No One is Sitting for my Booth Presentations- Now What?

San Francisco, CA- There are few trade show sights more disheartening than a Sales Engineer sheepishly presenting to an empty trade show booth theater. It’s a rough ego-blow for the undoubtedly knowledgeable Sales Engineer, and a stinging indictment of pre-show booth engagement tactics and planning. Luckily however, these problems can easily be avoided by relying on this tried and true booth theater presentation engagement process.

Step One: Gather a Crowd

Of course you expect your sales and marketing team to be on point and assertive when it comes to engaging walk-bys at your trade show booth. You’ve told them so many times! On-site however, extenuating circumstances often get in the way: exhaustion, sales meetings and crises back at the office.

When it comes to consistently getting your booth theater filled, its tough to beat the combo of a team of 2 or more professional crowd gatherers plus a mic’ed emcee. You can depend on a full house for every presentation, all day long, all week long, right up until that final presentation as folks are running for the door with their rollaboard luggage. It may be better for your lead count and sanity to just leave the crowd gathering to the pros, and let your booth staff focus on deeper conversations and demos.

However, if your company’s marketing depends on a decisively assertive and conversational brand, you may want to consider booth staff training to ready your sales and marketing staff for the highly specialized and tiring trade show environment.

Step Two: Hold the Crowd

Getting that first prospect seated before a booth presentation is only the beginning. Trade show aisles are exploding with distractions and your prospect’s phone is blowing up with urgent emails and texts. How do you keep those prospects seated and attentive for your entire presentation? Here’s where it pays to have a professional emcee to charismatically gather a crowd and explain the critical relevance of the upcoming presentation, all while keeping the booth energy light and fun. Its important to involve your professional emcee as early as possible in your presentation development process so the booth pitch can be integrated most effectively with the presentation subject matter, or simply outsource your presentation writing to a pro.

The trade show expo environment requires its own unique presentation tone: a combination of sales pitch and technical information along with a healthy dose of carnival pizzazz and self-aware silliness. Most sales engineer presenters who primarily deliver onsite pitches find themselves woefully unprepared for the circus-like distractions of the expo aisle. Trade show-specific speaker coaching and trade show presentation writing can solve this problem and allow your presenters to leverage the unique aspects of the trade show environment to your company’s advantage.

Step Three: Incentivize the Crowd

Of course your solution is the best one on the expo floor! Prospects will be certainly crowding into your booth to hear about it- they’ll be lucky to get a seat! Look, I have no doubt that your solution is unique and amazing, but so is every other solution on the show floor. Everyone has done a great job with their marketing messaging!

Unfortunately, the current trade show attendee expectation is to receive a promo item for having a seat prior to a presentation (t-shirt, socks, etc), plus a raffle ticket for a drawing for a ~$50 prize at end of the presentation. Like it or not, this is the current expectation- disregard at your peril.

Hopefully this three step booth theater presentation engagement process can help you maximize your company’s trade show budget at your next show by packing your booth theater for every single presentation. Get those prospect butts in seats so your presenters can communicate your solution your solution effectively, and so you can sit back and enjoy a coffee and the adulation for a job well done!