Prepare Your Booth Staff for Success

No matter how attractive and interactive your trade show display is, you know that it's the people who staff it that will ultimately sell customers on your products — or do irreparable harm to your brand. After all, "face time" is the reason that you and your visitors are attending the show in the first place instead of merely doing business online and sending product information through email.

So it's vital that you choose the right people to staff your booth and train them well on what to say to prospects and media people, what not to say, how to conduct themselves and how to collect good, solid leads.

Choose your crew
These people will be the face of your company for the duration of the convention, so choose wisely! Don't just look for young, single people who travel easily, but people who:

believe in your company and its products
have the energy and communication skills to transmit their enthusiasm about your products to others
know how to avoid trade show no-no's: ignoring visitors, talking to other staffers when a visitor is in the booth, eating or chewing gum and being ignorant of the products they're trying to sell

Good training, and a healthy dose of etiquette and common sense, can help eliminate a lot of these trade show pet peeves. It helps to have someone you know you can trust running your booth.

Keeping up appearances
No matter how flashy and impressive your display is, it can actually be upstaged by a staffer wearing an old wrinkled shirt, jeans and sneakers. Staffers' attire should match the booth's colors, and pants or skirt color should match shoe color. Sneakers are a no-no and Crocs are completely out of the question!

And as mentioned above, the way staffers act is as important as how they dress. Some booth visitors are even put off by staffers who keep their hands in their pockets, so keep body language open, friendly and welcoming!

Scripting for success
Sure, your staffers are people who work at your company every day. So they know your products inside-out, right? Well, not necessarily. At a trade show, they will encounter different and more challenging questions than usual. They might also be interviewed by a writer or editor for a trade publication.

So training should be mandatory and should include:

Thorough product training that helps staffers anticipate questions and prepare answers.
Media training that teaches how to answer critical questions and keep the company shining in a positive light.
Goals for the show: Are you there to increase visibility? Debut a new product line? Make sales? All of the above? Help your staffers keep the goal in mind and discuss strategy with them.
Lead generation and management techniques for all the contact information your staff will collect by using their newfound expertise!

To make sure that staffers have internalized their training, do a little role-playing to see how they react to potential booth visitors — for example, a decision-maker looking for product information, a cranky visitor, a critical reviewer. Above all, emphasize friendliness and create a welcoming atmosphere!

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