Tip of the Week #23 - How to Train and Manage Your Exhibition Stand Staff

Participating in an exhibition gives businesses a rare opportunity to get face-to-face interactions with hundreds or even thousands of prospects. Without providing adequate training to the right staff, the impact of your exhibiting efforts will be compromised. While it’s important to have an eye-catching stand that will draw visitors in, it’s also critical for your staff to be motivated, enthusiastic, knowledgeable and well-trained. Staffs who are highly skilled and well-trained could be able to develop key business relationships and build strong capture lead lists. To maximise the chances of those outcomes, here are a few tips for training and managing exhibition staff members.

Training Process

Don’t just talk to your employees about no sitting, eating, phone calls or texting when they’re staffing the stand. Train your staff on how to engage attendees with good opening lines, how to ask the right questions to discover what matters to attendees, how to identify the visitors that may become a customer, and how to close conversations with an agreement on the next steps. A good idea is to include role-playing in your training, which will let staff get some practice before the show.

Hire the right people

It’s critical to have the right people staff your exhibition stand. For example, if the media may be present at the show, make sure to have an employee who is experienced in dealing with the media. If you’re displaying technical products, include a technical staff on the stand that can properly and thoroughly explain the details to interested visitors. You should also choose employees who genuinely enjoy participating in exhibitions, as they’ll come across as more happy and enthusiastic. They’ll be more pleasant and easier for visitors to talk to, which will help in producing better results and generating more leads.

Establish Objectives

Don’t send your employees to an exhibition without a clear set of objectives. Whether you want to focus on generating sales orders, qualified leads or increase product awareness, it should be ensured that staff members stick to a focused strategy and meet their benchmarks. Outlining specific objectives will give them a clear idea about how to interact with visitors, and it will make it easier for you later on when you’re gauging the success of your exhibition participation.

Train Staff on Lead Management
Tell your staff how you handle leads, whether it be putting business cards in a fishbowl, writing notes on lead cards, scanning badges with lead retrievers or entering leads into a database on the show floor. Emphasis should be placed on proper lead recording so that all the vital information is included, such as lead quality, what the visitor’s problems are and how your products help them solve them, and what the staff promised the visitor they will do next.