Motivate your Trade Show Booth Staff

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Your booth staffers are the most important ingredients to a successful trade show! You can have the best booth, coolest promotional items, but if your staff doesn't bring in quality leads they are all for nothing.

First, let’s look at why your booth staff my not be doing their best job possible at the trade show.

Some possible reasons may be

• They are out of their comfort zone
• This is not what they were hired for
• No reason to bring in leads
• They ask strangers questions for hours on end
• Stand for several hours marketing and selling

There may be other reasons as well within your particular industry or staff.

What can we do to motivate past these barriers? Here are just a few suggestions.

Make sure they are confident

Give them the knowledge they need to know to go out with confidence and make contacts at the trade show or event.

Make sure they have all the facts and information about the

• The exhibit
• Target audience
• Goals and key messages for your company
• Promotions, at the show and before/after
• Other activities at the show
• Customer events
• Competitive strengths and weaknesses
• Lead management

Motivate with Incentives

Have an incentive program that rewards all your sales people for quality leads. Make sure you emphasize quality over quantity.

One of the biggest mistakes people make with incentive programs is setting it up in such a way that only one or two people will take home prizes, and so the contests rarely work because people know they have no chance of winning.

Make sure you setup a program so that all trade show booth staff will have a chance to win. We have a short tip on this topic, entitled “Motivate with Incentives – Everyone Wins.” Click here to read it.

Motivate with Recognition

Personal recognition in the presence of your peers is one of the most effective ways to encourage hard work! Have a short meeting (note short) and recognize several people for their leads, and have them recognize each other for something particularly well done.

When it comes time for the trade show, your potential customers see your sales people as your company. Make sure your staffers are confident with the knowledge they need to have, they have their goals and priorities arranged, they have a reason to excel and that they have an opportunity to be recognized in front of their peers for their hard work!

By Josiah Gallo, Copyright Personalized Lazer Designs, LLC

Do you have questions? Need ideas? Call us toll free at 1-877-365-2737 or e-mail info@lazerdesigns.com anytime.

Click here to read more articles on promotional items, advertising specialties, rewarding sales associates and much more in our Promotional Item Articles section.