Trade Show Display Marketing Tips and Advice

Price objections are common in sales -- primarily because most prospects have learned pushing back on cost will get them a discount.  That makes it difficult to respond to a pricing objection if you don’t want to immediately lower your price. While discounting has its place in the sales process, being too discount-happy will destroy your margins and lower your product’s perceived value.

Traditionally, the “marketing funnel” has been a guide for marketers to move their prospects along a continuum from awareness to consideration to preference to purchase and finally to brand loyalty. According to Forrester Research, the funnel is obsolete and the Customer Life Cycle that applies to today’s consumer is more like a circle of “continuous optimization,” which flows back and forth from discovering to exploring to buying to engaging with a brand.

One of Hollywood’s most famous depictions of the sales world is found in Glengarry Glen Ross. Alec Baldwin’s character, Blake, is the epitome of the high-powered, low-empathy, money-driven salesperson, and gets what he wants through fear, intimidation, and profanity-laced speeches. After threatening and terrorizing a group of salesmen (no women allowed in this boiler room), Blake gets to his point -- salespeople should "ABC": Always Be Closing. According to Blake, regardless of the individual prospect and their needs, the rep's ultimate task is to bring money in the door.

From their first conversation to the close, a strong salesperson consistently asks her prospect for small closes. Getting incremental commitments from the buyer trains them to say “yes” and indicates how invested they are in the relationship. These closes also accelerate the deal, since they help you hit significant milestones more quickly. I’ve found waiting until the last stages of the sales process to make a request can significantly damage your chances of winning the deal. There are two obstacles stopping reps from using the incremental closing technique.

One of my greatest marketing secrets,  I learned from my father. When I was 12 years old I worked for my father on Saturdays in his retail store. The challenge he faced was having a number of small and inexpensive items of various types left unsalable. There weren’t enough of any one product to have a dedicated sale and discarding all of these items would have affected his bottom line. What he did was randomly package five or six of these items into a small paper bag. Then he taped all the bags closed and placed them all in a bin. On the top of the bin he created a hand-made sign which read, “Surprise Bags - $ 1.00. He sold them all in one weekend.

During the warm, sunny summer months, it seems everyone is talking about great reads. And while that often may include an epic work of fiction or the latest thriller, why not include a title or two that can make you a better exhibit marketer?  While some of these may be familiar to you because they’ve been bestsellers, the rest haven’t likely been on your “must-read” list. But they should be!

It should come as no surprise that marketing to Millennials is not the same as marketing to other generations of consumers, which has big implications for trade shows and other events. The good news is that Millennials want to develop relationships with the businesses that reflect their interests, they prefer face-to-face interaction, and they identify with and support their favorite brands. The bad news is that they are hard to reach through traditional marketing approaches and channels. That means that trade show marketers need to create experiences in their exhibits that will draw in Millennial buyers.

Social media is nothing new. Many popular sites have been around for a decade or so by now. Yet few exhibitors are using these tools to their advantage.  One of the best aspects of social media tools is that they open up the lines of communication far beyond your own individual circle of influence. By using the various tools, you can reach not only your clients and prospects, but also industry thought leaders and members of the media. After all, one of the top reasons attendees come to shows is to discover new ideas or solutions – give them a reason why they should come see you! Here are a few tips to help get your social media strategy in place.

Salespeople are constantly on the go, whether they're meeting with clients, flying out to give a presentation, working in a trade show booth, or running to a team training. With this in mind, mobile access to sales systems aren't just a nice to have -- they're a necessity.   But besides company software, salespeople can also download productivity, educational, travel, and other just plain useful apps to optimize their time on the road. Here are 28 of our favorites.