Speaker 2: 0:20

Thank you. Meet Evan Polin, the president of Polin Performance Group. A master in sales coaching with over two decades of experience, evan is not just a consultant. He's a force in sales, focusing on mindset, planning and skill development. He's also the co-author of Selling Professional Services, the Sandler Way. Joining him is Craig Andrews, partner and CEO of Beholder Agency. An expert in growth marketing With 20 years under his belt, craig blends marketing creativity with strategy to propel businesses forward, making Beholder Agency a leader in effective marketing solutions. Together, evan and Craig are here to share their wisdom on winning strategies, best practices and transformative insights that will fuel your growth. Get ready to revolutionize your sales and marketing approach right here on the Sales and Marketing Playbook Unleashed.

Speaker 1: 1:12

And welcome to the Sales and Marketing Playbook Unleashed. I'm Craig Andrews and my partner in crime, Evan Poland. We're here today to continue our conversation about trade shows. Evan, how are you doing today?

Speaker 3: 1:23

I'm doing great, Craig. How are?

Speaker 1: 1:24

you doing today? I'm doing awesome. We got a great subject here. As the birds are chirping and the weather's getting warmer, what does that mean? Trade show season.

Speaker 3: 1:39

We've gotten through the combine and now we're ready to take shape and jump right into trade show season, for those of you who haven't already started.

Speaker 1: 1:49

That's right, and the thing to keep in mind is that trade shows could be happening now, which means you should have prepared, or it could be coming later, which means you better be preparing now. So why don't we recap a little bit in terms of the sales and marketing piece, in terms of the prep of the trade show, and then we're going to jump right into what you do during the trade show From a sales perspective, evan. What should they have done pre-show?

Speaker 3: 2:12

Yes.

Speaker 3: 2:12

So for those of you who missed out on our last episode, pre-show is really a big key to making sure that your experience at the trade show is going to be effective and profitable to making sure that your experience at the trade show is going to be effective and profitable.

Speaker 3: 2:25

So some of the things that you should be doing before you get to the show is doing your research. Who's going to be there? Is it the right target audience? Are there people there that we want to make sure that we get in front of? Once we get that list and we know who's going to be there, we need to be reaching out to people before the show Again, not at the show, but before the show and reaching out and trying to schedule meetings. My most successful clients have 5, 10, 15, 20 meetings scheduled before they ever get to the trade show. For those of you who are going to some of the really large trade shows out in Vegas we just had a mutual client that was out at a trade show in Barcelona If there's thousands, tens of thousands of people, a hundred thousand people that are going to be there, the chances of randomly bumping into the person that you want to meet, bumping into the person that you want to meet is not very good. So the more that you are proactive, find out either get the list of who signed up for this year, get the exhibitor list, go back and find last year's list. Proactively reach out, schedule meetings. It's going to be a night and day difference in terms of the results that you're going to get, difference in terms of the results you're going to get.

Speaker 3: 3:47

Make sure your people have their toolkits prepared. Do you have the right people from the company showing up at the trade show? Hopefully there aren't two or three people who, just like the fact that the show was in California, the show was in Florida, saw it as a free vacation but wouldn't know the first thing to say to a client or a prospect or a strategic partner about what your company does. Make sure that you have the right people going to the show. Make sure that you are prepared with your elevator pitch. You are prepared with With your client avatar. You know who you're looking to meet so that you know them when you bump into them and have things like your business card set up.

Speaker 3: 4:28

Craig, I know in a second you'll talk about some of the marketing things that people should have prepared going in. But you should have a plan before you go, even in terms of looking at who the exhibitors are and figuring out which could be prospects, which could be strategic partners, which of the different exhibitors you want to visit, who from your company is going to be the most appropriate person to stop by those booths. But you should have all of that planned out well before you get there. The other thing that you should have is your goals. What do you want to accomplish? Is it the kind of show I worked with a soil company a number of years ago? The other thing that you should have is your goals. What do you want to accomplish? Is it the kind of show I worked with a soil company a number of years ago?

Speaker 3: 5:09

Orders were taking place at the show. People garden centers were placing their orders for the upcoming year. So those folks had to close the deal at the show, otherwise it was going to be a really crappy sales year. The majority of my clients aren't going to close a deal at the show, otherwise it was going to be a really crappy sales year. The majority of my clients aren't going to close a deal at the show. They are going to start a relationship, have that first conversation and we'll talk about what you should be doing at the show. But it's really kind of setting the stage to do business. You're not closing business, but you need to determine which type of show it is and, before you ever get there, what your goals are for what you want to accomplish. So, craig, from a marketing perspective, if you just want to give a quick recap, but what are some things that people should have done before they ever got to the trade show?

Speaker 1: 5:55

Absolutely so.

Speaker 1: 5:56

The thing to consider prior to the trade show is all the stuff that in theory should already be in place A understanding the quality of the competition at the show.

Speaker 1: 6:07

That'll let you know in terms of if you need to step up your brand or if your brand is fine where it's at.

Speaker 1: 6:12

If you're going to be at a place that has competition that's on the upper echelon of your industry, you want to try and match that as best as possible with the branding that you have at the show. If you're in a position that you're messaging and everything that Evan put in place to us just now, you want to make sure that you have your business cards are branded the same, that you're all kind of wearing the same branded level things, because you're not only setting up a relationship through the sales perspective, but what you're setting up is a trust factor that you can match the other people in the show. So something to consider in the pre-show is what do we look like to the outside world and what are we doing from a social campaign that we can move on to? What are we saying in those messages from a social perspective? What are we saying in our messaging from a branding perspective. All of those factors come into play to make sure that whatever your booth looks like is a reflection of you before they even walk in the door.

Speaker 3: 7:10

So Craig, quick question for you in that regard. If you are the little company going and companies have these big, huge, ornate displays and you've got a table banner and nothing else, what kind of message could that send to your prospects, could that send to the community, if you don't look sound and feel as good, if not better than the competition?

Speaker 1: 7:36

So have you ever been hunting before?

Speaker 3: 7:40

For this analogy, for this story. We'll say sure, absolutely.

Speaker 1: 7:44

Okay. So imagine a vision here of you hunting with a bow and arrow versus a gun, for instance. There's a difference there and there's a difference instantly. We all know if we're in trouble and being approached by a bear with a bow and arrow, we're probably in trouble. It's called bear food, right, it's called bear food, that's right.

Speaker 1: 8:06

So that's the impression that it gives is that you came unprepared, you're not meeting the standard that these other guys are. Now there is a way to kind of step up that standard, to not look like you're completely inept in what you're providing customer-based. But you will lead the people walking by you if your branding isn't up to the standard of others in the area, and that's important. A lot of times, prepping prior to going to the show, where you're located in terms of in that show space, is important. Are you near the door or are you all the way in the back? So those are things to kind of sum up this marketing side of things. Those are kind of things that you want to take into account. But now we're going to transition into when you're at the show. You've already bought all in, you already have all your stuff, you've already have your plan together. How can you optimize Evan when you're at the show?

Speaker 3: 9:04

The first and probably most important thing that you should do is, right before you leave for the show, go back and find mine and Craig's episode on the elevator pitch, on the 30 second commercial. Go back after you, listen to that episode once, listen to it again. But you need to make sure that you have your elevator pitch down and you are ready to go prepared to talk about the problems that you solve. So if you can't do that, you're going to be in big trouble. You're going to lose all the credibility. So make sure that you have that prepped. Assuming that we've got that prepared, that we've got that prepared.

Speaker 3: 9:41

A couple of things while you're at the show. First, when you have your table, when you have your booth, set up the chairs in your booth those are just for show People who are sitting behind the table waiting for people to say oh Craig, I've been waiting to walk by your booth all day long. I'm really hoping that you can tell me all about your product. That's not happening, no, so you need to be prepared to be on your feet, standing in front of the booth, pulling people in pulling people over. Be engaging, otherwise two-thirds of the people in the show are going to pass you right by, so these-.

Speaker 1: 10:27

To that point. So tell me how it looks if you're sitting at that chair and you're on your phone while people are walking by. What impression does that leave for the sales guy?

Speaker 3: 10:41

The impression that it gives is I don't really care. My boss told me that I had to be here, but I'd actually prefer that you not stop by and not interrupt my scrolling through my Facebook feed and leave me alone. So it's not inviting at all. It is going to turn people off. I remember a company I was consulting for a couple of years ago. We were at a huge trade show. We were at the Gaylord out in Denver. Huge thing the booth next to my client there was hardly anybody ever there. Whenever there were people there, they were just sitting down scrolling through their phones. If 10 people stopped by in three days, that was a lot. Yeah, that left the wrong impression, not only to the people walking the trade show floor but also to the other exhibitors around them going what the heck are these guys doing? Why are they even here?

Speaker 3: 11:36

So you need to be proactive, engaging. You need to be proactive engaging. You need to be ready to stop people, to shake their hands, to ask them questions. So what are your opening questions? How are you going to get people to stop and have a conversation with you without you coming across like that used car salesperson? Craig, I'm sure you'll touch on this in a minute or two when we talk about the marketing at the show. But do you have a raffle? Do you have an activity At that same trade show?

Speaker 3: 12:05

What my clients did? We had a good amount of real estate. We got a putting green out. We got a putter. We had prizes for sinking a certain number of putts. People were lined up 10 deep to play the game. Well, guess what? We had one or two extra people at the booth who were then talking to people who were in line asking their question using the gun that they got from the show to scan in all of their information. There were probably 600 or 700 people total or 700 people total. We probably scanned 350 to 400 people and probably talked with two thirds of those people.

Speaker 3: 12:46

Just by having something engaging at the booth, that was a little bit different than what everybody else did. So you need to do those and I know you'll talk about that from a marketing perspective. But first we need to be there, we need to be engaging. Second, when you're at the show, you should not just have enough people at the booth to man the booth. When you are just sitting, if you only have two people and they're both at the booth. You are not meeting anybody else at the show, so you're not walking around, you're not bumping into people, you're not stopping by at other booths, so there should be enough people to both man the booth as well as to walk the show to engage with other people who are there. It's also good if you have a mix of technical and non-technical people at the booth so you can have your non-technical person be the one to stop people, try to engage, try to get them to drop something in the raffle, try to get them to play the game, try to start the conversation and then, if that person is qualified, that person can then hand them over to the salesperson or to the more technical person to answer questions, and that's really a great way to kind of engage all of your personnel who happen to be there.

Speaker 3: 13:56

The other thing you should do is whether you are doing it on your phone, whether you're old school and you have a pen. You need to be keeping notes on everybody that you're talking to. I know, unfortunately, I'm getting a little bit older. If I have more than four or five conversations in a row, I am not going to remember what I talk to each person about. It's going to go in one ear out the other, so after every two or three conversations, I'm making a couple notes. Okay, this is what Craig wore. This is what we talked about. This is how we're going to follow up with each other, because otherwise, if you're really active and meeting 30, 40, 50 people in a day, you can't possibly keep all of those conversations straight. You can't possibly know who you should be following up with when. What was the conversation about? So really important to be able to take notes throughout the day so that you can keep track of all of those conversations. In the next episode we're going to talk about the follow-up after the show, but that will go a long way in terms of really helping you. A couple other things before I turn it over to you.

Speaker 3: 15:02

For the marketing side, make sure you are good at building rapport. If people are comfortable, are you shaking their hands? Are you making eye contact when you talk to them? Are you being engaging? When you're talking with folks, are you just pitching them or are you doing a good job, asking open-ended questions, asking engaging questions? What brought them to the show? What were they looking to get out of it? Tell me a little bit about your business. What are some of the challenges? But the more that you can get other people to share information with you, the better you're going to be at qualifying or disqualifying those opportunities and you're going to have a much better idea of who you should be following up with and what you should be talking to them about when you do do that follow-up. So, from a marketing perspective, what are some of the critical things that people should be doing when they're at the trade show?

Speaker 1: 15:57

So I don't know if any of you have seen the Super Bowl Go Eagles, go Birds. So the beautiful thing about the Super Bowl is that, even as of today and we're in late March, in case you guys watch this and recycle it again people are still talking about the Super Bowl halftime show, even as of today, and so the reason why I bring that up is to understand one the trade show, while you're at the show, is a branding opportunity to get people to remember you. So, to piggyback on Evan's point, even though, from an internal perspective out, you're supposed to be engaging, you're supposed to be doing things to make yourself memorable, which is really what marketing is about. So, going back to the booth design, that's a great way to have people remember you by your brand, by your slogan, by your look, by your style and in a perspective of all of this is done to build trust. So, part of using the example you said before about the chairs, evan, one of the things that we always suggest to clients if you have one of those tables, unfortunately, if you came in slacking and you only had the table, you're in trouble. But we took that table and we push it to the back of the booth right. So now everything you got all this room in front of you to be more engaging. You use the example of the putter.

Speaker 1: 17:19

One of the things that we did for some of our clients is we created a cutout and it was themed around St Patrick's Day. So we created a shamrock or a leprechaun and we put a big contest around it and created scratch-offs where people could scratch off and win the prize. So we had a line into the next two booths for people who were waiting in line to get the scratch-off, to win the cash prize or be in a position that they got access to free something for a week. And the beautiful thing about it is it became into the social piece of things. You took a picture with the leprechaun and you posted on social media with hashtags that linked it back to that company. And when we got back which we'll talk about follow-up after the fact or in the next episode we were able to weekly pick winners because their picture was there. They signed up and attached the picture to it, to your phone example, and we were able to reach out weekly and say you won. You won this week our prize of whatever X was, and now we're continuing to engage way after the fact. We'll touch that later.

Speaker 1: 18:28

Those are examples In the moment. Not only were we taking pictures there, but we were posting them on social media and we were doing videos on social media and when somebody got the scratch off and won the prize and so forth a major prize and they're jumping up and down we got that. That got posted to social media that we continue to use year after year about how this person was happy. Don't forget, we live in a technology age now where our simple things like our phones can capture video in the moment. So, if you know, and you did your work ahead of time, you got your clients to the booth and there's a perfect opportunity to get a testimonial from your clients about how good you are in front of a group of people who've never met you before, because they all watch. It's sort of like a unfortunately it's like a car accident on the side of the road. We all go. What is that Right?

Speaker 3: 19:19

So it's nothing like having your clients at the booth talking about how great you are, eavesdropping of what's going on to help build the rapport with the clients that are there and you're telling me that causes a bigger buzz than just sitting behind the table, sitting in a chair waiting for people to come up and buy from you.

Speaker 1: 19:37

Period, without a doubt, without a doubt it does. And now every other booth is watching. How do I get part of that experience? And that in a exponential, experiential, experiential, experiential thank you can't speak today. That experiential marketing concept of things really brings your booth to life and people remember those things that happened while they were there at your booth. That's the things that marketing does. It makes you unforgettable. And so now, if you know, I'll go back to the crazy Eddie conversation. The guy was acting a little crazy on TV, but we all remember him decades later after that process. The same. You have to be crazy in your booth, but that engaging salesperson who has that personality that radiates from your booth like nothing else seen before, before you even talk about your product.

Speaker 1: 20:25

What I liked about what you brought up here is have the person who's engaging go back and talk to my more technical person, and you've already took them down the line of it. That's where your marketing material comes into more. So now, not just give them a flyer and go here here I am here I'm talking about. Now, not just give them a flyer and go here here I am here I'm talking about. Maybe give them something like a QR code on your phone that sends them to the link of a video that explains it as well. So when they leave there you have the pass factor.

Speaker 1: 20:53

All these things are marketing opportunities to get in front of your client and there's a good chance, if you're smart, that maybe in order to get to that video they put in some sort of to get more of the video, they put in some sort of email and phone number. Those are marketing opportunities depending on your space. To touch upon the example that you mentioned in terms of buying there in the site, I believe from a marketing perspective you prep them prior. Maybe an email campaign that went out prior get a discount at the show.

Speaker 3: 21:22

Yep, the show special, the driving people to the booth before they ever show up at the location.

Speaker 1: 21:29

That's right. And so you could do something there where you're in a position that they come in, they show you a code to know that they got it from a specific landing page. They show you a code Okay, you get that 20% off, you get that 30, 40, 50% off or whatever it is, and now you put that in your CRM, which, as a plug here, we're going to have a guest who comes on and talk about the importance of CRMs. Now you have an opportunity where you're taking your whole marketing campaign and you're having it evolve into something much bigger than just that day or two or three at the show, and that's important. So, as a tip from the playbook guys, as a tip, all these are answers because, evan, we are the playbook, because we give them the answers to all the questions they never thought to ask.

Speaker 1: 22:14

Bingo, and that's the whole point behind this podcast, people, If you haven't picked it up yet, we are giving you the answer to the playbook. And so now, as we transition here a little bit, the next episode we're going to be talking the next trade show conversation, because we do things in threes. We're going to be talking about what you do post-show. Post-show the job ain't done yet. Just so you guys know, the job is not done yet In Evan's example, if you are doing it right, you might set up your year. You might set up your year Think about that From a three-day show, maybe a two-day show, you might set up your year only because you did the work pre. And we're talking what you're doing during the show.

Speaker 3: 22:59

Yeah, and if you don't do the post-show? So for those of you who have done these first two episodes, that next episode is key. You are going to waste a lot of time, a lot of money without the ROI and you're going to blame the show because you didn't do the things that you needed to do to be successful. After the show was over. After the show was over.

Speaker 1: 23:20

That's right, and ultimately, we talked about this in one of our first episodes, in which we talked about the blame game. This is how it works, people. This is how the blame game starts, because somebody didn't do prep in the beginning, then somebody didn't do the work during the show. Now, when you don't do a post show because you didn't do the first two, the third won't work. Now the blame game starts.

Speaker 1: 23:42

We just spent a lot of money on a show and got nothing Right. So who's the blame? That's how it goes, right, I'm pointing Right. Anybody but me. Anybody but me, right. And so that's important.

Speaker 1: 23:54

We're telling you the answers on how to make these shows much more profitable for you and your clients and your business. By the way, as a shameless plug, if you need any help or assistance with planning your trade show, you got two guys here who are in a position where we can consult you or give you advice on how to help. It's very simple Like subscribe, comment, email us. You can find us all over LinkedIn. You can find us all over YouTube. Can't avoid us if you try. You couldn't avoid us if you wanted to, and we'll give it to you direct for sure. So, again, you can find us this episode of Sales and Marketing Playbook on Apple, amazon, all the major podcast formats. You can find us on YouTube, like subscribe and give us a comment. We would appreciate it if you heard anything here that's valuable to you, evan. Any closing words for the show? So?

Speaker 3: 24:49

again, take what we've told you, put it into practice and like subscribe. We'd love to see some comments on the LinkedIn page about maybe some of your either trade show success stories or trade show war stories that would be good.

Speaker 1: 25:07

All right, I'm Craig Andrews and that's Evan Poland. We will talk to you next time. Stay tuned, we're having the conclusion for the trade show and, as always, keep growing. Bye-bye now.

Speaker 2: 25:22

Thank you for joining us on this exhilarating journey through the world of sales and marketing. Remember, the playbook is in your hands and the possibilities are limitless. Keep exploring, experimenting and innovating, and watch as your business reaches unprecedented levels of success. Don't forget to subscribe to the Sales and Marketing Playbook Unleashed on all major podcast platforms and follow us on YouTube, facebook and LinkedIn for even more exclusive content. Until next time, keep hustling and keep winning.