Azimuth Marketing Communications’ Jonathan Cohen has experience of exhibiting at over 50 MICE trade shows over the past 15 years and, having seen CN’s sister publication Conference and Meetings World’s feature about the best and worst of destination selling offers some insider tips about how to get it right:
Serious exhibitors take a lot of time briefing their stand sharers the secrets of identifying visitors to a trade show.
The Blue badge – a hosted buyer. Drop everything you are doing, for they are indeed a god like breed.
The yellow badge, an agent approaching. Is it true that they are designated yellow because some of them are too aid to tell you that business is lousy and the last event they ran was in 2010. But, I digress.
Along comes a visitor who, damn them, they’re covering their badge. They’re hiding it with the show guide or some other conveniently-placed conference guide. What to do about them, what secrets lie here? Who is this mysterious person?
If I were you, I would pounce on this person as if your life depended on it. For this person is indeed god like. A VVIP who has shunned the hosted buyer programme, bought their own Easyjet ticket and booked in to some modest hotel using their own private credit card to pay. Not for this person, the false promises and false smiles of a trade show.
They have business to do, they know exactly who they have to see and which stands to visit. Knowing full well that if they showed their delegate badge – they wouldn’t be able to walk more than a few metres at a time, without being accosted from all sides.
So, the moral is simple. As an exhibitor, be aware of the delegate with no badge and learn to smile at everyone.
Any comments? Email conferencenews@mashmedia.net
