At a trade show, does the perception of your company matter more than your message?

And what I experienced could very well have served as a crash course on “The Top Ten Ways to Get People To Run Away From You.”

Okay, here’s today’s point and it’s a simple one: It is absolutely critical to your success to know what to say when someone comes into your booth.

Let’s face it, if you’ve got a great booth design, solid branding, a compelling message, maybe even a world-class trade show presenter, it’s very likely that there will be a whole lot of potential leads standing right in front of you. The key to keeping them there is to have an arsenal of excellent open-ended conversation starters. (If the question you’re asking will elicit a yes/no response, it’s a conversation ender!) The initial questions should always be light and friendly, and then go deeper from there. But the underlying question-asking principal still holds.

Your Cheat Sheet of Effective Questions

These will get you started (not necessary to ask in this order):

Look at their badge and say: “So ___________, what do you do at [company name]?

“How did you get started in this field?”

“What would you say is the biggest challenge you’re facing?”

“How have you addressed that issue in the past?”

“How did THAT work for you?”

“What kinds of things are you looking for at this show?”

“Great show so far. What have you seen that you’ve really liked?”

“How have you been dealing with challenge of _______________?” (online security, identity theft, etc.)

Listen, then follow up: “That’s interesting. One of our customers had the same issue. Let me show you what we did for THEM. …”)

“How familiar are you with our company’s product / service / etc.?”

“You’ve heard about some of the features in our live demo. Which one makes the most sense for what YOU’RE doing?”

“What feature DIDN’T you hear about that might be something you’d be interested in?”

“What is your timeline for implementing this type of solution?”

Trade Show Exhibits Are Intended to Serve a Purpose …

… and that purpose, when you boil it all down, is new customers/more revenue/success. Why build a booth … why book the travel … why even rent the space, if you’re not willing to engage with the people you’re paying to attract?  If you can’t get a good conversation started, all the booth whiz-bang in the world isn’t going to help.

So, start with the some of the “openers” above, customize them, make them yours and I promise, you WILL get better results at your next trade show.

Author’s note: I’m sure a lot of my readers already know how to ask a great opening question. In fact, I’m counting on you to help me. So, for the benefit of everyone, please comment and share your best conversation starters and let’s put together the most powerful list possible!

Be careful that you’re not on autopilot with trade show planning, presentations, marketing and booth design. If you’re just going through the motions and making the safe choices you know will get through the approval process, the specter of “trade show death” is already hovering. I mean, if you’re bored, don’t you think that’s reflected in your trade show presence? Don’t you think attendees can pick up on that tedium and strut right on by? Ennui isn’t exactly a trade show aphrodisiac.

How about this time, you start over. From scratch. I’m talking 4-5 months before the show, get those marketing directors, department managers and corporate personnel in a room around a table and find a completely different, utterly fantastic way to deliver your message and present your brand. Yes, easier said than done. But here’s your roadmap …

A New Trade Show Approach is Only an Improvisation Away

Imagine you’re sitting at that meeting table. Some people you know well. Some faces are relatively new. Some extroverts are champing at the bit to share their ideas, and some others are looking for a potted plant to hide behind. But you’ve got to come up with something all together. The biggest danger to the best ideas is the issue of intimidation. Group leaders (either by personality or rank) will always let you know what they think. But oftentimes the best ideas are in the heads of those who are too shy to share or those who no longer speak up because they’ve been burned in the past when they’ve tried. It’s essential you tap the brainpower of the entire team, and improv is a tremendous way to do so.

Try this exercise I learned from improv guru William Hall: One person shares an idea, and the next person MUST say, “Yes, and …” (no matter how outrageous or objectionable the prior statement). See where it goes. Keep playing for 10 minutes or however much longer it takes to get fully around the table. Make sure someone (in addition to playing along) scribes the key concepts on a whiteboard. People will say some crazy things, but there’s always a genius idea in there somewhere from which an entire trade show presence can launch. And don’t be surprised if that idea emerges from a really quiet person finally emboldened by the notion that every idea has equal validity!

Now, the biggest buzzkill to this lovefest is when the manager with true approval power isn’t involved in the exercise and subsequently shoots it down. So plan ahead, and make sure all the key decision-makers are in the room and participating. If you’re a part of the solution in real-time, it’s transformative and melts the hearts of even the most rigid mangers.

This exercise can work to develop all the elements of a trade show—from the theme to the message to the giveaways to the booth layout and flow. But make sure that when the meeting wraps, you’ve developed a rock-solid 30-second elevator pitch of what you want to communicate to your trade show audience. From that, it’s easier to craft a catchphrase, billboard tagline and anything else.

Get out of that rut! This is your clarion call for more creativity, more fun, better ideas and better results! Because as Coach Torts would say, “Safe is Death.”

Think twice before you "turn it up to 11."

And that something is this: No matter how awesome you think something will be—no matter what brand or company image you’re looking to present—you cannot afford to lose sight of the intention of that event.

Here’s the backstory: I recently worked a high-tech trade show in Las Vegas and was doing a presentation for my client at the opening reception. This event was billed as a tremendous soft marketing opportunity—a chance to meet with potential clients in a more informal setting with food and beverage … and best of all, no competing events. Just a nice stretch of quality time before all the trade-show craziness begins.

And you know, they delivered: The food was great. The drinks were flowing. The people were receptive. And just when I was in the middle of a presentation with a large crowd of interested and attentive guests, just when our booth staff was having some meaningful one-on-ones with potential customers … BOOM! Rock music begins roaring from our end of the hall (where, ironically enough, the “preferred” booths happened to be). CONVERSATION? Not a chance!  It was unfathomable. People were furious and trying to find the show planners to complain. Meanwhile, this 10-piece rock band was blasting away … and blasting away any opportunity to do business. And yes, they played for an hour, virtually hijacking the evening.

This was supposed to be a soft-marketing opportunity; a chance to get together and connect with people. It was not meant to be a rock concert.

Sure, have a jazz quartet. Have an acoustic guitarist. Or, tell people there’s going to be a fantastic rock performance after the reception, “so stick around!” But don’t charge people a ton of money for preferred booth location, provide everything they need to conduct highly valuable discussions … and THEN make that completely impossible by cranking the band up to “11”!

When planning an event—especially a client reception—be very careful that your entertainment doesn’t prevent business from getting done.

We were there to do business. They were there to rock our socks off. And they wondered why folks complained …

Here’s an easy example: Try a magic trick at a trade show for a small group of adults. If it’s the right trick with some sort of natural segue to your product or technology, it may very well be a helpful mechanism to drive further discussion. But try that same magic trick for the kids, and woah! Now we’re on to something! Before you know it the kids are out of their minds with excitement. Next thing you know, you’re performing for a captive audience of 40—kids and adults—who have gathered around. It’s a simple mantra: Once you have the kids, you have the parents. And once you have the parents, you have everyone.

It’s the fundamental difference between trying to get the rapt attention of a businessperson fast-walking down the aisle staring at their Blackberry and getting the attention of a wide-eyed youngster in a stroller who can’t believe you just pulled ten thumb drives out of your left ear.

There’s a Child in Us All

Unless you’re in a specialized niche, the vast majority of your trade shows will likely NOT be kid-friendly. In those instances, they key is to find that inner child in the adults surrounding you. Your booth presence needs to feel kinetic— movement, sound, bright, visually appealing colors and a centerpiece that deserves and demands attention.  And yes, that could even be a professional trade show presenter.

It’s going to take a lot to stop that Blackberry power-walker in their tracks. But we can all be distracted. Think of all those YouTube videos with a gazillion views. You think all those views happened after work hours and on weekends? No, my friend. Someone who was working productively got an email and got distracted. And then that person stayed because the content was compelling. A trade show booth has strong similarities. When looking for the inner child in adult trade show attendees, think Walt Disney. Think about not just creating a booth, but creating an attraction! What is the thing that will make the little kid in you put your hand on the stroller and say, “Daddy! Stop here!” When you’ve found that, you’ve found the heart of your trade show presence.

P.S.: When my son was in a stroller, he never ONCE asked me to take him to “PowerPoint World.”

Do you have an industry-related question you’d like answered on “Hey Newman”? Send him an e-mail and get your inquiry answered on the blog.

6. Build trust: The relationship between a potential customer and a booth staffer revolves around trust. If you do nothing else during your five-minute conversation, just simply create a rapport with the attendee. No one is going to actually make the decision to “buy” while in the booth; it’s going to be a multi-step process. All you’re really doing is initiating that process and building trust. So, what two traits earn trust? Warmth and strength.

7a. Exude warmth: It’s essential that booth staffers understand that on the trade show floor, warmth always comes first. You must give the attendee ample reason to think that this conversation (and potentially working with this company) “is going to be a good experience.” That’s accomplished through humor and empathy and showing genuine interest. Help that person to feel relaxed and open up. Once you’ve established that you’ll have a fun experience together, you can move to the next natural question: Are you the right company for the job?

7b. Show strength: Once you’ve established rapport, the attendee is going to need to figure out if you know your stuff and if you can handle his or her needs. At this early stage in the process, it’s more about building confidence and having the command of language necessary to articulate all the amazing, life-altering ways this product or technology can improve that person’s life. Deliver answers to the customer’s questions with confidence. Stand confidently. Dress confidently. Again, it’s about the benefits for the customer; not the technology itself. When a staffer leads with warmth and follows with strength, it primes the customer to move to the next logical step in the acquisition process.

8. During training, ask for a volunteer: When it’s time to role-play, Rather than waiting for a reluctant volunteer to raise their hand, ask for the senior-most employee in your pre-show staff training to come up to the front and participate. Everyone else will want to see how the person in charge does it, and you’ll instantly have a rapt audience. And the person can’t say “no” and expect everyone else to participate. If you happen to get an upper-level executive on stage, you’ll have a riveting few minutes of training that staffers will remember and discuss long afterward. There’s very little you can do as a presenter or trainer that’s as interesting to staffers as watching one of their own in action.

9. Practice an exit strategy: When following the previous eight steps across these two blog posts, oftentimes the results of interactions with attendees will be dramatically different. In fact, it’s not uncommon to engage someone in your booth and then not be able to get rid of that person! Sometimes they get so comfortable and feel so cared for that they don’t want to stop talking and don’t want to leave. That’s nice and all, but as a booth staffer the time will come when you need to move on.

The key is for the staffer to engage in a directed discussion with a purpose, a goal and a rough time limit. It’s about efficiency of conversation without being curt. You simply can’t allow one conversation to go on for 20 minutes. So what do you do when that customer wants to tell you all about his last fishing trip? Ask wrap-up questions that would naturally flow into the end of a conversation: I’ve told you a lot, where are you with all of this? … Do you have any concerns at this point that I can alleviate? … Listen, I’d love to talk to you more in another forum when not on the floor. Do you have an hour next week to chat with me? Thanks so much for your time. Without an exit strategy, success can be a dangerous trade-show curse.

10. Pull new people into the conversation: When a 1-to-1 interaction is going well, oftentimes two or three others will begin to hover and listen in. Those hovering people attract more people who notice the crowd forming, and so on. The key is to pull those on the “outside” into the conversation where they feel a part of the interaction. That one moment of “I see you and I’ll be right with you” could literally be the difference between a million-dollar sale and someone walking away. People want to feel noticed and feel in control of the situation. When they’re ignored, they don’t feel in control.

Ideally, staffers should be mic’d so that attendees aren’t straining to hear. But more importantly, why repeat the same thing to five or 10 different people when you can tell them all at the same time! It’s about efficiency and conservation of voice and effort … and you might as well get 10 leads out of a single conversation.

This is all just logical stuff. Staffers know this from real life and regular human interaction. It’s just about bringing it onto the trade show floor. If you can do just a little bit more than the next guy in the booth one over—if you can just make a little more effort—you’ll really stand out. Then, your company stands out, too.

“Make sure the human beings you put in your booth who will speak on your behalf and represent your company with potential multimillion dollar accounts know what they’re doing, know the environment and are willing and eager to do their job well. If you do that, you could have an empty booth with nothing else in it but the carpeting, and you will sell.” —Andy Saks, Spark Presentations

So much money and time and creativity is spent getting trade show attendees into a booth. Yet a shockingly large percentage of those same exhibitors fail to put equal thought and resources behind what staff should do when people get there. It’s enough of a problem that there are expert consultants to fix it. My friend and colleague Andy Saks, Chief Sparkler at the presentation design and delivery agency Spark Presentations, is one of the finest. I sat down with Andy to discuss his booth staff performance training program, “Booth Brush-Up: How to Stand Out, Sell More, and Have Fun on the Show Floor.” From our conversation came the Top 10 Ways to Radically Transform Booth Staff Effectiveness, and I’m thrilled he ok’d publishing it for all of our benefit:

1. Tell Your Staff “WIIFM”: The most effective way to motivate your staff to adopt new behaviors that improve your booth is to answer the key question they’re silently asking: “What’s in it for me?” So start your training by teasing the instant, tangible benefits they’ll personally enjoy by following your suggestions. For example: “Show of hands: Who here would like your time in the booth to go by faster? Who wants to have more fun along the way? Who’d like to get better leads by talking less? Who’d like the chance to dramatically improve their prospects at this company in just a few days? Well, listen up folks, because if you follow a few simple suggestions, you’ll enjoy all those benefits.” Now that they like where you’re going, they’ll march eagerly in formation behind you.

2. Attract them with body language: This goes beyond basics like don’t talk on your phone” and “don’t stare at the floor.” It’s about understanding the dollar value of every single customer that walks (or doesn’t walk) into that booth and how your body language will impact that customer’s decision to approach you. What are you communicating with your facial expression, your posture, your location in the booth? How will that stranger perceive you from 30 feet away … and up close? Any customer could be a lifetime customer. Any account could be a multimillion-dollar account. You’ll never know if your body language deflects the attendee before he or she steps into your booth.

3. Shift your focus: Trade shows are about the prospects; not the products. This is your opportunity to learn about your prospects and leads to decide if it’s a good match for you and for them. It’s always about the customer—and how your products may help that customer get where they want to go. So where do they want to go? It’s much more useful to spend your time asking questions of a prospect and finding out about their challenges, needs and budget than to talk about your technology (which may not be a good fit). It shows you care more about your prospect than pitching your product. That generates trust, so it’s useful in both directions.

4. Stop showing off: Often when booth staff do demos, they’re very eager to show off their product and own level of knowledge of that product. The result is a dense, technical monologue. It’s almost certain that the person you’re talking to doesn’t know as much about the product and might not be as familiar with industry terms, so it’s very easy to talk over that person’s head by accident. They won’t tell you they don’t understand because it’s embarrassing to them. But inside they’re either panicking or mulling an exit strategy. Use the simplest language possible. Define terms and ask what needs to be defined. What do the letters in that acronym stand for? Care about making sure that person is “with you.” If they’re not with you, the conversation isn’t going anywhere.

5. Walk your staff up the “Benefit Ladder”: Customers buy benefits; not features. They’re in it for themselves. So the job of booth staff is to find the best and biggest benefits—life-changing benefits—and express them clearly and thoughtfully. They need to easily walk the attendee up that “Benefit Ladder.”

If your product has a feature that will save a customer time, that’s not the ultimate benefit, is it? What’s the benefit of saving time? More time for other projects. What the benefit of that? Getting more projects done quicker. And then? They’ll get noticed by their boss. Which results in what? They get a job promotion, leading to more money. Ultimately the top rung of this particular ladder is: “Better quality of life, overall satisfaction, more time with the family … happiness!” It’s not what this product will do for them tomorrow; it’s about what it means “in the big picture.” And in order for the prospect to really “get” that larger benefit, your booth staff must first understand the benefit of describing things in this way.

Next week, we’ll present the rest of our Top 10 Ways to Radically Transform Booth Staff Effectiveness. Until then, I leave you with this quote from Andy:

“The single most important element of any trade show booth is its people. Not the company name. Not the product. Not the signs. It’s the human beings. For any trade show presenter, it’s heartbreaking to make all that effort to bring in a large crowd, only to have them vanish moments later. It’s like running the ball 98 yards down the field and then sitting down to have a sandwich. Run those other 2 yards and spike the ball.” —Andy Saks, Spark Presentations

I’ve talked before about timid exhibitors cowering in a small booth, spending most of their time staring at a bowl of Junior Mints. To a certain extent, it’s understandable. There’s a player to your left in a 70 x 70 with a putting green. There’s a big dog to your right, with more crowd gatherers than you have employees.

And then there’s you, in your pop-up booth. Small. New-ish. Unproven … as both a trade show presence and a technology. But what if you were the baddest company on the trade show block? What if you were a super-heavyweight among heavyweights. In the immortal words of Cheers, what if everybody knew your name, and they were always glad you came?

If you were truly the most important company on the trade show floor (and everybody knew it), you would walk differently. You would talk differently. There’d be a certain swagger and authority you’d bring to every interaction. Even contemplating that notion and conjuring the mental image creates a bit of a shift. It just feels different. And if carried through to the exhibit hall, it’ll look different to everyone around you.

It’s really no different than what you’d tell a socially awkward junior high student about that dreaded walk through the cafeteria: Just act like you belong, and soon enough, you will. In fact, act like a rock star, and soon you’ll have groupies of your own.

We spend so much time worrying about all the nitty-gritty elements that go into a trade-show presence—building the booth, selecting the signage and messaging, showcasing the product—that it’s easy to overlook the importance of attitude. The truth is, a good head game is often more important than a strong trade show ground game.

So, at your next trade show, when those attendees come tearing through the aisles, act like they’re there to see YOU.  Act like you OWN the joint. Don’t worry, those Junior Mints aren’t going anywhere.

Do you have an industry-related question you’d like answered on “Hey Newman”? Send him an e-mail and get your inquiry answered on the blog.

It’s a powerful question for anyone to ask, but it’s especially potent for companies that have been around a long time. What if this was your very first trade show … What if no one knew a thing about what you do or what you stand for. Everything is brand new and shiny: The slogan is new. The identity package is new. The product positioning is new. Consider it a corporate time machine, and you’ve got the key.

Now, what would you do? What would look different? What would sound different? How would you want the public to perceive you? This isn’t just some team-building exercise; it’s an opportunity to see your company image honestly and reflect on what it might be. The road is littered with the wreckage of companies that got complacent. What does the startup in you want to do?

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Do you have an industry-related question you’d like answered on “Hey Newman”? Send him an e-mail and get your inquiry answered on the blog.

Viewing estimates for the wedding ceremony of Prince William and Miss Catherine Middleton, at 11 a.m. British time on the dot, hovered in the three billion range, give or take 500 million. How could you possibly generate this kind of interest in your booth, short of having your Head of Marketing marry your Product Manager? Here are a few things you can do to take your trade show brand to new heights:

Generate interest. You may not have the built-in appeal of the royals, but you can still reveal what’s noble in your product or service.

Cultivate brand loyalty. Treat your subjects—your consumers—well and they’ll be there for you when you have something worthwhile to announce.

Write the fairy tale. Don’t give us a bunch of numbers. Don’t rattle on about facts and figures. Tell your story and give it a happy ending.

Create anticipation. Do your pre-wedding work. Build excitement BEFORE people start walking down the aisle.

Pick the right venue. Unless you anticipate tens of thousands of people storming your booth and helicopters flying overhead, you probably DON’T need to invest in the biggest booth you can.

Prepare. Events of this magnitude didn’t just get thrown together overnight. Be obsessive. Consider EVERY detail. Be a wedding planner.

Invite the right people. You know who they are. Contact them early. And give them a reason to show up, but don’t expect presents.

Don’t forget the ring. Have a checklist. Use it. The smallest details may turn out to be not all that small on the Big Day. (By the way, click here for a free checklist.)

Send thank you notes. Follow up, follow up, follow up.  Consider a postcard or hand-written note.  Although using a quill pen and sealing wax might be pushing it a bit.

Do you have an industry-related question you’d like answered on “Hey Newman”? Send him an e-mail and get your inquiry answered on the blog.