This is a message for trade show vendors: At your next show, sneak up on your own booth. That’s right, pop out from around a corner about 10 yards back and take a good, honest look at your investment.

Do your booth staffers look like sad little wallflowers?

Do they look like kids at a high school social afraid to ask someone to dance?

Is there a guy sitting expressionless in front of a glass bowl of Hershey’s Kisses, wondering why no one is coming up to talk to him?

This “condition” is more common then you might think, especially with the smaller booths. At one recent show, I walked around and paid particular attention to the 5 x10 and 10 x10 booths. Often they’re manned by just two or three people who are so uncomfortable they’re burying their heads in books or dabbling with smartphones — just sitting there waiting for it all to be over.

I looked at these people and found myself thinking about Neil Strauss, a contributing editor at Rolling Stone best known for penning a book called, The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists. This was the inside story of guys who despite NOT being the most attractive males out there, pick up women with absolute ease. Strauss not only researched this “secret society,” he became arguably one of the top pickup artists in the world and actually started conducting workshops for the undesirable and uninitiated.

At the heart of this book is a philosophy about “how to engage people.” He argues that if you’re going to try to pick up a woman in a bar, you don’t say, “Can I buy you a drink?” You don’t ask anything that could elicit a “no” response. Instead, you “engage” her. You contrive a story seemingly playing out before her eyes and ask, “What do you think?” Yes, it’s an opening line. But it’s an opening line that’s not clichéd or overwrought; it’s a question that pulls this woman into a story with you through her advice or involvement.

Strauss’ philosophy is hardly limited to the world of pickup artists. “Engagement” is something that most certainly can be applied to trade show marketing. I was observing the booth staff at this recent trade show, and they weren’t engaging anyone. First of all, they’re sitting. Rule No. 1: No sitting! Secondly, even when standing, they look positively miserable. If you’re spending that kind of money at a trade show and you’re planning to go there with the attitude that you’d rather be anywhere else, then don’t go! And before you say a couple of staffers don’t represent the “enthusiasm of the company,” remember that these faces are your company for the purposes of these crucial three trade show days. They are the representative image of you and the images that attendees will remember.

Honestly, if I had some sort of magisterial banishment power, King Newman would have sent home half the people working this particular trade show. If you’re going to look bored — if you’re going to feel miserable — find another way to market your services.

Here’s the ironic thing: A lot of these same people will spend a fortune on search engine optimization, which is designed to drive traffic to their site. But they don’t spend any energy driving traffic into their booth. And that doesn’t necessarily mean hiring a trade show presenter like me but perhaps a crowd gatherer — at least someone with people skills! If the person in your booth is not the type who can go up to a perfect stranger and strike up a conversation, then they’re the wrong person to be at the show.

You need to find someone who is not just a technical expert; you also need your company’s best pickup artist.

Have an industry-related question? Send “Newman” an e-mail and get your inquiry answered on the blog.

2) Make sure your booth staff is ready to talk to attendees
That means don’t sit down. Avoid standing in groups of two or more fellow staffers. Stand near the aisles.  Look out at the crowd and make eye contact. Smile. Don’t say, “Can I help you?”  They’ll say, “NO.”  Instead, look at their name tags.  Use their name. Ask them what their company does. Invite them into the booth. Now you’re getting somewhere.

3) Quickly follow up on leads
Three-quarters of the leads generated at trade shows are never followed up on … and when they are followed up, it tends to be way too late. Those 2,000 leads you got don’t mean anything if you don’t do something with them. You need a way to categorize your leads as “HOT,” “warm” and “cold” — and with hot leads, there’s no such thing as getting in touch too soon. First contact should come within days of the trade show’s end. When weeks or months go by, you just end up lumped together with all the other SPAM.

4) Use giveaways to build booth traffic
BUT, don’t just give stuff away. USE that giveaway item to quiz the audience on what they’ve just heard. Use it to get them to ask questions. You can also use higher-priced giveaways (from thumb drives to HD TVs to wads of cash) as an incentive to get people to the demo stations and get them into the booth. And consider “green” giveaways. Cheaply made swag just ends up in the trash and then in landfills. You want your giveaways to last … so that attendees hold onto your branded item as long as possible.

5) Keep product demos short
Seven minutes is ideal. Ten minutes is the limit. Fifteen minutes … Get the hook! Trade show attendees have a lot of real estate to cover. Don’t feel you have to tell them your entire story. Pique their interest. Get them to want to know more. Get them into the booth.

6) Limit your seating
A seating area with 50 chairs is intimidating. Few people want to be the first to sit down. Also, if you have an audience of 25 people, it still looks half empty. But with a dozen or so seats, you’re looking at a standing-room-only crowd. People walking by will be more interested in what’s going on if all the seats are full. It’s only natural to wonder what could be going on over there.

7) Have at least one crowd gatherer
We are not talking about scantily clad eye candy for your booth. We’re talking about warm, engaging, gregarious greeters. We’re talking about men and women who know how to chat up people in the aisles, ask them questions, invite them into your booth, introduce them to your knowledgeable (and well-trained) staff. These crowd gatherers will continue to invite people to stop and listen even after the presentation has begun. If you skip the crowd gatherers because of the stereotypes, you’re doing yourself a disservice.

8 ) Insist on an “open” booth design
Think about the lines. Think about the traffic flow. And think about how much you enjoyed the last time you couldn’t find your car in a parking garage. Try to design your booth in a way where there are virtually no impediments in any direction for someone coming in or someone going out. Make the booth’s architecture as open as possible to create maximum flow. You want people to just stroll through and almost accidentally find themselves in the booth. Booth layout and thoughtfulness has much more to do with success than booth size and “impressiveness.”

9) Do your pre-show work!
Promote in advance using social media. Send e-blasts to prospective attendees. Offer up a promotional tease to get people into the booth before the show even starts. Tweet from the trade show floor with your latest news and special offers. Utilize video. Do a “Live from the Trade Show Floor” spot and a daily wrap-up. Announce news and promotions with all the fanfare a live recording can offer. Make it short, interesting and something to get people excited in anticipation of your event.

10) Utilize a professional presenter
Bippy the Mime making a workstation out of balloons may be impressive, but it’s not likely to ensure you qualified leads. Have someone represent your company who is engaging, knowledgeable and will interact with the audience. Most trade show demos seem to be staged readings of marketing white papers. Whether you hire a professional presenter or not, don’t do this … under any circumstances.  Everyone talks about “24/7, valued-added solutions.” Your audience will tune out. Say it in layman’s terms, and say it with passion. Find a reason to truly care about your subject matter.

This article originally appeared as a guest contribution on the ChoiceVendor.com blog. We’ll return next week to the usual Q&A format. If you have an industry-related question, send “Newman” an e-mail and get your inquiry answered on the blog.

No problem, Walter.  As long as you can talk three times faster than normal and bring it in at SEVEN.

Seriously, here’s a question for you:  If you only had that seven minutes to tell your product or brand story, what would you say?

Imagine you’re the point person at a big trade show presentation. You’ve set up a small theater in your booth. You don’t have a professional presenter, so it falls on you to entertain, stimulate and inspire this throng of attendees that’s formed around you. The microphone has just been placed in your hand and you have to go … now! You have only seven minutes and then the mic goes dead. That’s it. You take a deep breath and step in front of the crowd. With such limited time and so much on the line, what do you say?

This is the essence of a compelling trade show presentation. It’s not how much you can say; it’s how little. What actually is your message when you’re “forced” to distill it down? The reality is those people in your audience are visiting 25-30 booths a day. They will only walk away remembering two or three key points, along with the “feeling” they got from the message and from your energy and enthusiasm. So, what are those two or three points they cannot leave without?

If you’re finding it difficult to answer that question, there’s an approach that can help: If you had to offer up all your messaging on just one piece of paper, what would you say? Many of my clients have 200 products and a worldwide audience. They deserve at least 10 pages, right? It doesn’t matter. No one is going to listen to that. It has to be ONE page — and not 2pt type!

Try to challenge yourself on that single page. Make a list of all the corporate jargon you’ve ever heard, read it over carefully, and then toss it. There are immense benefits in brevity, and even greater benefits in originality.

Now it gets even harder. Cut that in half, and give it to your booth staff as a guide for talking with attendees. Condense it even further and give it to the crowd gatherers as an elevator speech. For them, it’s perhaps one great phrase that encapsulates what you do and what your presentation will be about.

Many years ago when I began producing trade show presentations, I would have my client tell me their story. Their WHOLE story. That typically ran 45 minutes or so. Armed with that and a FedEx package filled with white papers and product brochures, I would craft what I believed was a tight, entertaining seven-minute draft. I’d present it over the phone and await my client’s response.  Often they would rave about the comic framework, tell me that it really “moved well,” but then mention that unfortunately, I had extracted the “wrong” seven minutes. My heart would sink and they would say, “What we really want to talk about is ‘this.’” It was one of the things they’d mentioned, but there was no way for me to know that this was where the emphasis was supposed to be. The client didn’t know at the time, either. It proved to be a clarifying exercise, but not a particularly efficient one.

Now, I work with every client to first find out what they care about.   And then I keep at them until we can fit that on a single page. We talk about the big deliverables. We talk about the key messages. We talk about how this product/service/brand will make people’s lives better. With this, I can begin structuring the routine and build the “right” seven minutes.  I add in the entertaining elements, and this time, when I do the read-through, it’s 95 percent of the way there.

This may be more work up front, but it pays off in fewer iterations and a much better (and tighter) script.

Oh, and on the off chance you think it’s impossible to get your message across in only seven minutes, take a look at what professional trade show presenter, William Hall is able to do in just a One Minute Presentation.

Do you have an industry-related question you’d like answered on “Hey Newman”? Send him an e-mail and get your inquiry answered on the blog.

Tom, you don’t have to pay a fortune to get people to pay attention.

You can re-skin your booth. You can have a smaller trade show footprint (and in doing so have a smaller carbon footprint). You can use a small space to reduce your costs while keeping your booth packed with people, which looks better anyway.

Too many companies choose large booths because it’s a status thing. Look how big we are! That model just doesn’t work anymore. It’s not essential and it’s not cost-effective. Think about it like this: People will always cram into the smallest room at a party. The same psychology exists at a tradeshow. There’s nothing more depressing than a 50×50 booth with four people walking around … and three of them are the exhibitors. When you have a 10×10 and people are bumping into each other and crowding around a single kiosk or a single monitor to watch a demo, that creates a wow factor and the impression that “there’s something really exciting going on here!”

I say use a small footprint and then put more money into what’s going on IN your booth.  Consider a three-hour training session for your staff.  Then, create real excitement in your booth with a live presentation.  I’m seeing more live presenters than at any time in recent memory performing in the smallest booths at the show. At a recent trade show, the big players had 60×60s and 80×80s—enormous footprints with 12 kiosks. But there were a considerable number of big companies with booths as small as 8’ X 10’.  One had a magician. Another, a juggler. A third had a professional speaker on a podium telling a half-dozen different stories in rotation, with each mini-presentation lasting just a few minutes. Each one played to consistently large crowds.

At this same exhibit, our client had one of those 8’ X 10’ booths.  With a registration desk and two demo stations, that left virtually no room to spare.  I did my presentation on a small riser at the very edge of the booth, stopping attendees as they walked by.  I delivered a short, entertaining pitch to anywhere from 10-60 people per show.  Those people would then come into the booth, get their badges scanned and many would hang around and talk to our booth staff.

Our client for this three-day event got over 2,000 leads. Considering the size of the booth, they paid a heck of a lot less for their leads than the large booth next door.  And, they got much bigger bang for their buck.

So, no, you absolutely don’t have to have the biggest footprint at a show. If you make the biggest splash, create the most buzz and get the highest value for your investment, then that’s a success.  A big success.

Note from Ken: If you’re interested in booth re-skinning or a smaller,  more efficient booth design, a great resource is Tim Patterson with Interpretive Exhibits.

Do you have an industry-related question you’d like answered on “Hey Newman”? Send him an e-mail and get your inquiry answered on the blog.

I don’t say this so much to toot the Magnet Productions horn as to illustrate an extremely important point: Having a live presenter made all the difference in our client’s success at this show. In fact, it was the difference between an empty booth and a full space clocking 2,000 leads (out of a trade show attendance of 7,000 total) … and this in a relatively small booth.

There were other live presentations at this show, and those booths had similar experiences. We heard comments like: “I didn’t understand why we needed a live presenter until today.” Another said, “Some people are already packing up, and we’re still packing them in. And this: “It’s not just that we got a ton of really good leads, it’s that everyone in the booth — our entire staff — had a really good time at that show. And that’s a first.”

You can’t predict the size of the crowd in these changing times, but you can protect yourself against a failed trade show experience. Think of it as preventative medicine: Booking a live presenter is like preventative medicine against an empty booth, ensuring good return on your money and good leads from the show.

When the trade show doors open and the first crowd comes through as a mere trickle, you know that you’re going to be in for a long three days — particularly if that trickle is on the morning of Day One! That’s exactly what happened in Chicago, with most of the booths staffed by people ready to pounce on anyone who came near. Pretty intimidating for a trade show attendee.

Instead, at our client’s booth, our live presenter would stop people in the aisles, offering to teach them a mindreading illusion.

“Come look at this! It’s amazing ! I am going to prove to you that we know EXACTLY what you’re thinking. And then, if you hang around, I’ll teach you how I did it.”

And attendees would watch … and then a few people would come by and watch them … and then some people would watch them … and then the presenter would take the stage and deliver our client’s message … to a standing-room-only crowd.

What I think it comes down to is this: Trade shows may be seeing a drop off in the number of attendees. But this doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t exhibit. What it DOES mean, is that when you DO exhibit, make it count! If, for example, you are committed to a show that is only going to be attended by 7,000 people, you’re not going to want to come home with just 50 leads. The best medicine to prevent that is to have something going on in your booth that will make it THE place to be. And that something is a live presenter.

The death of live presentations is the l…e…n…g…t….h.

Let me say it right now: Your trade show presentation is probably too long. Twenty minutes is too long. Fifteen minutes is too long. Ten minutes is too long. As a general rule, if audience members are looking at their watches, it’s too long.

I’ve participated in hundreds upon hundreds of trade shows, experiencing them both as a presenter and an attendee. In all that time, no one has ever come up to me and said, “That was a really great presentation, but it was a little too short.“ Ever.  In 25 years, it’s never happened.

Want to know (as a presenter) how to have your audience utterly thrilled? Tell that crowd there’s only three things you expect them to remember. Describe those three things. Reiterate those three things at the end. That’s it.

Two hours after the live presentation is over, an audience member should be able to tell you precisely what the presentation was about. These folks are completely inundated at a trade show, so if you can get them to remember a phrase or a slogan and up to three basic points, that’s a triumph.

Make Your Live Presentation Twice As Nice

If you want to get the biggest bang for your buck, don’t make me do a 15-minute show. Let me do a seven-minute show twice as many times a day. Let me build a crowd, work that crowd and then do it over again.

It’s About Questions, Not Answers

Ask more questions than you answer.  Get them to think about your company in a unique way, inspiring them to follow up with booth staff. It’s not important to explain everything. What’s important is to ignite a desire for that audience member to independently acquire any information not included in the live presentation.

So, to recap:

• “Too long” is death.

• “Too many answers” is death.

• PowerPoint as a crutch is death. (We’ll discuss this next time!)

So, stay away from these traps and have a tremendously successful live presentation. If you’ve absorbed this advice and need more guidance on where you go from here, feel free to contact us for a consult.

Do you have an industry-related question you’d like answered on “Hey Newman”? Send him an e-mail and get your inquiry answered on the blog.

I recently did three days of presentations for a company that was giving away $10,000 at a trade show. The festival atmosphere this promotion conjured up was beyond incredible. I’ve seen companies give away cars and other larger-ticket items, but the buzz about this cash was unparalleled.

To win, you filled out a card with your name and contact information. To be eligible to enter the drawing, you had to watch the live presentation I gave or engage with somebody in the booth one-to-one and ask a question or listen.

All three days of the show, we never presented for less than standing room only. Ever. On the last day, the money had already been given away, yet we still packed the presentation. That final-day success had a lot to do with our crowd gatherers and how persistent we were about getting the seats full. But on those first two days, the money did a lot of the work.

I mean, it’s $10,000. That’s a lot of cash … and a substantial incentive.

Not every company is going to shell out 10 grand, but they might spend $1,000, which is still a good chunk of change. It’s enough for people to come into a booth and fill out a piece of paper just to enter the drawing. So, if a company is willing to spend $1,000 for the cash grand prize and a total of $800 more for three medium-priced electronic devices, what they’ll get back for that expense is huge. There’s a lot of buzz and booth traffic to be gained from an investment of that size.

Mike, the point of contention is whether this cash incentive will get you a bunch of greedy “dead-ends” or some actual leads on which to follow up. There’s a big argument in the trade show industry that says you’ve got to look for quality leads over quantity. I disagree. That’s because if you have 20,000 people attending a show, you must do something compelling in your booth to capture the names of a significant percentage of those people (even 10 percent over three days) and get that traffic to flow through the booth. If you don’t, there’s a good chance you’re never going to have the opportunity to identify those coveted high-quality leads. In fact, you won’t have any leads at all.

Those 25-30 key people—the dream leads—aren’t going to just magically appear in your booth.  They’re likely to be swept into your booth along with the hundreds of other people who may be there to just win the $1,000.

There are only a few things that will draw people to your booth, and a lot of it has to do with what’s eye-catching. That can be movement, color, noise; those create crowds. When we did this drawing, and we have video documentation of this, there were 1,000 people standing around the booth. The fire marshals were getting people out of the aisle. It was insanity, pandemonium.  People were walking by asking, “What’s going on here? … They’re giving away $10,000! Oh my, can I get in?”

Sure, that person may have no interest in the particular technology, but somebody they later talk to might … or somebody they’re standing next to might … or somebody just walking by. An adept salesperson will capitalize, and there’s a huge piece of business that’s been booked.

Trade shows are, by their nature, a little bit of “sideshow.”  There’s no question that it’s all about buzz and excitement. And nothing says excitement better than an oversized check with $10,000 printed on it.

Do you have an industry-related question you’d like answered on “Hey Newman”? Send him an e-mail and get your inquiry answered on the blog.

Great question, Emily. A lot of booth staffers simply fail to apply fundamental rules of human behavior at trade shows. Two or three staffers will just stand around in a cluster talking to each other. That’s basically saying to a tradeshow attendee, “Don’t bother us; we’re busy.” Then, if an attendee actually gets close enough, the booth staffer says, “Do you have any questions?”

You wouldn’t engage a friend that way.

You would first make a comment relevant to the both of you. You know, make some conversation: “Did you watch the inauguration?” was a natural question I was asked in January. Or how about something simple like, “Are you staying at a hotel nearby?”… “Did you walk over?”… “Isn’t this weather amazing?” It doesn’t really matter so long as it feels human. Booth staff should first be in the business of finding a way into the middle of a conversation.

The best stories are the ones that start in the middle and circle their way back to the beginning, anyway. When you do that successfully at a trade show, you get the attendee “into the mix.”

Most booth staffers just don’t get that. The main problem is a lot of people who show up at trade shows to man booths don’t have the necessary skill sets. That’s why Magnet Productions ends up doing so much consulting and booth staff training. These folks need to understand appropriate and fruitful ways of approaching attendees.

When conducting a training session, I sometimes just give the booth staffers a simple exercise. I say, “All you do is read their badge.” That’s it. I tell them to walk up to an attendee, flip their badge over, if necessary, and just say, “I see that you’re with [insert company name]. What do you do for them?”

People will answer that question. They’re not going to say, “None of your business.” But if you ask them a question for which there’s a “no” response, (such as “Can I help you?”), there will be a “no” response. It’s just simple sales technique.

It also works because people love to talk about themselves. It gets the trade show attendee engaged. It’s about making contact and asking the types of questions that get desired results. And it’s essential that your booth staffers “get that.”

Do you have an industry-related question you’d like answered on “Hey Newman”? Send him an e-mail and get your inquiry answered on the blog.