We exhibited today at the Solicitor Group Exhibition at the NEC. It was a costly affair but I believe the return on our investment will be high. Why? Because we worked the stand! We stopped as many passer-bys as follows simply with a smile or an icebreaker like “You seem to like collecting freebies (if they had a bulging bag) why not come and get more goodies from us?
And did we give away lots of goodies! Not cheap pens, mugs or sweets but free and valuable CD’s and booklets. Our belief is the ‘the more you tell, the more you sell.
Visitors at exhibitions are normal people who don’t like starting a conversation or being pro-active. So we had to initiate the start of a potential business relationship with these simple tactics. The number of people attending didn’t seem to be that big as it was the first (and maybe last!) conference/ exhibition of its kind so we had to also go networking around the stands. We created lots of leads and will be following them ALL up next week.
In the few quiet moments where we weren’t chatting we watched so many exhibitors sitting on their computers, talking on the phone or generally ‘hiding’ behind their expensive stands. I reckon we had the smallest stand with the most number of visitors. Why do companies spend so much time and effort …then waste it? They must be making too much money and need to make tax losses!
I was at the show as well last week and can confirm that Will did indeed have the smallest stand there was, yet had one of the busiest i.e. spoke to the most people.