When you’re putting together trade show displays, you want everything to be perfect. It’s your big chance to impress the public, show off your latest products, and generate those leads that keep your sales team busy. It’s easy to obsess over details such as the design of your booth, your graphics, your text, and the placement of your products.
But are you putting enough emphasis on the people at your trade show display?
Sad to say, at too many trade shows, I’ve felt like the human element was often the weakest link. I’ve been to plenty of trade show booths that looked impressive, but whose staff was simply not trained and ready for the reality of customer interaction. Yet, at the end of the day, it could have been prevented just with some extra time spent coaching and writing scripts.
Why Write Scripts For Your Trade Show Displays
This might seem like an unnecessary detail, but it’s not. Interacting with visitors at your trade show exhibits is like virtually no other form of sales interaction. Between the bustle of the trade show, and the extremely short amount of time available to engage with each visitor, they have to get a lot of work done very quickly with each visitor…and they have to keep it up all day.
Your staff needs to be prepared and ready to go at full speed from the moment the doors open. That means training and scripting. The more practice you get done beforehand, the better they’ll perform when the pressure is on.
Here are a few tips:
- Have specialists, not generalists: Assign each staff member a particular post which is to be their responsibility. For example, if you have multiple stations in your trade show exhibit, ensure each station is staffed with someone who knows specifically about it. Don’t just have people roaming the booth, give them a specific responsibility.
- Create a FAQ: A Frequently Asked Questions list is invaluable for training the staff at your trade show displays. Have your outreach and sales teams collaborate and try to think up as many potential questions visitors may ask as they can, and make sure you have answers for them all. Quiz your staff, and make sure they can answer their questions correctly
- Write practice scripts: Write little “skits” to be performed between staff, with one as the booth host and the other as a customer, to get them used to the rapid-fire pace of conversations in these situations.
- Focus on being customer-oriented: At all times, your staff should be professional, knowledgeable, and businesslike. While a certain amount of natural goofing off will occur at these sorts of practice sessions, make sure they are taking it seriously and they understand how important it is to present themselves well to visitors.
- Have a “lifeline” available: No amount of scripting and preparation will cover every situation and question that can come up at a trade show. Your employees should have a phone, text connection, or some other means of contacting a higher authority in case a question comes up they cannot answer. This is vastly better than having them start making up answers on the spot.
A Prepared Staff is a Capable Staff
Much like a plan of battle, most of these preparations will be out the window by the time they day is half over. These scripts shouldn’t be stuck to word-for-word, but rather should guide your employees and ensure they have as much training as possible for dealing with the fast-paced world of trade show displays.
Prepare them well, and you’ll reap the benefits at every trade show.
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FREE Trade Show Training Support
Click the following link to see a lengthy list of additional trade show training tips we offer as a free resource to our clients. We’ve also dedicated a page to list all of the trade show training resources we can find (if you notice one that is missing, please let us know!).
For more, check out how to make sure you don’t drop the ball at the finish line or how to gather more leads with your displays.