How to Plan for a Small Trade Show or Vendor Event

Many employees are faced with the task of planning their company's appearance at a trade show. Unfortunately most do not understand the requirements or the lingo of trade shows and end up not having things they need or paying for things they don't.

Obviously there can be many, many steps involved with planning a large, complex trade show appearance. Hopefully if you are attending a show like this you either have in-house trade show experts or you outsource to a marketing company.

However, if your company is planning to attend a small trade show, here are some of the steps you need to take.

Difficulty: Moderately Challenging

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Computer
• Trade show booth
• Collateral
• Booth workers
• Shipping method
• Giveaway

1. Figure out when and where the trade show will take place. If it's a small, local show your only preparation may consist of toting your company's tabletop or pop-up booth to the event, putting out some brochures and a little giveaway item, and plopping yourself in front of it. If it's a somewhat larger show, however, or if it's taking place out of town, decide who is going to attend the trade show and work the booth. Make sure this employee or employees knows they're covering a trade show so they won't schedule something else for the same time. Now that you've got your workers covered, you can move on to dealing with the mechanics of the trade show itself.

2. The company or association sponsoring or putting on the trade show should have sent you some information, or at least pointed you to a website with the specifics. Pull out that information now. If you haven't reserved your space yet, do so immediately. The information packet should include a layout of the show floor. Take a look at it and pick 2-3 spots where you'd like to locate, then contact the show organizers to see if those spots are available. Alternately, the organizers may assign booth locations.

3. Once you've got your spot secured, figure out what you're going to need in the way of supplies. Find out what's included in the booth reservation cost - oftentimes one table and a couple of chairs are included. If you have a tabletop display, however, you may need an extra table - one to put the display on and one to keep your collateral, business cards, giveaways, product samples, etc on. Some organizers include electricity in the price of the booth. What does this mean for a small trade show? Usually it's one 3-pronged extension cord. Do you need electricity? Does your tabletop or pop-up booth need lighting? Does anything else you're bringing require electricity? If so, bring a power strip with you. Plug that in to the extension cord and you won't have to worry about running additional lines to your booth.

4. Other supplies related to the booth itself that you might need or want are: furniture, plants, display racks, and carpeting. Most of these things are optional with the exception of carpeting. If the display hall isn't carpeted the trade show organizers will almost definitely require you to purchase a square of carpet for your booth to sit on. A 10'x10' booth, which is a standard size for smaller trade shows, needs 100 square feet of carpet. Do yourself and your other booth workers a favor and spring for padding underneath the carpet. Standing for hours on basically a concrete floor does not make happy booth workers.

5. Now it's time to gather all the other things that go along with a trade show: product samples, brochures, business cards, candy - what you bring is mostly up to you. However, a tip - don't bring too much and don't bring too little. How will you know if it's too much or too little? There's probably an estimated attendance number in the information packet from the show organizers, or you can call and ask how many attendees came last year.

6. Two other details: giveaways and shipping. At a small trade show it's probably just fine to bring a bag of candy and put some out on your table. If you want to do something nicer, but still cheap, pens are a good bet. You can buy pens from any number of sources, often for about .50 apiece if you're willing to purchase 500 or more. If you attend several small trade shows each year you'll probably need 500. You might want to bring a few nicer giveaways for people who you either really want to work with or seem very eager to work with you. At my old company we kept some nice 6"x9" leather-covered notebooks with pens attached under our table. When we had been speaking with a prospect for a while and we felt good about our chances of winning their business, we'd pull out this nice item and say something like, "In case you'd like to take some notes about our conversation". People are suckers for things like that. I believe we paid $4-5 each for the notebooks, and we were stingy about giving them away.

7. Ah, shipping. The bane of many trade show-attending company's existence. Even if you don't have a lot of giveaways and collateral left, you will need to lug home the tabletop or pop-up booth and any lead information you got during the show. If you're only sending a few things back to the office I'd recommend using UPS. The show organizers can most likely make arrangements to have your stuff picked up. If you have a lot of items in multiple boxes, I like using Yellow Freight. They were cheaper than any of the other shippers, including USPS, FedEx, and UPS. And, if you can develop a relationship with them by using them consistently for your trade show apparatus they are very good at working with you to track your packages, etc.

Tips & Warnings

• Give yourself enough time to make arrangements - in the trade show world, the early bird gets the best prices and the procrastinators pay a lot more.
• Don't stand behind the table at the trade show. Hard as it may be, especially if you're shy by nature, you need to be out in front of your display so you can draw people to you.
• Avoid having too many or too few workers. Too many means you'll probably commiserate about your company, etc since there are always booth workers who will be unoccupied. You do NOT want to air your company's dirty laundry for someone to overhear at a trade show. Too few workers makes it look like you don't think the trade show was valuable enough to the your business to fully staff it.
• Be sure your employees have an "elevator speech" down pat. This is a 30-45 second introduction to your company and its products, and it should roll right off the tongue automatically. You have a very small window to differentiate yourself - don't spend it fumbling for words.
• This should go without saying but since it's in the warning section obviously it's a problem - make sure your employees are dressed properly. Whether you issue them company polo shirts or advise them to wear suits, everyone representing your company should look professional.
• The hotel bar is a great place to make contacts, but it can also sink your chances at a trade show if your employees get plowed and make a scene. If you want to take your employees out to let them blow off steam, don't go to the hotel bar. Take a cab somewhere far enough away that you're less likely to see other people attending your trade show.
• Issue a "trade show etiquette" document to all employees - you never know when someone has to attend a trade show who doesn't normally represent your company, and they need to know what's expected of them.