The Trade Show Strategy That Wins More Customers Part 1

Are trade shows delivering real business growth, or are you simply hoping the right customers walk by your booth?

In this episode of 10 Keys to Thrive in Business and Life, Jim Krigbaum kicks off a three-part series on maximizing trade show success by revealing how the most profitable trade show strategies begin long before the event opens.

Drawing on decades of global experience as an exhibitor, attendee, and international business leader, Jim shares practical strategies for choosing the right trade show, identifying your ideal customers, creating a realistic budget, selecting the best booth location, and developing a plan that turns a major marketing investment into measurable results.

You'll also discover why successful companies schedule meetings before the show begins, how to capture qualified leads instead of collecting stacks of business cards, what giveaways actually work, and why following a proven strategy consistently outperforms simply hoping buyers stop by your booth.

Whether you're exhibiting for the first time or looking to improve the return on your next event, this episode will help you avoid costly mistakes and build a trade show strategy that generates qualified leads, stronger relationships, and lasting business growth.

Because successful trade shows don't happen by chance.

They happen through preparation, planning, and purposeful execution.

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Welcome back to Ten Keys of Thrive in Business and Life. I'm your mentor and host, Jim Krigbaum. Today we begin a mini-series on trade shows. We'll start out with how to choose the right show and how to plan for the show. The next session will be on what to do when you're attending the show, and the third session will be on follow-up of the show. Trade shows are a large investment. A large section of your budget is dedicated to trade shows. Let's talk about how we can maximize trade shows.

SPEAKER_01 0:25

If you're not getting the results you want in your business, your team, or your life, it's rarely a lack of effort. It's a gap in how you think, decide, and lead. So welcome to Ten Keys to Thrive, where practical wisdom meets real-world results. Each episode gives you simple, proven tools to improve your decisions, strengthen relationships, and drive better outcomes right away. Drawing on decades of global leadership experience, Jim brings practical insights shaped by real-world challenges and results. Here's your host, Jim Krigman.

SPEAKER_02 0:59

Hi, over my career I've been to hundreds of trade shows. I participated as an exhibitor, as visitor, and I've helped coordinate delegations of visitors to shows in working to arrange meetings at the shows, before the shows, and working with follow-up. So I have a good understanding to trade shows. I believe trade shows are a hope strategy if you don't plan properly. Our sessions here will help you plan to make sure that it's not a hope strategy where you don't just hope that the customer passes by. You don't have to hope that they stop. And you don't have to hope that they have time to talk to you. You will have arranged things accordingly and you will have planned effectively to make sure that you capture the right customers. The first thing you need to do, of course, is identify the right trade show. To do that, you need to know your right market. You need to know what your niche is. You need to identify who should be buying your product. And then you identify what show would have those buyers attending. Your business is different if you're selling direct to consumers and different if you're selling B2B, business to business, or business to industry. Industry is a different type of sale. You're selling to somebody that's going to use your product as an ingredient. We'll talk about that throughout a number of sessions. Trade shows are global and they have visitors from all over the world. You need to visit the trade show before you exhibit, before you make a commitment to spending thousands and thousands of dollars to attending a trade show. You should attend. You should attend in person. If you can't attend in person, if your marketing budget, if your time frame and everything else doesn't allow you to attend in person, you can attend on the web. You can go to most trade shows websites these days, identify who the people that are exhibiting there are, and by doing that, you can identify what type of show is going to draw the customers that you've targeted. You've already done your SWOT analysis, you've identified your product, the strengths, opportunities, weaknesses, and threats. Now you're ready to promote it. I do believe that trade shows are a hope strategy, and I encourage you, because you've identified your customer, because you've identified who they are, spend your time getting in front of that customer. Whether getting in front of that customer is going to meet them in their office or capturing them at a trade show. You need to figure it out. You need to figure out what the best way is. We've had some customers that we've knocked on their door, we've called all our strings and try and get them to talk to us, and it doesn't work. They're not interested. They want to come to you as opposed to you coming to them. They will go to a trade show. If they go to a trade show, you need to make sure that you capture them. When they walk by your booth, you need to know who you're looking for. You need to be able to identify their tags and say, that's a customer we need to talk to. And if you're talking to somebody that's less important, you need to be able to pass them off to somebody else and go, hey, this is a customer we need to talk to and try and drag them and bring them into your booth. Remember, their time at the trade show is limited. They're not going to want to spend a lot of time talking about things that don't matter to them. They're going to want to make sure that they leave your booth with the information they need. Doesn't mean they leave with a brochure. A lot of buyers will not carry brochures with them. I've gone to trade shows back in years past and I've left with 30 pounds of trade show materials. Studies have shown that 75 to 80% of that material gets thrown away before the person leaves their hotel and gets on the airplane. You don't want to spend thousands of dollars on brochures only to have them show up in a garbage can before they leave. What we do is say somebody wants to look at your brochure, say, hey, as you're looking at my brochure, you know what? I can send you a copy of that via email. I can send you a PDF. That way you can forward it to other people within your organization. That way you don't have to carry it. Oh, that's great. I don't want to have to carry it at the show. Thanks. Here's my email address. Well, when they say, here's my email address, ding, ding, ding, the bells should go out because that's what you need. That's what you need to capture is their email address. So that's one of the objectives of trade show is to build your target list, to build the identified customers and the identified individuals that you should be talking to. Now, identifying the right trade show. You've done your research, you know your product, you know your company, and you know your target customer. Find out what shows they are attending. Once you determine the show, you need to determine how much you want to spend on it. Determine a budget. How much emphasis do you want to put onto this? Do you want it to attend just as a visitor? A lot of times a visitor, you can meet with other customers there. You don't have to have a booth. We've attended trade shows all over the world where we didn't have a booth. In fact, at one trade show in Dubai, we took over a coffee shop and made that our office. We brought buyers in to talk to us. So you don't have to spend the money on the booth necessarily, but if your objectives are to get the product into the hands of the consumers, the hands of the buyers that have in a booth is there. You have to also determine do I want to give away samples? Do I want to appeal to customers and get them to taste in product? That's different than if I want them to develop a dialogue with this. If I'm working on consumers, direct to consumers, I want them to taste my product. I want them to say, hey, you know, stop by and taste it. If I am giving away a soft drink, for example, I'm going to have dozens of people outside my booth all the time to get the free product. If I'm giving away food, they're going to stop by just to get the free food. That's right because they taste it. But do you actually have time to talk to those buyers? And how many people that pass by your booth and stop to get a sample have no interest in your product? None whatsoever. So you have to balance that. How much do I want to give away to attract a number of people? And how much do I want to attract the right people, bring them into my booth, and maybe back behind me, I've got an oven, I've got a refrigerator, whatever, and say, hey, you're interested, would you like to try it? Not giving it out to the masses. That brings me to another point. A lot of trade shows have attendees that will give away pens. Here's one, for example. I got this pen at a trade show. It's from a company that I don't do any business with. It's a company that the chance of me doing business with is very, very small. But they gave me a gift that's worth a couple of dollars. Was that a smart move? Well, yeah, it builds name familiarity. But if it's a product that I have no intent on buying, it's a waste of money. So you got to think about what you're going to give away. I've seen trade shows where at the end of the show, they have boxes of shirts and boxes of hats and boxes of pens that they throw away or they bring back and store in the garage or store in their closets or store in their warehouse and never use again. So think about it when you're going to do that. There's a right time to do it, it makes sense, but you also have to figure out is it what value am I going to get from giving somebody this pen? Are they going to buy the product from me? Maybe. But if I'm selling widgets, the pen has nothing to do with it. So if you are going to give away a sample, if you are going to give away a gift, have it tied to your product. Have it tied to something they can go, oh yeah, this is the product, this is the company. So something to think about. Once you've identified the show, you have to identify where the booth is going to be. Choosing a booth is an art. It's not a science, it's an art. And you want to figure out, do I want to choose a booth that's at the front entrance where everybody passes by? Great booth. If you want people to pass by, if you want masses of people, there'll be crowds all the time passing by your booth. That's great, but not if you want to talk one-on-one with buyers. So if they're going to choose a booth that's by the front, understand that you're not going to have a chance to talk one-on-one. If you choose a booth that's way in the back of the show, you're going to have to draw the customers there. You're going to have to draw them there because they may not make it back that far. One of the keys that we found is choose a booth that's by the bathrooms. Not too close, not so close that you have the line in front of the for the bathroom in front of your booth, but get it so that people have to pass by your booth when they're going to the bathroom. Everybody at a trade show at some point in time during the day is going to have to go, so they'll pass by your booth. Same thing with food. Choose your booth close to the food court. Don't choose it in the food court because people will be using your garbage can, using your tables to eat on. That's not productive to what you want to do. But if you choose it one row off, people, again, are going to pass by your booth. So choosing the booth is important. Choosing the size of your booth is important. Choosing the design of your booth is important. We've seen trade shows where the designs are beautiful, beautiful designs. I had one customer that said, Isn't the design beautiful? The guy who designed this booth has never been to a trade show. For me, it was obvious they'd never been to a trade show because they designed it so it's not functional. You need to understand that you're there to talk to customers. So having a booth that limits your ability to talk to the customers is limiting the effectiveness of the booth. Sometimes companies will say, okay, let's build a meeting room up above. We'll put a TV up there, and people can go up there and meet. And 90% of the time I've seen that happen, that place becomes a storage place for people to put their bags, their coats, their computers, and everything else. It's not used as a meeting room. So again, think about the functionality of what you're trying to do. Remember that all the exhibitors at the show are trying to sell. They're not there to buy. Even if you're selling them ingredients, they're going to be less likely and less willing to talk to you because the booth is not staffed by buyers. It's staffed by sellers. So if you want to meet with the buyers, you have to prearrange it. That's the most important thing before a show. You've got all your planning, you've got your budget, you've got your timing, you've got your staff. The important thing is you reach out to the customers. Announce that you're going to the show to all your existing customers. Do broadcast emails to the wide section of the industry saying, we're going to the show, meet us here. Include the show's logo and the date on your letterhead on the bottom of your emails to encourage people, oh, they're going to be at this show. How can we meet them? Most trade shows today have a database. Once you register, you have access to that database. And people that register for the show also have access to that database. It becomes a conduit to communicate with potential buyers. So you reach out to them. I spent hundreds of hours reaching out in mass and trying to get people to respond. Sometimes only 40% of the people respond, sometimes only 4% of the people respond. But the ones that respond are more interested in your product. And by looking at the list of who's going to be at the show, I can go into LinkedIn, I can go into some of my other databases and identify buyers that should be at that show. And I can reach out to them. So promoting yourself before you get to the show is important. Trying to set a schedule before you go to the show is critical. Don't hope that they pass by. If you know that somebody from Walmart or Costco or Fred Meyer or whatever retailer that you're looking at is going to be at that show, just reach out to them, say, hey, stop by. Let's plan to get together. Let's set a time. I don't say, I'm not going to set a time, but I'll stop by. Chances are you miss them. Especially if you miss them, if you're not looking for them. They may pass by, they may look in, but if you don't capture them, if you don't capture their attention, the elevator pitch, which we talk about in a lot of other things, is really critical at a trade show. You don't have 15 floors to talk to them to get their attention. You have 20 feet from the time they start at your booth to the time your booth is out of sight to capture their attention. Now, you don't want to be overaggressive. You don't want to be standing in the aisle and blocking them. You have to have something that appeals to them, something that attracts them. We've utilized attire, for example, when we were marketing product from Peru, we hired somebody and they dressed in proof attire and they gave out samples of the product that we were selling. And the person dressed in the attire drew the attention of the buyers. They pass by, they'd look and they'd stop and talk. So sometimes the apparel of the person that is exhibiting is important. You also have to be careful, as we talked about, you need to dress for your audience. Don't dress because that's the way you want to. If I'm from Brazil and Brazil has their bikinis and their beauty and everything else, it's in their culture. But if I'm going to the Middle East, I don't want my exhibitors that are handing out the soft drinks and the beverages to be there in bikinis because you will offend the people. If I'm going to Japan, I'm not going to dress like this in a bright shirt. I'm going to go and dress in a dark suit because that's what they do. So you have to understand their culture because you have to appeal to them. You don't want to offend them immediately. Now, again, we did a trade show in Japan where we were promoting our soft drink. It was called Malibu Sports Club USA. Because it was Malibu, the image of Malibu was there. So we did hire a model to come to our booth to wear an American flag swimsuit because our product sold for two reasons. Three actually. One was because it was the right price. Two was because the image of California, the image of Malibu. And three was because it was from the United States. We built on those factors. Those were our strengths, those were our opportunities. So how do we build upon those? You have to understand your strengths, opportunities, weaknesses, and threats to choose the right show, to plan the right show. When you're planning a show, make sure that you have on calendar that sets out when decisions need to be made. Assign people responsibilities for that. Planning a show a week before the show, a month before the show, three months before the show is not sufficient. You need to plan a show a year in advance. The best booths at a show are selected at the show the year before by the exhibitors. So if you want a booth, you either have to be an exhibitor from one year to the next, or you have to get in there immediately to try and select your booth. You have to make a commitment. And that means you have to make a decision and you have to plan. And spending money at a trade show without planning is you might as well just give it away because it's not going to be effective. Trade shows are a great tool. They're a great chance to launch new products, they're a great chance to meet new customers. They're a great chance for you to go and explore and learn what other people are doing. Look at the colors of the product people are marketing, the packaging, look at the sizes, look at the styles, look at the new products. Several years ago when Stevia was first coming into the U.S. market, a product that we helped bring into the US market by working with Cargill to change the scrap status of the product. When Stevia launched, every booth at the trade show had Stevia. Similar type of situation with quinoa. When we first brought the red quinoa into the United States, as soon as the quinoa became available, everybody had it. So you can look at trends and follow them, or you can lead the trend. And you can lead the trend if you know what the market is before you get there. Another thing to look at is sales missions. Trade shows are great, but I know I've got customers in New York City. And I know I've got customers in Washington, D.C., Virginia, and Philadelphia. What I'll do is I say, I'm going to fly to Washington, D.C., and I'm going to drive to New York City. And on that drive, I'm going to meet with companies. I can get their interest by saying, I'm going to be in your town on this day. Can we meet? Can I meet at your office? Can I buy you a cup of coffee? Whatever it is. By setting the date and say, I'm going to be there, you've already removed some of their objections to meeting. So I can set that up. If I do it properly, I can set up a tour where I'm hitting different cities and ending up at a trade show. We've done it where we started in Washington, D.C., we end up in New York City and we're at the fancy food shop. You have to be careful though, because as companies prepare for trade shows, they're busy. They're looking at the trade show, they're planning things. So they're not open for people to come and show up and say, we're here to sell you. They don't have a lot of time. Fruit Logistic, a show in Germany, for example. If you go two weeks before the show and you go to Rotterdam and to the Netherlands and some other markets and try and meet with produce buyers, they're going to go, I'm busy. I don't have time. I'll see you at the show. So you got to think about that as well. But it is a good thing to plan a sales mission, plan it, say, I'm going to be there at this time. You can tie it into a trade show, which is great. And again, you don't have to necessarily have a booth. We've taken over coffee shops, we've taken over tables downstairs. So that's something I recommend you take a look at. I'm going to give you some homework, something to think about before we go to the next session. So the next session is when we go to the show. What do we do when we get to the show? And that's critical because boots are on the ground, and that's where you maximize the returns on what you've invested into getting there is the time that you're actually at the show. Before you go to the show, you've already done your SWOT analysis. If not, go back and do a SWOT analysis on your product and identify who your target customer is and identify their profile. Then look at the trade shows that are going to have those profiles available. Once you've done that, you're going to plan on a show. Take some time in the next week and take a look at the trade shows that are out there and compare them with your product and try and identify what show you're going to. Develop a system of planning the show. Now there's a lot of keys out there for here are the steps that you need to in planning a trade show. Take a look at it. That'll help you identify what needs to be done when. Be sure to read their manuals of the trade shows. The manuals will have dates that you need to meet. If you don't meet those dates, you're in trouble. If you order late, you're going to pay 30% more for your equipment. So that's something to think about, which brings me to another point, which is interesting. We did a show in Chicago, and it was cheaper for us to buy a microwave oven than it was to rent one. We bought one, we gave it away to charity at the end of the show because we would have had to pay to rent it from a company. Now you have to make sure that you can bring in your own equipment. Some shows don't let you do that. But if they do, it's better off to do that. Another thing on planning a trade show that can save you money is when we send samples to show. So we did shows in the Philippines, for example, or in Singapore. And instead of me sending over cases of a product, each case weighing 30, 40 pounds, we would send over one case, and we'd send over labels. And we would display our case at the booth, and then we'd go to the grocery store and buy cans of similar size, put our label on them. We'd mark them so we didn't open and say, this is our product, but our display looked full, even though we didn't spend all the money to get product there. So think about ways that you can save money. Book your hotels in advance. No, you're going to go to a show. Don't wait to the month before the show to book your hotels. Book them as soon as you know you're going to go. Do that whenever anybody say, we may want you to go to this show in six months. We immediately go on to either to Marriott or to Expedia or some other website and book the hotel. We make sure we can cancel it, but we book it because when a show comes to town, the rates go up. As those rooms get filled, the rates go up. So the sooner you book your rooms, the better chance you have of getting a competitive rate. You can always cancel. Make sure you know what the cancellation dates are. Same thing with your flights. If you fly enough and you can buy a ticket and cancel it and either get refunded or use your money someplace else, do it immediately. Those are all things that you need to think about. So when you're doing your homework this week and we're trying to figure out what to do on a trade show, think about how you can do that. If you have questions, go to tenkeys to thrive podcast.com, go to Ask Jim, and you can ask me questions and I can give you individual feedback on your concerns and your ideas. Thanks.

SPEAKER_00 19:00

So that's it for today's episode of Ten Keys to Thrive. Head on over to Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen and subscribe to the show. Be sure to head on over to tenkeystotrive.com to pick up a free copy of Jim's gift. And join us on the next episode.