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Pushy Salespeople Have No Business at a Trade Show

Written by Barry Siskind

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Booth staff training is extremely important to the success of your trade shows. There is no such thing as too much booth training nor is there any employee that knows it all. You should either hire an outside consultant to conduct this training, or develop your own training program. In either case the training needs to prepare your staffers to sell and function in a trade show environment, with competing sights and sounds.

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Think back to a time when you were a customer. You could have been shopping for anything: a new car, a winter jacket or something for dinner. Now pretend that you asked whoever was serving you for some information and that person took your question as a signal that you wanted to hear everything. What would your reaction have been?

One of the things that drive trade show visitors crazy is pushy sales people. When visiting a show, the last thing visitors want to encounter are sales people who do not take the time to learn about their visitor’s unique situation before embarking on an over whelming spiel that includes information that has very little to do with their needs.   It’s called the pitch.

Think back to a time when you were a customer. You could have been shopping for anything: a new car, a winter jacket or something for dinner. Now pretend that you asked whoever was serving you for some information and that person took your question as a signal that you wanted to hear everything. What would your reaction have been? My guess is that while you may have tolerated the pitch, you were probably thinking about ways to end the conversation. Am I right?

Visitors to a trade show feel exactly the same. Their defense against pushy sales people is to avoid eye contact. Studies have shown that as many as ninety five percent of visitors walking a show avoid eye contact. Can you blame them?

The solution then is an attitude adjustment. When you are preparing your staff for a show or an event, you want to help them change their approach from one of a sales person to one of a host. A host is a friendlier role to play and takes the emphasis away from pure selling.

The role of host is usually played out in social settings. Here is an example. Let’s suppose for a moment that you and your family have moved to a new home. The moving trucks have long gone, your boxes have been unpacked and everything has been placed where it belongs. It has been an exhausting experience. Now you and your partner are sitting on a couch realizing that while your new home looks great you are strangers in the neighborhood. To rectify the problem you decide to have an open house for the neighbors. You set the time for next Sunday between two and four P.M. You develop an invitation and walk it up and down your street stuffing it into mail boxes. Now it’s two o’clock on Sunday and your home looks perfect. Your front door is open and your first neighbor approaches. What do you do? You have choices:

    - Sit in the den and watch television
    - Sit on your couch and read the newspaper
    - Approach them by telling them all about yourself, or
    - Approach them and get them talking about the neighborhood.

The last suggestion is the one that fits the role of host well. It’s the same role that should be played in a booth. Your exhibition booth is your place of business for a few days. Instead of trying to sell products and services to visitors who happen by, simply welcome them and try to find out what their needs are.

The right approach will make the difference between success and failure of your exhibit plan.

Barry Siskind
		About the author:
		Barry Siskind, President of International Training and Management Company is one of North America’s most sought after consultants and speakers and an internationally recognized trade and consumer show expert. Barry provides a wide range of products and services to help exhibitors improve their bottom line both on and off the trade show floor. These services translate to stellar results for his clients. He has written seven best-selling books and over 500 original trade articles and industry reports as well as a Guru series for the Centre for Exhibition Industry Research. Read More >>