and integrated-marketing company in New York, suggests customizing pre-show mailers to introduce the sales manager or a salesperson in the prospect’s territory as the contact at the show. “When we pre-promote to attendees,” says Consorte, who also teaches marketing at Long Island University in New York, “it gives the salesperson an incentive to show up. It gets them hyped up, and they think they would look stupid if they weren’t there when a prospect came by looking for them. Even if the booth traffic is light, they are unlikely to leave.”
Issue Six: Fear of Rejection An experienced trade show producer once said he doesn’t pay salespeople to make sales — he pays them to take rejection. Since salespeople typically set up meetings through cold calls, they are not used to approaching strangers face to face without some prior contact. So prospecting at a trade show can be intimidating. “I have had people tell me of bad experiences they had when they approached somebody in the aisle,” Gager says. “Once, one guy offered a prospect his business card and the prospect tore the card up in front of him and said, ‘No way in hell will I ever consider doing business with you.’” Solution: Reward Bravery Given the constant rejection the sales staff face, be prepared to cheer them on and keep their spirits up. One way of doing that: “Reward the outcome people fear the most,” Gager says. At the end of the day have the sales staff share their toughest rejection stories and give a prize to the salesperson that endured the most humiliation. Gager suggests a small reward, such as a $25 gift card. “It turns a loss into a win,” he says. “It makes the rejection that much easier to stomach.”
Issue Seven: Lack of Recognition Salespeople often don’t feel appreciated or that they are an important part of the exhibit-program puzzle. Salespeople want to be the big man on campus. If they don’t feel valued, they don’t want to be there. Solution: Stroke Their Egos Get top management involved. Whether it’s a videotaped message from the CEO, or a winner’s dinner with the president, make sure salespeople know their efforts will be recognized by top management. “Something has to come from the top,” says Susan Friedmann, CSP, president of The Trade Show Coach based in Lake Placid, NY. “Even if it’s a note that says ‘Thank You,’ an internal newsletter, or inter-office e-mail, they need to know that they will be recognized.” Friedmann also suggests offering a certificate or plaque. “People like certificates on their wall. For some it is really meaningful,” Friedmann says. Involving the sales team in the process — the entire show-planning process as well as the awards recognition — also lets them know how valuable their opinions are. Friedmann suggests letting the sales team decide who should get the Most Valued Booth Person award. You can also stroke egos on a different level. “Put the salespeople in a position to deliver workshops and seminars. Set them up as experts to a particular product or sales technique,” Brooks says. “Use that seminar as a method to gather business cards.” If you have 200 people attend the seminar, you’ll have a huge number of leads. “In my case, I will not go to a show unless I can get on the agenda to deliver a seminar,” Brooks says. “I’ve gotten more leads out of seminars than by being at the booth.”
Sheree R. Curry is a freelance writer in Maple Grove, MN.