Booth Staffing

When it comes to vendor events, your company only has a small window of time to bring in potential customers and wow them. The staffers at your booth are your first line at these events, therefore success is dependent on their behavior during the event. Even the most carefully chosen booth staffers can end up hurting your event, and then, it’s time to say goodbye.

Lateness Or Failing To Show Up

The reasoning is simple: if your booth staffers don’t show up, you have a few products on a table and nothing else. The key to success in a vendor event is the interaction and lead generation from the visitors to your booth, and without a staffer, that can’t happen. Beyond the initial worry that you’ll miss valuable interaction with potential customers if no one is staffing your booth, lateness or a failure to show up may indicate a fundamental problem with your booth staffer. Chronic lateness could be a sign of underlying social anxiety or lack of confidence. Individuals staffing your booth should be confident and outgoing, as well as punctual.

You may have eye-catching booth, quality products & services, preppy presentations and promotions, BUT, if you have the “wrong” booth staffers, your brand marketing will end up in a massive wreck and there is no poetry in that.

RECLAIM YOUR MIND AND START ACTIVATING YOUR INTELLIGENCE — THE NEXT BIG THING IS HERE AND EVERYWHERE OR SO IT SEEMS

Artificial intelligence, long a staple of science fiction, is fast moving into the mainstream of every day life with the potential to revolutionize and disrupt numerous industries and companies. However, one thing is for certain, given the performance of Apples's Siri and Amazon's Alexa, artificial intelligence is far from being intelligent.

Because,

“It takes something more than intelligence to act intelligently.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Having thus said, today we are on a mission to make your booth intelligent. Needless to say, your first order of the day is to invest on developing the "emotional intelligence" of your people who will be staffing your booth. Give them lessons on intelligence —  train them on the concept to "hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function."

A word of caution: Anything that can be replicated will be replicated and will have a price that will tend towards zero.

Train your people to stretch their minds, such that it never shrinks back to its former dimensions.

"Hospitality is not to change people, but to offer them space where change can take place. It is not to bring men and women over to our side, but to offer freedom not disturbed by dividing lines.”

A consistent concern for marketers is how to increase the amount of qualified leads at events and trade shows. If you are a B2B marketer, you simply do not want a pile of dead-end leads — you want qualified information that your sales force can make something out of it.

THAT'S RIGHT. PUT A HALT TO FREEBIES. MAKE EVERYONE EARN SOMETHING. THAT WAY THEY WILL REMEMBER THE PAIN AND THE THRILL OF THE EXERCISE.

Time after time, we’ve witnessed potential leads scurry from booth to booth in a quest to collect every possible freebie at the trade show or event, all without stopping to experience the company’s message.

So what can you do to stop them in their tracks, create a constant flow of leads, and deliver your company’s message?

RELAX, YOU WILL LOVE THIS.  WE HAVE DONE THE MATH FOR YOU

If the booth size is a given, which it normally is, then you will need one staffer for each 50 square feet of unoccupied space. Occupied by what, you are asking? By your display, product demonstrations and equipment.

If I were to describe to you the thrill of driving a race car on a track at speeds incomprehensible to the common driver, you would hear “words.”

You might get a partial glint in your eye as you try to imagine the physiological strain, mental challenge or fear. This is where experiential marketing comes into play.

Booth Staffing Tips for the Digital Era

Staffing for Trade Shows and Events has changed. More of the same will not do anymore.

Before “Big Data” and the proliferation of electronic marketing it was sales people who reigned supreme at the show. Their personality and ability to connect with people were key tools for getting more people into the booth. Crowd gatherers were big too as it was all about getting people who you did not know to come into the booth and learn all about your company. While salespeople can still be great staffers and people skills are always great, the landscape of trade shows has changed and with that the type of skills needed to staff the booth.