Book Club Discussion – Trade Show 411

Join us as we dive into the essential guide, “Trade Show 411” by Lisa M. Macielo.

Whether you’re new to trade shows or a seasoned exhibitor, this episode is packed with valuable tips and strategies to help you maximize your trade show experience.

Welcome to this week’s episode! Join us as we dive into the essential guide, “Trade Show 411” by Lisa M. Macielo. Whether you’re new to trade shows or a seasoned exhibitor, this episode is packed with valuable tips and strategies to help you maximize your trade show experience.

Timestamps:

[0:00] Introduction and Overview

[0:30] Understanding the Difference: Running vs. Exhibiting at Trade Shows

[1:08] Trade Show 411: Marketing Your Product

[1:22] Our First NBAA Experience: The Good and the Bad

[2:34] Challenges in Setting Up Booths: Lessons Learned

[3:16] Common Pitfalls: Over-Investing and Hidden Costs

[5:30] Leveraging Vendor Relationships: Using Other People’s Money

[9:26] Planning and Logistics: Checklists and Preparation

[12:47] The Importance of Lead Management

[15:28] The Glossary: Decoding Trade Show Terminology

[18:32] Networking and Prospecting: Making the Most of Your Time

[20:46] Breakfast Networking: A Cost-Effective Strategy

[22:43] Client Interaction and Feedback

[23:36] Final Thoughts and Recommendations

[24:28] Next Month’s Book Preview and Closing

Transcript –

1
0:00:00
So, welcome to this week’s episode. Today we are talking about the Trade Show 411 by Lisa M. Macielo, which is one of few, actually, books about how to run a trade show that is really helpful and comprehensive and all that stuff.

2
0:00:27
So how to run a trade show or how to attend a trade show?

1
0:00:30
How to exhibit at a trade show.

10
0:00:33
Okay.

1
0:00:34
Yeah, exactly. I guess that’s different. We don’t want to teach you to be NBAA or HAI or AOPA or any of those organizations that run events. Heaven help them if they’re… Heaven help you if you are trying to run an event with more than two people in it.

1
0:00:50
But a trade show is a mini event for a company. We’re just using other people’s events as the framework for exhibiting or attending as part of our marketing process,

9
0:01:05
right?

8
0:01:07
Right.

1
0:01:08
So from that perspective, Trade Show 411 is basically how to market your product using trade shows as a marketing tactic, which in the aviation industry, I guess that’s one of our first introductions into the industry was attending

2
0:01:22
NBAA, right? Yes, it was. It was a real interesting first experience. Right, and

1
0:01:33
it might, I think it might be kind of entertaining to go through like the best and worst of our first NBAA, you know, the things that we found surprising in good and bad ways. What I found great about our first trade show was I had met Benet Wilson, the regional aviation queen, right? Aunt Benet, on Twitter prior to going to NBAA and she knew that we were new to the aviation industry. We were coming from the finance industry. This was years and years and years and years ago, but that very first NBAA we went to,

1
0:02:13
she kind of took us under her wing and introduced us to everybody. And I remember B-Rad, Elliot, a whole bunch of other people that we met at that very first NBAA because we had met them kind of on social media prior, and there was a tweet up and some other

2
0:02:34
things that we were prepared for. So I think that was great. We had a very interesting experience with the folks that actually move you into and set up your booth. Yeah, I think that was probably one of the worst of that whole thing, was we really weren’t

1
0:02:53
in a position, we weren’t prepared to have a presence at NBAA, but we thought, well, this is what everybody does. So, here we are doing what everybody does, which is the worst thing to do in marketing,

3
0:03:06
right?

2
0:03:07
But we learned from that and went on to two or three more trade shows there and other places and made complete successes of them.

1
0:03:16
Exactly. So, some of the things that we did wrong, of course, you know, we over-invested. So, it’s almost impossible to get a good ROI if you spend too much money at a trade show, which is super easy to do.

1
0:03:29
If you have never exhibited at a trade show before, you will be absolutely aghast at the expenses that pile up that are maybe a little bit hidden intentionally or on purpose from exhibitors as far as booth rent, cleaning, a garbage can, electricity, Wi-Fi, anything that you have to pay for is far more expensive than you would ever even imagine in the real world, right?

2
0:03:59
and everything, there’s nothing provided except a concrete floor and dividers.

1
0:04:07
Right, and a blue, I think it was a blue, maybe gray curtain. No table, no chairs, no nothing, you just show up with all of your stuff.

2
0:04:19
No trash can, no carpet.

4
0:04:21
Right, right.

1
0:04:23
And the people that really know how to do trade shows, and I’ve worked for several of them, just not in the aviation industry. And some of our clients really know how to do trade shows now, so some of those are really doing a great job. But they have an entire professional pop-up booth ready to go. They ship it in crates.

1
0:04:43
They are shipping one while they’re receiving the other, and they’ve got everything all set up. They’ve got their checklist. They’ve got their processes, all of that is great. And there’s always things that you can improve on.

1
0:04:55
Every show you go to, you learn. But this, I think, if I had had this, we probably would not have exhibited it at that first show because we would have known how involved it is and how many factors you need to coordinate and that a two-person company that has never thought of this until two months before is really in no position to make the best of that situation. But we did. Yeah. Yep, exactly. So a couple of things that I thought were great about the book, one was the concept of using other people’s money for your trade show. This is something

1
0:05:30
that I had never thought of, but this actually would work for a lot of aviation companies because because they get parts or fuel or something from a vendor, you know, almost every…

2
0:05:43
But before you go into that, it falls right in line with what I was… what I learned, I don’t know if I was taught, but I learned early on about finance, and that is, regardless of what you hear on a TV or the radio or the newspapers, reading the newspapers. There is a financial transaction that is possible for anything you want to do. It may not be canned. You may have to think it through and talk with some people and negotiate how it’s going to work, but there is a way to make it happen. And now, that’s just sort of a segue into what she’s saying is there are ways to make it happen

2
0:06:29
to use other people’s money, which we hadn’t thought of with respect to trade shows.

1
0:06:34
Right. So don’t count yourself out of a trade show if you think you can’t afford it. Just think outside of the box of some of the ways that you can help represent at that trade show. And so, one of the things that Lisa talks about in this chapter are what they call MFDs, Marketing Direct Funds.

1
0:07:02
These are things, this is money that companies make available to their vendors, you being one of them, if you happen to be an FBO, you’re a vendor for the fuel company. If you are an MRO, you are a vendor for the avionics company or the parts company or for somebody. So, you know, you are selling other people’s products, usually, most aviation companies

1
0:07:27
are selling other people’s products in some way. And so if you can find a way to leverage that relationship and say, hey, we will represent your product in our booth because this is what we do. This is an integral part of our service is to provide your fuel, your avionics, your wiring, your windows, your whatever at this trade show and is visibility for you if you are there. So, some of these larger manufacturers have a ton more resources than we as smaller companies may have.

1
0:08:03
And you can leverage their resources and represent them well and get a bigger booth, get a booth at all, have a nicer presence, all of those things.

2
0:08:15
And this is actually not anything new with respect to industry, it’s just new with respect to the marketing aspect because all the major auto manufacturers help out their vendors some way or another financially.

1
0:08:32
Right, exactly. So, I mean, almost anybody in the aviation industry has a vendor that is larger than them in one way or another. So, you know, this can work. Or even if you need to get other people’s money from multiple sources, you can do that as well. It just requires a little bit more coordination and things.

1
0:08:54
So once again, the further ahead you start planning, the more creative you can be with your thinking, the better. And also, if they don’t have marketing direct funds available, they may provide product for demos, they may provide product for giveaways or contests or other things to get people to come to your booth. They may even provide people to help you staff your booth. There’s other things that they could do to make that a win-win for them as well.

1
0:09:26
So that was one thing that I thought was really surprising. I had never thought about doing that for some reason, even though every show we’ve been to we see the stack of FBOs from the fuel companies, that’s exactly what they’re doing. And there’s no reason other companies can’t do it as well. Other things that I loved from the book, they go into a lot of detail about shipping and logistics, lots of checklists and other things about make sure that this is included, download

1
0:09:57
the show runners guide for the show, and that becomes your Bible. You want to sleep with that every night for nine months before the show. And you really do want to have a showrunner from your organization. Even if you are a two-person organization, you have one person who is responsible to make sure that every one of those checkboxes gets ticked off so that you are making the absolute most of that trade show, right?

2
0:10:25
Yep, absolutely.

1
0:10:27
Right. I think we’ve said before in other scenarios that when you are doing a trade show or anything else, you want to do fewer of them, especially since COVID. We’ve kind of rethought our position on trade shows. Some of our clients were relying on them

1
0:10:46
and then found that when they cut back, they were spending a whole lot less money and it did not equate in the same ratio to their sales. So, you know, they’re still selling quite a bit if they didn’t go to as many shows. So you know, if you do 10 shows a year, maybe only six is a good number for you. Or if you’re doing six, do four.

1
0:11:07
If you’re doing four, do two. But spend twice as much energy, effort, and resources on those two or four or six shows, right? So, you know, it is I think the best return on investment to overspend on every show and you know do all of the things do the press releases do the You know new product showcase, you know If they have that use every single facility that they offer you at that show make sure you’ve got the time, the energy, and the money to do the heck out

1
0:11:40
of that show. But if you only do one show a year and you do the heck out of it, that might be enough.

2
0:11:46
I was going to say, but when you do, if you haven’t been attending or exhibiting, that is, well, the first time you exhibit, you should plan on doing it the rest of the time you’re in business.

1
0:12:00
I think there’s maybe a second corollary to that, and that is if you go more than twice, you create a distinction. So, we kind of warn our clients against giving big gifts on a particular holiday or things like that, because you’re setting up a tradition

1
0:12:19
that you have to be able to afford forever if you do something like that. And then if you go cheap the next year or don’t go to a show the next year, then everybody’s going to wonder if you’re having trouble or maybe this is a bad year for you financially or whatever the situation is.

2
0:12:34
My point.

1
0:12:35
Exactly. That’s an excellent point. All right. So there’s that. Another one is lead management. I think they had an excellent view of that.

1
0:12:47
Of course, we cover this in our prospecting workshop and we cover this in our holding pattern workshop. You get a lead from any source, including a trade show, you want to have a really, really strong process for managing that lead and making sure that you are making the most of those because that’s where your ROI happens is how many of those leads actually convert and how many of them convert into profitable, happy customers. So if you’ve got a good lead management process,

1
0:13:18
onboarding process, etc, you’re going to make a whole lot more return from that show than if you just collect a ton of leads and then let them sit in the fishbowl for a week after you get home, right?

4
0:13:32
Mm-hm.

6
0:13:34
Right.

1
0:13:34
One example of that, I’ve talked about this before. I always wear a suit with pockets when I’m at a trade show. And when I meet somebody new or they give me a business card, if it is somebody that I want to follow up with right away, or there’s a very specific idea that I have for working with that person, or I think they have the money, the authority, the need,

1
0:13:56
there’s some urgency there, it goes in my right pocket. If it is somebody who may be a potential in the future at some point, they’re interesting but they’re not urgent, they go in my left pocket. So then at the end of the day, I have my pockets full of cards. I pull out the right pocket cards, I send them notes or make phone calls immediately, do whatever I told them I was going to do, and get those entered into our CRM and do all that stuff.

1
0:14:29
The cards in my left pocket, I can hand to an assistant or somebody and say, put this into our holding pattern process so that they get our next newsletter and so that they are aware that we’re here and send them a thank you for,

1
0:14:42
our generic thank you for meeting us at the show kind of thing. And that just makes the workload a whole lot more manageable so that I get to those hot ones right away. So those are separate. You know, I manage those every night of the show and then the day after the show so that, you know, I’ve got things scheduled and planned and everything else.

1
0:15:01
It’s way too easy to just take a week off after a trade show because your feet hurt. You know, you’ve been eating bad food for a week, you’ve been traveling, you’ve got a stack of stuff on your desk, you know, we totally get it, it’s a thing. But, you know, you really do need to be on top of it in order to make that work and to make it worth it, right?

5
0:15:26
Yep. Yeah.

1
0:15:28
The last thing in my notes is the glossary. This is the best glossary I have seen on trade shows, and there is a language. And you think there’s a language for aviation? There is a language for trade shows, too. This is from page 232 to page 256. How many pages is that?

6
0:15:50
24.

1
0:15:51
24 pages of glossary, but the terms in here are advance order, aisle carpet, things that you would never think of. Certificate of insurance for trade shows is different than what it is for anything else. Consolidation service, insigner, we use that for freight. You know, just crazy, crazy things. Infringement on other people’s floor space, as an example.

1
0:16:33
You know, that’s jigging, you know, custom dividers and protective padding used inside crates to prevent booth components from damaging and shipping, damaging during shipping. I had no idea what jigging was until I read that. You know, I mean, there’s so many words and so many things that you have to pay for and that you have to agree to and everything else, and it’s all in those agreements and things, but it is a different language. So having that glossary is really, really cool.

2
0:17:00
As a matter of fact, if you didn’t bring it, you pay for it.

7
0:17:04
Right.

1
0:17:05
And if you did bring it, you pay for it because you got to pay for somebody to set it up.

2
0:17:10
That’s right.

1
0:17:11
In fact, I think we were talking with somebody at Freeman, Freeman is the union company that sets up booths at the Las Vegas Convention Center, and they said the only thing you can bring in here is your lunch. Everything else has to be brought in by a union member. So we had a magician one year who did not want anybody to handle his magic stuff, right? His kit of magic stuff, which included a card table, you know, for card tricks and things like that. And he did not want that thing out of his sight, and he didn’t want anybody else to touch it, because it’s trade secrets for a magician, right? And the way we got around it was, it was

2
0:17:50
small enough when folded up that he could carry it in the front door, and that’s the way he got

1
0:17:54
around it. Exactly. He just said he had a really big lunch that includes the table. So, you know, there are ways of getting around things, but, you know, the more you can play along with the show, get along with the contractors, get along with everybody, the better. And, you know, that always involves more money

1
0:18:12
than you ever thought you’d be paying. So, you know, it’s really, really important to make sure that you make the most out of a trade show opportunity and get the best return on investment out of it.

4
0:18:26
Of course.

1
0:18:28
Yeah. Any other trade show stories you want to share, John?

2
0:18:32
Well, when you’re there, and you’re not exhibiting or taking a break or have somebody doing your booth, you still need to be prospecting.

6
0:18:45
Yeah.

2
0:18:46
And you can find rooms that are not scheduled because they don’t lock anything. You can go into a room and use it, but you have to be ready to leave as soon as somebody comes in and it’s got a schedule because they paid for it. And you can go in there, you can do interviews, have discussions, make sales, because we’ve done all of the above.

1
0:19:15
This is one time when location services on your phone or sharing your location is really, really helpful because like this Las Vegas Convention Center, I keep saying that because that’s where NBAA happens, is huge and confusing. And if you share your location, then people can just find you. It’ll give them walking directions to where you are. Or you can just tell them the nearest booth number and

1
0:19:39
you can find a place to have coffee and so on. So yeah, that is an excellent point. You don’t have to exhibit to make sales at a trade show or to meet people at a trade show or to further the sales process by extending those relationships and things like that. You can make appointments with people and you can find a place

1
0:19:58
to meet, sit down, have coffee, all of those things without a booth. And that’s what we do because we’re a really small company and we don’t really have the people available in Las Vegas on that day to man a booth.

2
0:20:13
And the other thing is, as you go over many times, is you need to make as many appointments before you get there since you can.

5
0:20:26
Mm-hmm.

1
0:20:28
Yeah, this is the one opportunity when a huge number of prospects are in the same location at the same time and have time available, hopefully have time available to discuss things with you. So meeting with current clients,

1
0:20:46
this is sometimes the only time during the year that we see them face-to-face. The rest of the time it’s all Zoom and phone and everything else, but it’s so nice to see people in person. In fact, we do a breakfast the first Tuesday of NBAA

1
0:20:59
before everybody’s had a little too much Las Vegas to be paying attention to us. And, you know, that’s a really nice breakfast. It’s a really nice opportunity to sit down with people, kick off the show in a really positive way, start with some nice warm friendly conversation and sharing what we’ve been doing during the year and everything else.

1
0:21:18
I really look forward to our Tuesday breakfast at NBAA. A couple of great reasons to do breakfast. One, it is less expensive than dinner. Two, you’re not competing with Las Vegas Nightlife. And three, it’s just a really good opportunity to kick the show off in a nice way. And sometimes you can get non-clients or customers to attend with people they know who are clients

4
0:21:45
or customers.

2
0:21:46
So if you have a prospect that’s a really good prospect, they get a chance to meet and

1
0:21:51
talk informally with your current clients. We’ve had several companies, we’ve been on the other end of the table with several companies for those kinds of dinners, breakfasts, whatever. And it’s a really nice way to get to know somebody that you’re thinking about doing business with. And it’s also great for the company to get to know, you know, see how they fit with your current clients, you know, if it’s going to be a good fit personality-wise as well as everything else because we all want to do business with people we enjoy and

2
0:22:28
That we get along with and they can also quiz out people that are your clients They don’t they want to know what they May find your answer self-serving Exactly they can’t trust you but they might trust somebody that works with you, you know a little bit more

1
0:22:43
They’re getting a consistent message. Okay, so famous last words. What do you think?

2
0:22:55
One to ten? Well, it’s got a new take on several things, so I’d probably give it an eight and a half for nine.

1
0:23:03
Right. I think I would probably do the same. The only reason I don’t give it a ten is because trade shows is not really central to the type of marketing that we do. We do a lot of inbound marketing, but many of our clients do it. And so I think this is an essential, absolutely essential book.

1
0:23:22
They call it the Essential Guide to Exhibiting Like a Pro. If you exhibit at trade shows, you have to get the book. It’s, as far as I know, the best one on the market for that particular purpose.

2
0:23:32
Yeah, it would have been nice to have seen that before we met the first time.

1
0:23:36
Oh my gosh, we could have saved so much money and done such a better job. But it wasn’t the print then. I don’t think so. Let’s find out when it was printed. It was printed in… when was… when did we exhibit that? It was about 20 years ago. About 20 years too late, but get it now. Right. All right. Well, thank you for joining us, and we will see you next month. Next month, our book is Process, which is really important because most of our clients, the biggest problem that they have with executing on marketing tasks that we have is that they’re overwhelmed with doing business.

1
0:24:28
You know, they are working on their business rather than in their business, as they say. And so process is a really great way to help set up some of those background things like marketing that need to be done. Automate, delegate, eliminate, you know, whatever you need to do to make sure that you are focusing on the right things at the right time and that things actually get done. So that makes you a thousand times more effective without going crazy or making people work overtime or you know

1
0:24:57
driving your driving your people around the bend with unrealistic deadlines and so on every time you have a trade show as an example. You know that can really throw your whole tribe for a loop if you haven’t planned for it and if you don’t

2
0:25:12
have a process for it. As a matter of fact, the planning for a trade show, they ought to write a book. They ought to, we ought to, somebody ought to write a book on how far in advance you need to plan one of those crazy things. We do. We have a trade show workshop that we had earlier this month. Oh, I know we have that, but I mean a book that

1
0:25:30
goes into the detail like this thing does. Yeah, that’s true. So we’ve got checklists, and if you haven’t attended or seen the video for our trade show workshop, I highly recommend that and download the checklist for 120 days, 90 days, 60 days, 30 days prior and 30 days, 60 days, 120 days after the trade show. So yeah, you want to check off every box if you can or at least consider every box if you’re spending that kind of money.

1
0:25:59
All right, well have a great month. We look forward to seeing you next time and we’ll talk to you soon.

3
0:26:04
Well, have a great month. We look forward to seeing you next time, and we’ll talk to you soon. We look forward to seeing you next time, and we’ll talk to you soon. you