The difference between a good booth staffer and a bad one can make the difference between a trade show that profitably boosts your brand and sales, and a tragic waste of your company’s time and money. What can you do to ensure that you assemble a team of booth staffers that will get the job done right?
To help you find and prepare a winning booth staffer team, here are the 10 best ideas on booth staffing that I’ve collected over the years, and now share with you:
- Choose staffers who actually want to staff your trade show booth and have the right attitude. Then, train chosen staffers for product, company, and customer knowledge as needed.
- Your booth staffers will be more motivated when they understand clearly just how much you are investing at each show, what are the company’s goals and your goals for them at the show.
- A staffer that is able to stay focused on aisle traffic, watch attendees walking down the aisle for the right moment, and engage with them can get double, triple, or more leads than a booth staffer who is distracted or too shy.
- Your booth staffers don’t have time to tell your entire company history. So train staffers to ask what matters most to your booth visitors, and then share only the relevant part of your story.
- Tell your booth staffers it’s essential they take a minute after each visitor conversation to write down a few sentences about what that lead said and wants, before going on to the next lead.
- Spend enough time training your booth staffers to give them the chance to succeed. A half hour just before the show starts is not nearly enough. For example, can staffers all smoothly demontrate your newest products?
- New booth staffers benefit enormously by doing practice booth staff role playing before the trade show. It gets them over their fears and engrains the training much more memorably.
- Invest in bringing enough staffers so they can maximize the investment you’ve already spent in booth space, trade show exhibits, show expenses and services, and promotions.
- Surprisingly, introverted booth staffers can outperform extroverted booth staffers, because they can be more focused on engaging attendees and may listen more to your booth visitors’ needs.
- Offer prizes and/or recognition for the staffers who gather the highest quantity of qualified leads.
Your booth staffers are the ambassadors of your brand. What they say and do matters. A lot. Use these 10 tips to ensure that your staff performs at a higher level and gets more from your trade show investment.
I’m sure you’ve learned your own booth staffing secrets while gracing the ailes of your trade show booth. We’d love to hear your best ideas in the comment box below.
Booth staffing is just one part of effective exhibiting. To see what else makes exhibitors successful, read the What’s Working In Exhibiting white paper. To request this guidebook full of tips and ideas, click here.
