December 08, 2000, 4:32 PM — TODD HIROZAWA OF Hewlett-Packard remembers exactly how the sale at the trade
show was clinched. Prospective customers were gathered several ranks deep around a
demonstration of a computer system at the HP booth. An IT member of the booth team, who
had been trained to talk to people at the back of the crowd to make sure they didn't
lose interest and drift away, struck up a conversation with a man behind the cluster of
customers.
"It turned out he was the CIO of a major company, and it closed our sale with that
company," recalls Hirozawa, a computer science graduate who moved from IT to become
a "customer advocate." Hirozawa attends trade shows and entices customers to speak with
HP's engineering and manufacturing people. "That sale was closed because of a technique
that we learned in our trade-show training class."
Turning to expert trainers
Tech employees, not just sales and marketing pros, staff trade-show booths. Some
managers use professional trainers to teach their tech talent how to meet, greet, and
interact with prospective customers attending these shows.
The reason for training is simple: boosting sales. Although many trade-show
managers believe few deals are inked at shows, they do know that the sales cycle can be
sped up when prospects have a positive experience with show-booth personnel. At the
same time, booth personnel not trained in how to communicate effectively in the often
hectic trade-show environment may inadvertently turn customers away.
The training is important, managers say. But they differ on the question of how
often such training is needed. "Social skills training is very important, but you only
need that once," says Linda Hull, trade-show manager at Siemens Communication Devices,
in Dallas. "Once you've learned it, you've learned it."
Not so, says Kimberley Gishler, one of the trade-show program managers at HP.
Gishler believes that the lessons the trainers teach are worth repeating annually.
"The booth training covers basic items that a lot of technical people don't
understand," Gishler says. For example, trade-show training teaches IT people to usher
prospective customers from one part of HP's booth to another, which requires staff
members to go beyond their immediate area of responsibility. "A lot of technical people
never think about that," she says.
That's true, says Matt Hill, a trade-show trainer and president of The Hill Group,
in San Jose, Calif. In addition to HP, his company has conducted trade-show training
for techies at Sun Microsystems, Symantec, and Adobe Systems.
"A lot of technical people never thought their jobs involved anything but answering
questions or talking to each other. We get them to look at the strategy of the trade
show," Hill says. "The basic strategy of going to a trade show is to get face time with
people who might be customers. It's the company's chance to achieve their marketing
objectives or to reinforce their position in the marketplace. Orders usually are not
written at a trade show unless yoou've timed it just right. So a company's objectives
probably are to introduce a new product at the show or to move a customer along the
sales cycle."
Sometimes IT workers will act more professional at a trade show if they are given
some work goals, says Susan Friedmann, an IT trade-show trainer at The Tradeshow Coach,
in Lake Placid, N.Y. She has trained IT workers from Sun and Siemens Communication
Devices.
"People behave differently on a trade-show floor and do things they wouldn't do at
work. They eat, drink, sit around looking bored, and talk amongst themselves. They do
these things because they don't know what else to do. So I try to train IT people by
giving them a personal goal for being at the show. Maybe they want to meet specific
people in the industry, or do their own market research," Friedmann says.
Friedmann also instructs techies on body language: "I say, 'Be aware of what you're
doing. Don't eat, drink, or chew gum. Don't be seen touching body parts. Be interested
and enthused about being a company ambassador. IT people at a booth can make or break
business relationships.'"
Part of good body language is being proactive, Friedmann says. "When somebody comes
to me, I get up and react, or start talking to that person. IT people tend to be a
little more shy and introverted, but they have to overcome that because the trade show
is a very people-oriented environment."
