Any person who is staffing an exhibition stand is the ambassador for your business. You want to be sure that the staff will be able reinforce a positive image of your company. When choosing the people who will represent your company at the trade show display, you need to consider appearance, knowledge, professionalism, and how well the staff member can relate to strangers.

Just as you will carefully plan the appearance of your display stand, with the appropriate portable displays, signage, banner stands, and exhibition style lighting, you need to carefully plan what your representatives will be wearing. Comfortable clothing is a must, especially shoes, as the staff member will be spending a long time at the exhibition stand, standing and talking to your prospective customers.

However, you also want to encourage a uniform and professional look for your staff, and something that attracts attention to your staff member and identifies them as part of your exhibition stand, even when they are away from the stand itself. This is why many companies will invest in bright coloured, printed t-shirts or caps for their staff at the exhibition stand to wear.

Knowledge of your products, prices, specials, and options available is a must for any staff members manning an exhibition stand or trade show display. Remember, these are the people your prospective customers will be dealing with and asking questions of. Not all of your potential customers will be willing to wait until the salesperson follows up from the trade show or exhibition next week, to have their questions answered.

Ensure you have plenty of brochures and reading material readily available for customers to pick up as well.  Plan the design of your display stand so that the brochures are easily available to all passing customers. If you are working in a modular exhibition stand, have brochures available from each end or corner of the stand. Consider the placement of the exhibition furniture to allow your potential customers unimpeded access to your important information.

Professional staff will ensure your money spent on the event hiring equipment, banners, display stands, and the exhibition stand itself, is well spent. If your staff members display a level of professionalism that encourages potential customers to see your company as professional, you have won half the battle. Ensure your staff members receive appropriate training about the goals of the company in attending the exhibition and expected behaviours while they are your ambassadors at the expo or trade show.

A large part of manning an exhibition stand is being able to relate well and quickly to a big crowd made up of many different individuals, each with different needs and expectations from attending the exhibition. You need staff members who are confident and well able to deal with people. It may be better to train someone who exudes confidence in the product knowledge, rather than send the specialist expert on the product, who has difficulty in talking with lots of people. Remember you need to attract people to your exhibition stand, and someone who is shy and prefers to sit in a corner of the trade show booth will not achieve this goal for your company.  Teach your staff that each conversation matters, and encourage them to smile at every visitor.

Make sure that your staff who are manning the exhibition stand and display area for your company are professional, exude confidence in the products and your company, and have the tools and training available to them to adequately represent your company. This way, you will ensure your exhibition stand is a true success.

Tags: exhibition staff

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 18th, 2008 at 10:56 pm and is filed under Staffing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.