Don’t take this personally, but … we can all become complacent about how we work at an exhibition stand, which can mean we don’t get as much out of the event as we could. That is why the day before each Security TWENTY exhibition, Roy Cooper, MD of Professional Security magazine, pictured, holds an informal training session for those exhibitors that want to hear. Here is the start of a digest of his session to anyone interested, before ST Birmingham last month.
Roy’s pedigree is as a visitor to innumerable exhibitions over the years; and on the exhibiting side he goes as far back as Modern Alarms, when he was that company’s stand manager for IFSEC. When he started to talk through some dos and don’ts, he said that you already know these things, but anyone can become complacent, and forget things. Hence the training as a refresher.
Before the show, invite your customers. The day before the show, it’s too late. Yet of the 70 or 80 exhibitors at each ST event, a fair few don’t invite their customers. Some say that they don’t because they don’t want to invite customers to where their competitors may be on show also. That’s naïve, Roy suggested. And what if your customer comes anyway, and sees you there? If you’re not sending out invites because that is what your marketing department ought to do, then talk to marketing, because if you are investing in ST, make it work for you! Arrive in good time at the venue. If you come late to set your stand up, you may find that the guy next to you has pinched a couple of inches; and so has the next … and at 7.45am on the day you are complaining your stand area is a small size. Make yourself known to the show organisers. Build your stand in the right place – sometimes an exhibitor doesn’t, and it always seems to be the exhibitor with the stand that takes three hours to put up.
Make sure that your literature is in place, and that your equipment is working. In the morning of a show, you may see someone working at their laptop, not ready even as the first visitors are coming in, at 8.30am.
The next ST20 event is ST Glasgow, on Wednesday, April 22, at Hilton Hotel, William Street, in downtown Glasgow. Visit https://professionalsecurity.co.uk/security-events-and-conferences/security-twenty-home/.
For part two of four – click here.
