Live Presentations and Motivation that Sells

Presentations

Your booth and your staff are key elements in the image your prospects will see. You can enhance that image and draw more qualified leads if you retain an experienced presenter to hold an interactive presentation in your booth. A good presenter can even identify targeted prospects for your sales team to interact with both during and after the presentation.

Set the Stage

Whether you have a small 10x10 booth or a large island exhibit, before you engage a presenter or even choreograph a presentation that will be presented by your own staff, you should consider the type of presentation you would like to conduct in your booth. Irrespective of the size of your booth, you should have a stage area from which the presentation will be conducted. Having a small raised platform will set your presenter apart from the attendees and typically attracts other attendees over the course of the presentation. The goal in having a presenter is to attract and stop a greater number of attendees than you would otherwise draw.

Of course, the size of your booth will partially dictate the size crowd you are able to accommodate. Depending on the size of the booth and the audience you anticipate attracting, it is generally a wise investment to rent or buy a wired or wireless headset microphone. In my experience, wired microphone sets afford far higher voice quality than wireless sets do, but the trade off is more difficulty in set up and teardown. If you decide that a wireless set best suits your needs, make sure that you have a wired microphone on hand in case of a malfunction. If your presenter is not a hired professional, you should have your presenter practice using the microphone until they are completely comfortable with it.

Presentation Tips

Ideally, your company should have scheduled presentations on regular intervals. For example, your presentations could be slated for every hour on the hour. When using this type of repetitive presentation style, you should be sure to display a prominent sign in the booth clearly indicating the schedule of presentations. When using a presenter, less is more. The presenter should speak for just a few minutes and make the presentation as interactive and lively as possible. Attendees are generally making an effort to see many exhibitors and won’t stay put for long. Capturing their attention for a few moments will be more than enough to get your message across and get the information you want.

If at all possible, try to avoid using videos during your presentations. Attendees tend to be more drawn to live people giving interesting presentations than they are to static videotapes. The presentation should focus on the benefits of the product or service to your customers. If possible, you should include as much audience involvement as possible. Incorporating audience involvement can be easily accomplished by having them pass an item around so that everybody can get a closer look or ask them to repeat a “magic” word. Attendees interacting with your presenter are often more engaged than those that are simply observing.

The presentation should be tailored in such a way that you can identify what prospects appear to be interested in your product or service as opposed to those that aren’t. By asking certain questions of the audience and by discussing things that are important to potential clients, you almost ensure that those who are interested will stick around after the presentation. At the end of the presentation, be sure you have additional salespeople on hand to answer questions from the audience.

Your exhibit staff should be thoroughly trained in all aspects of your product or service so that they can effectively handle any questions your audience may raise. Exhibit staff should also be trained to ask the right questions of the attendees to determine if they are a good prospect or not. Is the attendee the decision-maker for purchasing products for their company? When do they plan on making their purchasing decision? Does their company have a need for your product or service? Remember that a good presentation will give you an opportunity to connect with more qualified prospects at the show.

It is critical to train your sales team in the proper prospecting techniques before launching them into a trade show setting. By asking the right questions, the salesperson should be able to narrow down the sales potential of any attendee. A corollary benefit of asking good questions is that the answers to those questions can guide your salesperson on the type of presentation that would be most effective for that particular prospect. For example, an engineer may benefit from receiving more technical information on your product than a purchasing manager would.

Trade shows by nature only afford your sales team a limited window of opportunity to speak to people about your product or service. This limitation literally forces your team to narrow their questions to only those that matter most.

The 80/20 rule is one to live by, especially in a busy trade show setting. Your staff should be speaking only 20% of the time and listening to what your prospects have to say the remaining 80% of the time.

Presenting to Clients

If you have done your pre-show marketing properly, you will surely have a healthy number of pre-set appointments with clients and prospects in your booth. These are people that you likely pre-qualified well in advance of the show. If they are already your client, then simply pulling their file and jotting down key information about them before the appointment will give you an advantage in your meeting with them. As is true with all people, your client wants to feel welcome and important when they come to your booth. You can easily satisfy this desire by spending a bit of time in pre-show preparation.

Presenting to Prospects

In cases where the pre-set appointment is with a prospect rather than a current client, you can nonetheless prepare in advance. When making the appointment, ask the prospect detailed questions about their company. Then, do a quick Internet search in order to learn all you can about the other information they might not have shared with you. Your prospect will be duly impressed with the details that you know about their organization. At the same time, this knowledge will give you an opportunity to ask them more focused questions that will assist in your further interaction with them.

Live Marketing Presentations

It may surprise you to learn that many attendees also engage in pre-show preparation. They commonly conduct their own research about the companies they intend to visit and will be well versed in your product or service. In this age of the Internet, they have ready access to online information that will enhance their understanding of what you have to offer before you have the chance to pitch it yourself. Once they embark upon the show floor, they are generally ripe and ready to see your products and services in full living color. In fact, the Center for Exhibition Industry Research conducted a study in which it showed that 28 percent of attendees were drawn to those exhibitors who conducted a live demonstration in their booths.[1] Because attendees are anxious to see the newest widget in action, it is well worth the effort to include an in-booth demonstration along with your presentation.

Naturally, people are drawn to a scene where something exciting is happening. Movement of parts, noise, lights, laughter, or any commotion for that matter will generate more interest in your booth. Following an effective demonstration, particularly one in which your audience is brought to laughter, prospects walk away with a distinct memory of what they have seen and how it works. With particularly effective demonstrations, attendees may even recount the experience to others back at the office! Remember, trade SHOW is two words with each being equally important to your success.

Effective Demonstrations

Unfortunately, I have seen live demonstrations fail and fail miserable. The reasons for this painful experience are far too numerous to recite here, but the most common are as follows: the demonstration lasts too long, it doesn’t convey the company’s main marketing message, it is boring, or it wasn’t properly rehearsed and doesn’t flow as it should. To be effective, you should engage a professional who is completely comfortable with what’s expected of him or her. A professional in this context doesn’t necessarily mean a hired gun. You may have someone right in your own office that is sufficient versed on performing and handling a crowd that they would be just perfect for the job. While some companies are fortunate enough to have that perfect person already on staff, most often this just isn’t the case. In that event, your money would be well spent on hiring a person who can carry a live demonstration and leave that positive lasting impression you are driving to achieve.

Imagine this, you assign John the task of giving the demonstration because he is the most gregarious fellow in your office. He is quite comfortable in front of all your office staff and never lets an opportunity pass to get in a funny word. Now, here he stands in front of your target audience, widget in hand, pale as a ghost and dryly reading from the card fluttering nervously in his hand. In a matter of moments, you can be assured that crowd that had gathered at the sound of your intro music is disappearing right along with John’s confidence. The person conducting your demonstration must be lively and entertaining. He or she must engage the crowd and be ready to handle any off the cuff remark shot from the crowd. At the same time, that person must be competent at weaving your marketing message throughout the demonstration without making it seem like a full blown commercial. In the event you draft the script to your demonstration, you should limit the points made to no more than three. This will keep the ball rolling and the audience engaged.

As mentioned before, your presenter should also make a concerted effort involve the crowd in the demonstration. Whether it is asking someone to hold something up for everyone to see, or dropping their card in a fish bowl, crowd involvement almost ensures that attendees will stay around for the whole presentation.

Practice Makes Perfect

If you have decided that John, your employee, is qualified for the job of demonstrating your product or service at the show, you should ensure that he spends ample time practicing it in front of others. Your presenter must understand every aspect of how your product works and must be able to relay that information to attendees without boring them to tears. Having your in house presenter start practicing in front of your trade show team well in advance of the show will result in a far higher quality presentation. Also, it is a good idea to have your team briefed by your presenter with a mock run through of the demonstration an hour before the show opens on the first day. In the event you have engaged a professional presenter, you won’t need as much pre-show preparation. This person is quite accustomed to working a crowd and should be quite prepared without your direct supervision.

At the risk of discounting the value of physically practicing your presentation, I want to emphasize the importance of mental rehearsal. As mentioned above, mental rehearsal is equally if not more important than physical rehearsal because it is the only means of performing perfectly every time. Countless studies have been conducted on this very issue. In those studies, subjects are divided into two groups. One group is permitted to practice the activity with physical props in hand while the other is restricted to mental rehearsal. In those studies, the mentally rehearsed group almost always outperforms the group that was permitted to practice the activity with the item. This has been attributed to the value of practicing perfectly every time. When you actually get to the venue, your performance largely parallels your practice and, as we all know, perfect practice makes perfect performance.

Troy Milligan
9477 Winewood Circle
Elk Grove, CA 95742
888-438-3944
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