As a junior salesperson I always thought it was cool to attend a trade show. I had to work the booth, but I got a lot of cool stuff for free towards the end of the show and all the food I could eat during it.
Todays post is by Ronald D. Southard, CEO at SafeSourcing Inc.
The honor of attending a retail tradeshow was often reserved for the best sales people or those with the best presentation skills.
According to Wikipedia Trade is the voluntary, often asymmetric, exchange of goods, services, or money. Trade is also called commerce or transaction. A mechanism that allows trade is called a market. The original form of trade was barter, the direct exchange of goods and services. As such, Wikipedia defines A trade fair (trade show or expo) is an exhibition organized so that companies in a specific industry can showcase and demonstrate their latest products, service, study activities of rivals and examine recent market trends and opportunities.
Unfortunately as products have become more complex particularly in the area of non consumables and technology driven products it has become much more difficult for these shows to drive new orders. Leads maybe, orders not so much. This is primarily do to the fact that most decision makers don?t show up at these shows and if they do, may not even visit suppliers booths or be able to get a presentation if they do visit.
These are expensive events for suppliers to attend, so you may not get the exposure you are looking for on the tradeshow floor. Normally you can get a list of attendees on line that will allow you to make sure you are going to be able to spend your time wisely.
If you are a retailer planning to attend a trade show, have your plan in place as to what you want to accomplish in advance.
1.?Who will you be having dinner with?
2.?What booths will you visit?
3.?What is it you want as a take away from your visit
4.?Do you have any messages you want to pass on to specific suppliers.
5.?What presentations or education sessions will you attend?
6.?How will you report what you have learned back to decision makers?
If you don’t care to wait until the next tradeshow to begin saving some serious money, please contact a SafeSourcing Customer Services Account Manager today.
We look forward to and appreciate your comments
