Exhibition Booth suggestions

[ProcessSales]

Our company plans to start having a booth at various exhibitions around the world. We'll obviously have the basics such as the photo boxes, monitors, lighting, back drops, etc, but I want to see what guys in the industry would like to see at a vessel/reactor fabricators stand. And I don't mind if you want to suggest door prizes. One of the door prizes we will have are wine bottles with our name and logo on them, golf bag, etc.

 

[Unotec]

A good looking hostess ..... sorry, couldn't help it

<<A good friend will bail you out of jail, but a true friend
will be sitting beside you saying ” Damn that was fun!” - Unknown>>

 

[vpl]

Good literature, that includes the name of a knowledgeable contact. I would define "good literature" as a brochure that went a bit beyond the glossy picture to provide some short bullets of what your company can do, such as Codes normally used, delivery times, whether you serve local, national or international customers, specialities, etc.

Patricia Lougheed

Please see FAQ731-376: Eng-Tips.com Forum Policies for tips on how to make the best use of the Eng-Tips Forums.

 

[ProcessSales]

Unotec: Hmm...

vpl: We'll have our top Commercial guy and Technical guy there, so i feel good about that. Though we still have some "glossy" stuff, we've gone more toward powerpoint presentations on thumb drives showing our main fabrication facilities and equipment, plus some of the more impressive items we've made. The first page of the presentation is exactly that-bullets.

 

[rmw]

The worst thing that you can have happen is that someone walks by your booth, looks in and walks on and doesn't have a clue as to what you are all about. Make sure that your pictures or displays tell a message-the message you want told. Rolling large monitor displays with product or application or fabrication photos are good too. All mirth aside, scantily clad models can draw lots of folks to your booth that you don't need to waste time with. Golf putting greens, and that sort of stuff the same, unless you want a bunch of drunks in your booth occupying space trying out their putting skills.

Your time there (and my time there) is brief and valuable and what you want to attract into your booth are qualified prospects or those that you want to inform about your process/product who can ultimately do business with you. Anyone else is wasting oxygen and space and occupying space that a real live prospect could be occupying. Give aways that draw all the wifes and kids into the booth for a freebie are a disaster. Keep give aways out of sight and make them good quality and give them to quality visitors.

VPL's point is good because unless your techinal people are superman, they will have to be away from the booth from time to time for various reasons and when they are not present, your presenttion materials are your fall back position.

Also, make sure that your booth is ALWAYS manned by someone knowledgeable. The shipping department guy who comes with the booth to set it all up doesn't count because he/she can't get done what you need to accomplish.

I as an engineer who is trying to optimize my valuable time when I am at trade shows like pictures and/or displays of what you do that jump out at me and tell me immediately what you are all about so that I can make an informed decision whether to stop or walk on by. A booth full of guys pawing a model or putting on the green or kids grabbing for giveaways are a turn off for me. There is time after the show hall closes for that type of activity.

rmw

 

[Unotec]

Well... I was just saying... It got people to my booths for sure.
I my old days, when we still believed in tradeshows, what I noticed got most bang for the buck was analytical results of common operations. We were on biotreatment, though. I guess you could extrapolate this into showing the typical things you can offer.
In my mind, when you show the more impressive stuff you drive away the potential day to day customers whose applications might not require such a high degree of developments. You might look either too specialized or too expensive or both.

<<A good friend will bail you out of jail, but a true friend
will be sitting beside you saying ” Damn that was fun!” - Unknown>>

 

[ProcessSales]

rmw: I completely agree with you. If you notice one of my other threads, we're looking for a model builder. There are a few specialized type vessels, drums and reactors we fabricate, and a scale model with finite details including cut-aways would be absolutely invaluable, particularly when trying to explain some of the techniques we utilize for construction. For example, we typically use a forging for the shell-to-head-skirt attachment, but without a good visual, such as a cut out of one, it's difficult to visualize if you don't know what it is. Another example is we use narrow-gap-welding, so a visual would help explain how there's a smaller HAZ, less consumables, faster deposit time, etc. Obviously, if you can't visualize it, it's more difficult to appreciate.

Thanks for the sincere post!

 

[vesselguy]

Codefabricator,

When I walk by a booth, I want to talk to a knowledable person to answer my technical questions. I agree with VPL's points. Besure to have a detailed resume list of past customers that bought those types of vessels. I used to design thickwall reactors too so when I talk to vendors, I want to know if these people really know what they're talking about, welding processes, quality control, type of heat treatments offered during fabrication (don't just tell me we'll PWHT it at the end, wrong answer), what different kinds of weld overlay processes you're capable of doing and experience, who's your regular source of forgings and how long is the lead time I can expect now, ect. A model is nice but a good 3-D computer model is just as good to show me the parts. Show me your factility, where is it? Shipping access? How big? QA/QC qualified to what standards? Post some drawings/photos of past jobs. The big thing is experience and success history.

Then give me a useful engineering free-bie that I can use in my job. This will remind me of your company everytime I use it.

A pretty girl won't hurt either; easier on my eyes.

 

[JStephen]

It's been my observation that good-looking women attract attention, but it's mainly from the salesmen in the other booths, especially when the show gets slow.

If your company has anything new to offer, that would be of interest. If you're doing the same things everyone else does, you need to sell your company, not your product.

New developments that let you do your work faster (and therefore cheaper) but without any real benefit to the customer are not of that much interest.

It might be of interest to just rotate stuff through the booth each year. Show how radiographs are done one year, show a submerged-arc set up the next year, etc (Not necessarily doing these things in the booth, just have the equipment set up). Real "things" are always of more interest than models of things, which are of more interest than pictures of things.

 

[rmw]

I thought of one more thing to rant about. Nothing frosts me more than to approach a booth that I may have a mild interest in and have the booth attendant so busy pecking away on his computer that he can't bother to even acknowledge my presence. If it is something vital that I have a real need to know about, I will interrupt him and pull him away from his beloved computer. But if it is just something that I have no more than some curiosity about, if he is too busy on his computer to talk to me, I just move on. It blows my mind why someone would spend the big bucks to go to major trade shows and then ignore aisle traffic by spending lots of time on the computer.

But then again, that might be just me.

rmw

 

[vpl]

codefabricator

One of the things I forgot to mention is be sure whatever you give away has contact information. I'll never forget the one time I attended a trade show (ok, to be honest it was a quilt show, but the principle is the same), saw a product I really liked, got their handout, and when I went back six months later realized the handout had no contact information. They lost business because I went to the company whose contact information I did have.

Patricia Lougheed

Please see FAQ731-376: Eng-Tips.com Forum Policies for tips on how to make the best use of the Eng-Tips Forums.