Picking & Briefing Your Stand Team
So it is now time to pick which staff members will be manning your expo stand and planning how to brief them. Here is a guide to selecting the right team members and, crucially, how to brief them before the show.
- The person's job role
- The person's confidence
- The person's product knowledge
- The person's sales experience
But here's the thing, you often don't know who will be the best person on the stand until you test them. Most of the time the best people will be your sales team and BDM's, but this is not always the case for every person.
I have seen BDM's look miserable on a stand and be terrible and interacting with people, conversely I have seen staff members plucked from the warehouse team or tech support who, after a bit of practice, became amazing at talking to prospects.
So like all marketing you have to test and adapt. Make the best decision with the information you have when picking the stand team, then after the show assess who was good and who wasn't when deciding who to bring to the next one (as well as trying out new staff members at the next one as well).
To brief your stand team, make sure they know the following things:
1) What aspects of your product/service you are pushing and what you want communicated to the prospects. Just briefing them to "talk about the product/service" is not sufficient, they need to know the USPs and parts of your offering that they should be focusing on.
2) They should know that handing out business cards and literature alone is NOT sufficient, every decent prospect MUST have their data captured. Show them how to capture the data, here is a link to my blog on Data Capture Methods.
3) They should know WHO you want to speak to, and that if there is a time waster who doesn't fit this criteria, then the conversation should be politely wrapped up quickly. If they are wasting time with someone who is not a potential customer, then that is lost time they could be spending speaking to decent prospects.
4) They should be given a guide to how long they should spend with each prospect. Spending 20 minutes with every prospect will severely limit the amount of leads your team engages with, but conversely if you are chatting to someone who could be your biggest client then spending ages with them is justified. So the team members need a rough guide of how long to spend with an A list lead, B list lead and C list lead. They should also be told that they have the flexibility to deviate from this guide depending on how good the prospect is and how busy the stand is.
5) I always advise telling your team NOT to leave the stand before 1pm. I know BDM's like to leave the stand to meet clients and spy on competitors stands, but this should be saved until after lunch. The show might seem quiet at the beginning of the morning, but mid/late morning it gets busier, and when a magician is working on your stand (I hope you are having one) two thirds of the daily prospects are usually handed over before 1pm (after which is lunch and the afternoon lull).
Speaking of magicians, if you have not yet found the right magician for your stand, I would love the opportunity to explore this with you. To request a quote please click here.
Who To Pick
This is an interesting topic, there are obvious factors that come into play when selecting who to bring such as:- The person's job role
- The person's confidence
- The person's product knowledge
- The person's sales experience
But here's the thing, you often don't know who will be the best person on the stand until you test them. Most of the time the best people will be your sales team and BDM's, but this is not always the case for every person.
I have seen BDM's look miserable on a stand and be terrible and interacting with people, conversely I have seen staff members plucked from the warehouse team or tech support who, after a bit of practice, became amazing at talking to prospects.
So like all marketing you have to test and adapt. Make the best decision with the information you have when picking the stand team, then after the show assess who was good and who wasn't when deciding who to bring to the next one (as well as trying out new staff members at the next one as well).
How To Brief Them
The most important thing, whoever is on your stand, is to make sure they are sufficiently briefed. This is CRITICAL!!!!!To brief your stand team, make sure they know the following things:
1) What aspects of your product/service you are pushing and what you want communicated to the prospects. Just briefing them to "talk about the product/service" is not sufficient, they need to know the USPs and parts of your offering that they should be focusing on.
2) They should know that handing out business cards and literature alone is NOT sufficient, every decent prospect MUST have their data captured. Show them how to capture the data, here is a link to my blog on Data Capture Methods.
3) They should know WHO you want to speak to, and that if there is a time waster who doesn't fit this criteria, then the conversation should be politely wrapped up quickly. If they are wasting time with someone who is not a potential customer, then that is lost time they could be spending speaking to decent prospects.
4) They should be given a guide to how long they should spend with each prospect. Spending 20 minutes with every prospect will severely limit the amount of leads your team engages with, but conversely if you are chatting to someone who could be your biggest client then spending ages with them is justified. So the team members need a rough guide of how long to spend with an A list lead, B list lead and C list lead. They should also be told that they have the flexibility to deviate from this guide depending on how good the prospect is and how busy the stand is.
5) I always advise telling your team NOT to leave the stand before 1pm. I know BDM's like to leave the stand to meet clients and spy on competitors stands, but this should be saved until after lunch. The show might seem quiet at the beginning of the morning, but mid/late morning it gets busier, and when a magician is working on your stand (I hope you are having one) two thirds of the daily prospects are usually handed over before 1pm (after which is lunch and the afternoon lull).
Speaking of magicians, if you have not yet found the right magician for your stand, I would love the opportunity to explore this with you. To request a quote please click here.
