Posted on 24, March, 2020
Last Modified on 24, March, 2020
Staffing a trade show is a complex and important component in your trade show plans. A wrong staffing decision can put your success, ROI or company’s reputation at risk. Consider sending these five types of employees to a trade show to positively impact your company’s success.
Experienced Staff Member
It’s important to have a staff member with experience representing your company at trade shows. It is helpful to have someone who knows how to execute the strategy you have planned, and an experienced staff member can be a good leader who ensures the rest of your staff follows the plan. One of the benefits of staffers with trade show experience is that they may have had interactions with previous or current clients in attendance. They also know how to connect what your company is providing to what various industry representatives and buyers are looking for. It’s always comforting to know your staff at the show will have a strong leader who has successfully represented your company at past trade shows.
Media/PR Staffer
Your ultimate goal for any trade show is to get your company noticed by attendees and anyone else at the show. If you are looking to launch a product or service, or even just further your brand’s recognition, you should aim to come away from the show with earned media. Having media or public relations staffers on hand is paramount to making sure that goal is accomplished. These staffers should be trained and comfortable handling the media and making sure the message you’re sending out is the correct one. If you don’t have the luxury of sending a PR or media staffer to the show, be sure to have someone on your staff who at least has some prior training handling media opportunities; you need someone who understands the company’s products or services, mission and goals, and can effectively communicate them publicly to the media.
Tech People
Have you ever exhibited at or attended a trade show where a company has had technological issues with their monitors, tablets, or even worse - their demo? There is no feeling worse than struggling to get your equipment for demos or presentations running after it’s crashed. Not having your demos or digital materials available to present to attendees at a trade show can quickly derail success. Attendees have a limited amount of time on the floor to talk to vendors, and getting their attention is too hard to lose it over tech issues. Save yourself the potential to lose out on leads or future sales by sending a member of your tech team, or at least a tech-savvy staffer who has familiarity troubleshooting the bugs of your demo or equipment.
Customer Service Representative
The goal of any trade show or conference is to connect with current and hopefully future customers. While your sales staff understands the selling points and benefits of your company’s products or services, your customer service staffers know those as well as the pain points. They hear the potential issues – and understand how to provide the solutions your customers need – while also hearing the improvements customers would like to see in the future. Pairing up a qualified sales staffer with an accomplished and knowledgeable customer service representative can create a great staffing team capable of answering every question any current or potential future customer may have.
Staffers with People Skills
The most common trade show staffers are often a company’s top salespeople. You hope any trade show or conference results in recruiting plenty of new clients thanks to staffers successfully selling them on the benefits of working with your company. Successful, experienced sales staffers are essential to this success. However, trade shows can be a little different from your average sales meeting environments. Intimate, one-on-one sales meetings and interactions are not the norm at trade shows. The idea is to meet and engage with as many attendees as possible and turn those attendees into leads and sales. This requires your staffers to have people skills. Many successful sales staffers do have good people skills, but that does not mean they all will. Those staffers you might describe as “chatty” are the people who can hold a conversation that allows them to connect with attendees and keep them engaged at your booth. They are especially important to have on your staff when things get busy – these staff members can run demos or help facilitate the next step in turning an attendee into a lead.
Bonus – Extra Staffer!
These five types of staff members are imperative to have at a trade show, but it’s always important to be prepared. When selecting your staff for an upcoming trade show, be sure to train at least one more team member just in case. If someone gets sick, has an emergency or has travel issues, having an extra staffer ready to send to the show can provide an easy, invaluable solution.