The Trade Show Strategy That Wins More Customers Part 2

You've invested thousands of dollars in your trade show. Now what?

In Part 2 of this special series on 10 Keys to Thrive in Business and Life, Jim Krigbaum shares the proven strategies that separate exhibitors who simply show up from those who consistently generate qualified leads and long-term customers.

Jim explains why a trade show is never a vacation with a badge. It's a business development opportunity that requires preparation, intentional conversations, active listening, and a clear follow-up strategy. You'll learn how to attract the right prospects into your booth, ask better questions, identify decision-makers, communicate your value without sounding salesy, and create memorable conversations that lead to future business.

Drawing from decades of international business experience, Jim also reveals common trade show mistakes, how to keep your booth engaging and fully staffed, why business cards and contact information are your most valuable takeaway, and how to position your product or service so buyers remember you long after the event ends.

Whether you're exhibiting for the first time or looking to improve your return on investment, this episode provides practical, real-world techniques you can implement at your very next trade show.

Because successful trade shows aren't measured by the number of people who walk past your booth.

They're measured by the quality of the relationships you begin.

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Welcome back to Ten Keys to Thrive and Business in Life Podcast. I'm your mentor and host, Jim Krigbaum. You remember that last session we talked about planning for a trade show, being able to maximize your profits and understanding which trade show to go to, how to plan and organize a show to maximize its results. Today we're going to go a step further. Now we're at the show. What do we do at the show? Join us in this session. At the end, I'll give you an assignment that'll help you understand and help you improve your system for the next trade show that you attend.

SPEAKER_01 0:28

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 1:03

Welcome back. A trade show is not a vacation with a badge. It's an event that is meant to generate business. A lot of times, trade shows are a reward for staff and they go and they have a great time, they go to events, they go to the show, and sometimes they don't even go to the show. I've had people that worked with me in various organizations that go to a trade show and show up for an hour and not really spend a lot of time there. That's not what a trade show is for. If you're planning a trade show and you're investing money either as a business owner or as a manager or you're attending, it's important that you attend. But it's also important that you attend, knowing what you're trying to accomplish, knowing your goals, knowing that you're there to capture business, you're there to get a business card. At the end of the day, one of the best things you can get from a trade show is a business card. A lot of talk about how people come back. Oh, I came back from this trade show and I had $3 million worth of business. That doesn't happen. Working with USA and other government agencies, reports had to be generated at the end of the trade show, and everybody expected immediate results. Don't expect immediate results from a trade show. The immediate results that you get from a trade show are the leads, the dialogue that has begun between you and a targeted customer. As we talked about before the show and planning for the show, you've already identified your product, you've already identified your target customer. Now, how do you get in front of them? We want to change the show from being a hope strategy where you hope they pass by, you hope they stop, and you hope you have time, to where you can actually capture them. Now, you've planned your booth properly, you've got the right location, you've got a booth that is going to bring people into your booth. So once they come in, how do you get the dialogue going? One of the most important things is that you listen, you read their body language, you understand who they are before they get there. So you either know their company because you've done your research, or you know the type of individual, you may even know the individual themselves. You know what their role is, but you don't know what their specific hot points are. So you want to make sure that you ask questions that give you answers that allow you to keep the dialogue going and get them excited about your product. You want them to leave your booth going, I gotta remember that. I gotta come back to them. I gotta tell somebody else about this because that's what you're there for. You're there to promote your business, you're there to excite the buyers. Get the buyers to say, I may not be the right person in my organization, but I do know who is. And I met this person, had a good dialogue with them. They weren't too pushy. They knew what they were talking about, they were professional, they're dressed appropriately. So I have confidence in them. I feel comfortable with them. You want to make sure your buyers feel comfortable. I had a boss when we were at a trade show, and he spent all the time telling the customer how we were going to solve the problem. Problem is he didn't ask the customer what the problem was. He didn't listen. So make sure when you get them into your booth, you listen, you get the dialogue going. Sometimes you have to bring them into the booth by having a social dialogue. Hey, how are you today? I like your shoes, I like your pants, whatever it is. You try and get their attention, you try and get them to come in. Now, you don't want to sound phony and you don't want to say, hey, everybody, come on in, come on in. Some people can do that, and that works for some people. And depending on your product, you may be into that showmanship type of situation where you want the flash, you want the excitement of the product. There are times when at a trade show you have a celebrity in your booth or you have a model in your booth that will bring people in. That's fine if that's what you want to accomplish. But remember, at the end of the day, you have a customer acquisition cost. How much did it cost to acquire that customer? When you leave the show, you may have a stack of business cards, but you don't know who's going to turn into a customer. You have to follow up. We'll talk about the follow-up in the next session. Main thing is to get that card. Now, when they're there and they're looking at their brochure, you're trying to point things out and you're trying to get them interested in it. If they're interested in taking the brochure, say, hey, you know, instead of carrying, I see you got a bag there, but instead of carrying the brochure, would you like me to email it? Give me your email address. I can email it to you. But you need to do it. You need to make sure you follow up the next week that they get that. We'll talk about the timing of that follow-up. But the key is to get that business card. You want to make sure that your booth is staffed at all times. A lot of times a trade show booth will be empty because they've only brought one exhibitor or two exhibitors, and one exhibitor is talking to a friend or they're looking at their cell phone and they miss a customer. The other exhibitor may have gone to the bathroom and they've gone to eat. You need to make sure that you have at least one person in the booth at all times, but you need two people to cover so that the one person has time to go to the bathroom, has time to go eat. You also, when you're sitting in your booth, you don't want to be sitting there looking at your cell phone, thumbing through your Instagram account or whatever. You need to have your focus on the customers. Now, you can be typing, you can be looking, but as soon as somebody passes, you stop typing, you put your phone down and you look up. A lot of times I'll have two people in the booth and I'll sit in the back and I can be doing my emails, I can be planning things, I can be following up on things, and somebody in the front will be capturing their attention. Once somebody comes into the booth, I stop. You need to stop and pay attention. You need to listen. You also have to make sure that if you have two people in the booth, that the person that you're talking to is the most important person between the two of them. So the person that has the most value to your business should be addressing the person that has the most value to your business so that you're not the president of the company and you're talking to somebody who has absolutely no possibility of buying your product. And you're talking about golfing, you're talking about sailing, you're talking about kids or whatever it is. That's not going to work. You need to make sure that the person that has the highest knowledge on your product is talking to the person that is highest targeted customer. So there are times when I may not be the right person for him to talk to and say, hey, let me get Bill. Bill's a great person to talk to because he's the person in production. He's a person in quality control. He's a person in packaging. So he's able to address these concerns. Then I can move on to somebody else. You don't want them to feel like you're dumping them. You're not important, so I'm going over here. You can't do that. You need to make sure that everybody that stops by your booth feels important, that they're the most valuable thing to you. Because at that moment they are. You spent thousands of dollars to get there. You can spend thousands of dollars and hours to get them into your booth. Spend the time to pay attention to them. Spend the time to listen to what they need. And then address how your product meets their needs, how your service meets their needs. How what you have is going to be competitive with competition. You don't want to have like, oh, it's the best in the world, it's the finest, you love it. How do you know they'll love it? You don't know what their needs are yet. You've got to listen to what their needs are. Saying something is the best. The person three booths down that has a similar product shouldn't say theirs is the best. So if you do say yours is the best, you can say ours is the best because it has these features. Or for example, I import stainless steel containers and I've done it for about 25 years. And I can say ours are the best because in the 25 years that I've been importing these, I've only had two claims for quality control. And those were situations that happened in shipment. The quality is amazing. You won't find that with anybody else. I can quantify my expertise by saying our manufacturer is competitive with price and quality. He's so competitive, he's shipping product into China. So it's like moving coals into Newcastle. A lot of containers, the stainless steel containers, are coming from China, the United States. So they produce them, but he has a quality, the image, and the price that allows him to compete in their own country. So I can quantify what I'm claiming. You don't want to just make claims. You want to be able to say, here's why what I say makes sense. Here's why you should listen. Here's what advantage. Here's why you need to make sure that what you're selling the container for or selling the product for is going to generate more return for them than what they're giving up, the money that they're giving you. You can ask for an order, but you're not going to get one. So it's important that you ask for what else can I do to help you? What information do you need? Would you like to set a meeting in the future? Can we set a phone call for next week where I can talk more about our product or our service? Would you like me to send samples? Now, you don't want to say that if you're not going to do it, because that's worse than not saying it at all. You tell somebody you're going to follow up, you better do it. You darn well better do it because they're expecting it. Again, we'll talk about the timing to do that because when they return from the trade show, they're busy. So you need to figure out how to do that. You need to make sure that you stay in touch with them after the trade show. But at the booth, you need to make sure when they walk by, you capture their attention. You have your hottest products to where they can see them so that they're drawn into your booth. And a lot of people won't cross the line to get into your booth. Once they cross the line, you've captured them. They're yours. They're yours. So take care of them. Find out what it is they want. If somebody doesn't want to stop by your booth, don't force them because that's too aggressive. People don't want to be forced. They're there to see. There's 700 booths at a trade show. They need to cover the entire floor. They're heading off to a meeting. So you also can say, hey, if you've got time, I'd like to talk to you. If not, can we set up another time? Is there another time when you can stop by? Or do you have a booth and I can come see your booth and look at your product and learn more about your business? So, trade show, you're there to listen. And by listening, you'll be able to get the information you need. You walk away with business cards, you walk away with leads. Need to make sure that your phone system is set up so that if somebody's using a WhatsApp or some other database that allows them to tap your phone into yours and exchange it, you can do that because a lot of people don't want to give business cards. Now, I've had so many times a trade show, oh, I ran out of business cards. Well, is there another way that we can get in touch with you? So you need to be prepared to ask that question. You need to be prepared to answer all the questions about your product. Why in the world would anybody buy your product over anybody else's? And again, don't say it because it's a best. Say it's best because of these factors. And understanding your weaknesses, because you've already done your SWOT analysis, you understand your weaknesses, you can downplay them and you can have an answer for when somebody points out, well, this isn't what I need. Well, it's not, but we have something else that is, or we can adapt this to meet your needs, or yeah, that's not exactly right. I think it will meet your needs because here's what it can do. And when you look at the cost-value ratio, this will accomplish what you want. So the trade show, you need to make sure that you're at the booth on time. You need to make sure that the booth has people covering the floor at all times. You need to make sure that people listen. You need to make sure that you have enough brochures, enough materials to give people. You need to make sure that at the end of the show you have samples that you can give people. At the end of the show, people will walk around collecting samples. They want to take them home. So instead of taking your own product back to the factory, you can give it to somebody. Make sure you give it to the right people, but you can give it to somebody or say, hey, come on back at the end of the show and I can give you the sample right here. You can take it home and you can try it yourself, or you can try it on, or you can look at how it works. So make sure that you have product that you can give people, giving away tokens, giving away pens, giving away that type of stuff. You can do it. It'll draw people to your booth. Sometimes it will draw the right people, but you need to know who those right people are. You need to know when you see their badge and you recognize the company name, you go, oh, this is a distributor, this is an importer, this is a retailer, this is a consumer that I need. And some shows will actually, the badges will be color-coded. So you see somebody walking around with a blue badge, you know that they're an importer. If somebody's walking around with a red badge, they're a distributor. Somebody's walking around with a green badge, they're an official from the show. All those things you need to understand. So when you're at the show, you can identify who they are, you can draw them into your booth, you can listen to what they have to say, and you can capture their business card. You can capture the information that they need. Take notes. Don't throw the business card away. I had a situation, went to a trade show in Saudi Arabia, and the individual that I had hired to collect the business cards and to represent companies, at the end of the show, I said, Okay, where's your business cards? Oh, I threw them away. Why did you throw them away? Because I talked to them and I didn't think we needed them. Any customers that's willing to give you the business card is worth the follow-up. They may not be the actual buyer, but they know somebody that is. And that's something when they're there. Say, are you the decision maker? If you're not, is there somebody else I can get in touch with? Who should I be having a dialogue? Here's some homework for you. We've prepared for the show, we've been to the show. Next, you're going to do the follow-up. Think about what you're going to do follow-up. Give me three bullet points. Give yourself three bullet points on what you're going to do to follow up. Stay tuned to the next session and we'll cover those. Also, you can go to my website, tenkeys to thrive podcast.com, go down to the Ask Gym, and you can ask me questions and I'll provide you with individual feedback. Trade shows are a big investment. Let's make sure that you maximize your returns on them. Thanks.

SPEAKER_00 13:46

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.