The individuals that staff your exhibit should be those that are knowledgeable, enthusiastic and can sell the business very well. The number of staff that you bring along may be determined by the number of expected visitors at the exhibition. It may further be determined by how many people you expect to talk to, say, every hour. Try not to overcrowd your exhibit with staff but make sure you have enough to liaise with visitors at any time. Two or, maximum, three members of staff is usually the norm for small business exhibits.
It is important that you and your staff are presentable (smart, uniform, etc) and can be identified with the use of, say, name badges (make it easy for those interested in your stand to identify you.
Be polite and as informative as you can to ALL visitors even if they do not appear to be interested in making a purchase: you may have just been rude to a journalist in an attempt to make better use of your time with interested customers.
I have been to a number of exhibitions where stands have no one to talk to during lunch-time: an exhibition is about hard work and maximizing opportunity, not a few days away from the mill! Your behaviour and habits are all common sense so treat visitors like you would customers at your business premises.
Publicity
Exhibitions are prime resources for journalists to find news and so this is your chance to gain as much free publicity as possible. Journalists will not have the time to visit all stands looking for news so it is down to you to grip their attention: this all links back to the design of your stand.
Prepare a press release so that they can be taken away by the journalists but try to be as newsworthy as possible because they may have collected over 100 in the last six hours! You should also prepare a Press Information Pack to give to journalists (not everyone else) that will include your press release, photographs, product/service information and contacts: display a card size request for reporters to request your PR information. Journalists will consider following up news on your business if you provide them with such information. On the big front: if you want to set up a press conference, provide them with details concerning location and time.
Advertise your stand outside and around the exhibition to make people aware of your location. As we covered earlier, advertise your attendance to customers and to the public in newspapers and magazines, say, during the month before the exhibition date. All exhibitions create a catalogue/programme, so why not buy space for an advert. Getting one of your family to hand out flyers/leaflets to those coming and going is a very low cost way to distribute your name, and to hopefully make visitors see your stand before leaving.
After the Exhibition
When the exhibition has closed, you should write down the things you did well and the things you could improve on for future exhibitions (if you decide to do it again). If you were successful, you will probably be nursing a pile of sales leads and so it is important that they are dealt with in quick response. Distinguish the more promising leads from the list and contact them by phone at least within the next two weeks in priority to those leads that you consider less promising. You should further post information to ALL leads at least within the next seven days so that their interest is maintained.
Summary
Exhibitions are excellent for potential customers to view and experience your products or service. Being face-to-face with potential customers and suppliers is arguably the best way to promote your business as any questions or queries can be clarified with you in person: as a result, exhibitions can usually generate good sales leads. The added advantage of exhibitions is that they can offer free publicity as journalists and photographers will nearly always be present.
Your stand will act as a shop window for your business and so you should make it as informative as possible with an increased respect for design: failing to show quality and organization will be a major turn off for visitors. Be helpful and willing as possible by giving everybody the attention and time they require to learn about your business.
Arguably, the businesses that benefit the most from exhibitions are those that implement good planning, organization and management. This applies to before, during and particularly after the exhibition, as many people will tell you that much of the hard work starts after the exhibition: turning those sales leads into solid sales.
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