For most businesses, conventions and trade shows are a great opportunity to gain exposure for your product offering. However, many hopeful companies take on their first attendance with no idea of how to get the most sales for their product promotion and marketing dollars.
What are the ways to motivate attendees into purchasing something willingly? Not all ‘customer pleasers’ at trade shows are booth staff; some are materials set alongside the booth enhancing product appeal, such as point of purchase displays.
Attendees that run into persistent booth staff trying to sell promotional items in an overly forward way can be dissatisfied; that’s not the way you want to enhance sales. Instead, you need to have a focused approach; the key to this is to follow these best practices – you’re far more likely to increase sales in a way that leave the attendees satisfied.
Make your booth stand out
Attract attendees to your booth through banner stands, prize drawings, product giveaways, and interactive elements like tablets and touch screen devices to gather customer information, conduct a survey or demonstrate a product.
Select a unique theme for the booth and make it engaging, fun, and informative. Implement key marketing and sales messages, informative literature, appealing giveaways, eye-catching signage, and other promotional elements to generate higher foot traffic to your booth; leverage this traffic to increase sales by highlighting the promotional item at the booth.
Train your sales staff
One of the most important things attendees remember about your exhibit is the staff. Even the most dynamic or experienced sales team needs training before they are deployed at a trade show to increase product sales.
A well trained staff team is an important part of your trade show sales strategy. Make sure the staff agrees and understand the sales objectives before attending. Also, offer refreshers on both manners and goals once present at a trade show event.
Highlight the promotional item
Very shy type or skittish product placement may subconsciously make the product you want to increase sales for feel ‘trapped’, especially if it is positioned in a place where attendees can’t see it with a naked eye. A better product placement would be the one that keeps things open and comfortable.
Pop displays and cardboard display stands are some of the options that can be designed and manufactured to make an item or a specific product stand out. These displays can be ideal to promote product at trade shows in a cost-effective way. Some point of purchase display manufacturers offer multiple substrates from which to select to ensure businesses are able to create a marketing vehicle that will be structurally sound and cost effective.
Rethink your engagement techniques
Have your sales team follow engagement best practices, such as establishing eye contact and alerting the interest of the passer-by, such as with a question or a small sample. Your team will only be able to advance to the next stage if these small steps are successful.
It’s also important to have an engagement strategy based on the visitor flow to your booth; visitor operate in waves, so there will be peak times, session breaks, as well as downtime. The sales team may need to engage customers with push messages during peak times, and one-on-one conversations during breaks.