Trade Show Booth Staff Training Expert, Susan Friedmann, CSP, The Tradeshow Coach

On February 23rd I’m going to experience another first.  Dennis Shiao, Director of Marketing at InXpo, and I will be presenting together at the Virtual Edge Summit, to be held at the Santa Clara Convention Center, February 22-23, 2010.

Although I have been presenting my tradeshow training workshops for over 25 years, and I have presented virtually for many years, I have never before co-presented where one presenter is live at the conference, and the other is virtual. I’m going to be the virtual component for the session “Prevent Virtual Event Nightmares: How Producers Prepare Speakers, Exhibitors and Attendees.”

The topic we’re covering is far larger than the time we have to cover it. However, the major challenge to overcome is making sure all players know what to do, and how to do what they need to do, in a virtual environment. Dennis will focus on the technology, or the hardware, and I will concentrate on the software, or the people skills.

The key ingredient for all players to engineer a successful event lies in the simple process of planning and preparation.  Easy enough, yet very few exhibitors really take time to truly understand what this means.  Participating in virtual events means not only knowing, and understanding the technology platform, it also means honing the necessary skills for successful results.

For a speaker this includes knowing the program objectives, audience needs, as well as delivering good solid information.  Speakers who have never participated in a virtual event could experience a rude awakening, if unprepared. Speaking into thin air is a far cry from presenting in front of a live audience.  The dynamics, the energy, and presentation style all come into play.

My recommendation for event organizers is to either do a superlative job of preparing the speaker (if they are not of “prima donna” status, and are coachable), or rather select a presenter with some virtual event experience.  So much of the success of an event hinges on the quality of the presentations, and the information shared.

As for the exhibitors, in addition to becoming familiar with the technology, they need to know what outcomes they want to achieve, set measurable goals and then plan their strategy accordingly.

Hope that many of you can attend the session and the show – it’s complimentary.

In my tradeshow training programs, I’ve always encouraged my clients’ exhibiting team to be 100% scripted and 100% flexible when it comes to interacting with booth visitors. What I mean by this is, you need to know what questions to ask to get the end result. For example, if your goal for the show is to find out more about how the economy is affecting various projects your prospects or existing customers are working on, you need prepare the right questions to ask, to collect that information. However, I have always advocated that despite how prepared you are, you also extreme flexibility, because the trade show floor is very unpredictable. You can never foresee 100% what’s going to happen, as no two shows are identical.

This weekend I attended a very special program conducted by Eric Lofholm, sales trainer and script writing guru.  Eric advocates the opposite philosophy. He believes that, with thought and pre-planning, you can anticipate almost all the situations and questions surrounding your prospects and customers.  Eric teaches that script writing is the key to help get you through any good, bad, or ugly situation.

Until this weekend, scripts, for me, conjured up visions of those telemarketers, who love to call during dinner time, and robotically spew out their script, which, in your mind, you can see them reading.  In other words, it was a totally negative exercise, which I’ve resisted like the plague.  How wrong could I be? The Eric Lofholm system prescribes script preparation for every possible scenario. Then, when written, internalizing your words to the point where they become a totally natural part of your conversation.  When you listen to the master exercising his skill, it’s totally mesmerizing and utterly believable. On the flight home from San Diego, my pen was flying across pages in my exercise book working on the numerous scripts I need.

Now, I realize that for many sales professionals, this concept isn’t new.  They use scripts in their field selling all the time.  However, does your exhibit team prepare scripts for the time on the show floor, or do they wing it? Because visitor interaction time is extremely limited, often 3-5 minutes, according to tradeshow research, sales reps need different scripts from the ones they use day-to-day.  The question is, do they have them? If not, I highly recommend they do, especially if you want to maximize prospect time in the booth.

Oh, I forgot to mention that once your scripts are written, they’re done for life. Editing and adding to your script book (another of Eric’s recommendations), is always allowable.

Back in a couple of days.  In the meantime, I’m busy writing my scripts.