Hostess Beefcake

As any feminist will tell you, a woman can do anything that a man can do. But is the reverse true? Can a man do anything a woman can do? That was my question when my female booth hostess bailed, leaving me with a man to do a woman’s job during my company’s first trade show appearance.

When I started my job as product brand and sales manager at Snellville, GA-based Soap Warehouse LLC, I quickly convinced the boss that trade shows were vital to our sales process. Since the company had never before exhibited at shows, I knew every detail — and every dollar — of our presence at our first big show, The Great American Trucking Show in Dallas, would be scrutinized. So to make doubly sure we’d get our money’s worth, I tried to pinch every penny we’d need for our 10-by-10-foot exhibit.

Rather than spending money on shipping and flight costs, Ed, one of our part-time employees, and I planned to load the booth and all our collateral into a Toyota Tundra, drive to Dallas, and install the exhibit ourselves two days before the show. Our company’s owner would then fly out the morning of the show to help us staff the booth when the exhibit hall opened at noon on Thursday. He’d work in the booth until just before the show closed on Saturday, when he’d fly back to Atlanta.

I also hired a booth hostess from a modeling agency to help us qualify leads. The Dallas-based model would work four hours per day, giving Ed, our boss, and me an occasional break while she answered basic questions and helped pre-qualify attendees. That way, the rest of us would have more time for in-depth conversations with qualified prospects, and we wouldn’t have to pay another staffer’s travel expenses to and from the show. I even e-mailed her a tutorial, including a company overview, some talking points, and our lead-qualifying form. Plus, since most of the show’s attendees were male, having a pretty woman in the booth — even if she was dressed professionally — certainly couldn’t hurt our booth traffic.

The Monday before the show, however, the boss came into my office to show me an injury he had incurred over the weekend. His hand was swollen, looked infected, and had earned him an appointment with the doctor that afternoon.

I hoped a quick antibiotics prescription would put him back on track, but later that day he called to tell me his doctor had admitted him to the hospital for blood poisoning. In the course of a single phone call, I’d become concerned about both my boss’ health and that of our newborn exhibiting program. Still, I figured that Ed, the hostess, and I could pull this off without our ailing boss.

So Tuesday morning, Ed and I hopped into the truck, drove our booth to Dallas, and checked into our hotel. After a night’s sleep, we drove to the hall and unloaded our booth. We then spent the bulk of the day setting it up before returning to our rooms to freshen up for dinner. And that’s when the real trouble arrived.

With a few minutes to kill before I needed to head downstairs at 7:30 p.m. for dinner, I checked my work e-mail from my laptop in the room. What I found sent me into a panic. There was an e-mail from the modeling agency. The e-mail — sent just three hours earlier — said our booth hostess had backed out, and the agency would be refunding our money.

No “We’re sorry.” No “Here is someone else to try.” And since it was now after 7 p.m., there was no one at the agency’s office to call. I was down to myself and one part-time employee who had just learned the product line to staff our 100-square-foot booth for the entire three-day show.

Not knowing where to turn, I decided to call my husband for inspiration. Since he had experience as a booth staffer working in the computer industry, I hoped he might know someone in Dallas who could recommend a new booth model or some other solution to my staff shortage.

As it turned out, he reminded me that Mike, a friend of ours that my husband knew back in his own trade show days, had recently moved to Fort Worth, TX — roughly 35 miles from Dallas. My husband gave me Mike’s number and wished me luck.

Dialing, my biggest hope was that Mike could help me find another model who might be able to show up part time or at least on Saturday, which would be the busiest day of the show. Otherwise, Ed and I would be doing all of the qualifying ourselves, leaving us little to no time for in-depth conversations with hot prospects.

When Mike answered the phone, I explained my problem and pleaded with him to help me find a solution. As luck would have it, Mike had taken time off from his job to do some work around the house. He suggested that instead of finding another hostess, he could come to the booth and be my model — sans the skirt, of course. While Mike wouldn’t necessarily appeal to the male truckers the same way the female model would, at least he could do the qualifying.

Mike planned to meet Ed and me in the morning for breakfast to go over the particulars. With a sense of relief, I thanked him and said goodbye. Over dinner, I told Ed all about our new developments, and how we needed to meet early the next morning to bring Mike up to speed.

As an avid EXHIBITOR reader, I had brought a memory stick with all my collateral, including the tutorial I had e-mailed the model. So that night, I loaded the tutorial on my laptop.

While the three of us ate breakfast the next morning, we used the tutorial to educate Mike about our company and its products. He seemed to pick up our product information quickly, but as we headed off to the show hall, I hoped he’d recall his booth-staffing skills just as fast.

Although he was not as pretty as the model he replaced, Mike turned out to be an invaluable asset in the booth. He quickly engaged attendees in conversations and got them to answer our lead-qualifying questions. He also effortlessly passed appropriate attendees to Ed and me for final qualifying. The three of us spent the next three days working the show, securing almost 150 well-qualified leads out of the 10,000 or so attendees — well past our goal of 100 leads.

When we returned from the show, my boss was more than thrilled with our success. But now, as I happily plan our next big trade show, I’m almost tempted to hire a male model. After all, while they’re usually not good trucker magnets, it seems that men can do almost anything women can do.

— Linda Chambers, product brand and sales manager, Soap Warehouse LLC, Snellville, GA