Exhibition Organisers - Challenges - Bringing Opportunities
The Exhibition Guy - Stephan Murtagh QBE 👔
🌎 Global Exhibition Industry Expert ➡️ 30 Years of Transforming Exhibition Success for Organizers, Contractors & Exhibitors| 📊 Strategy, Training & Project Management | CPD Accredited | Speaker MC| LinkedIn Trainer|
Exhibition Organisers Challenges
As Exhibition Organisers, we have many challenges. They are not going away anytime soon so it’s not really the challenges that are the issue but rather how we handle them.
There are of course more challenges than just these, but today we will focus on these 3 key ones.
Finding New Exhibitors
When it comes to finding new Exhibitors, a lot of sales people rely on re-booking and fill the gap by a few inbound enquiries and trawling through other exhibition catalogues searching for the “lower hanging fruit” – These are grand but will only get us so far and we need to be more creative where we find Exhibitors. As our world becomes even more competitive, we need to look to new places and work harder to find new clients. Using the old ways is fine but you will need more avenues to source and find new clients to replace the lost Exhibitors. Consistently filling the pipeline is what great salespeople do. The added advantage of having new Exhibitors in your show also reflects in new visitors to the event and by keeping the show fresh and relevant, you are increasing its appeal to visitors.
Some new ways of finding Exhibitors include…
1. Actually, asking your clients for referrals
2. Joining and contributing to LinkedIn groups specific to your industry
3. Creating your own groups from above
4. Developing stronger links and partnerships with Associations
5. Getting out of the office and face to face at networking meetings
6. Hosting free advice podcasts or webinars
7. Finding out the companies that follow your social posts and engaging with them as potential Exhibitors/sponsors
There are a lot of other opportunities and ways of finding new clients, many of which you are doing but the reality is that if you keep just doing the same thing over and over, you will get the same result. As we face into more challenging times, it’s critical that we become more proactive not reactive when it comes to filling the gaps left by lapsed Exhibitors and this is not nor should it be a sporadic thing but rather small consistent efforts that lead to bigger successes.
For me, it’s all about having a retention & prospecting strategy that takes account for things always changing and adapting to that change. It’s about being creative, thinking outside the box and trying many things (some of which won’t work) but finding ones that do and capitalising on them.
Exhibitor Retention
The average business loses between 17-25% of their clients to every year. However, in our industry we lose a lot more…somewhere between 40-50% of our Exhibitors annually would not be unusual. The real challenge is not only losing them but rather the time it takes to replace them with new companies…increased time which we invest to effectively be in the same place. This to me is a real issue and we as an industry need to address this. In simplistic terms, take a show that has 100 Exhibitors. Let’s say we lose 40% of them (in reality it’s closer to 50) - so in essence we lose 40 companies. In my almost years in the industry, it’s safe to say we would have lost 20 of them anyway, achieved objectives, show didn’t work, gone out of business or that market segment. This is perfectly normal and not a major cause for concern.
However, the other 20 we lose for 2 reasons...
1. They did something wrong
2. We did something wrong
What I am getting at is, that we are losing too many Exhibitors each year because we or they are not educated on how to exhibit properly. They rock up to the show and just “expect it to happen” – no planning, pre show marketing, no objectives set and throw up a few banners and pop ups and wonder why people aren’t flocking to their stand. Worse still are the Exhibitors who park themselves on a chair for 3 days, texting their mates or eating their lunch. Exhibiting is not easy but it’s not difficult either and if we want strong Exhibitor retention it’s vital that we help our Exhibitors on the journey. What I mean is, we advise them on what preshow marketing works, how to set their objectives, stand design etc and what to expect in terms of visitors and how to sell at exhibitions. By doing this we are not only investing in them, we are investing in ourselves and higher exhibitor retention. By doing this we are increasing their opportunities for success and ultimately ours by getting higher re-book rates. Yes, it’s a hit of work but it’s worth doing…for everyone. It’s very easy as Exhibitors to lay all the fault at the Organisers door and sometimes you would be right, but from my 25 years experience of working with Exhibitors, very often they have done little or nothing before exhibiting and just hope it will all work out. To put it into perspective, it’s the Organisers responsibility to get visitors to the show but it’s the Exhibitors responsibility to get them to their stand.
On the educating piece, there are 7 key steps to Exhibition Success, and these are listed below. These are the things that will determine success and ultimately better results exhibiting and higher retention rates.
1. Have a 1-2-page written plan
2. Set 3 Clear objectives for exhibiting
3. Do lots of Pre-Show Marketing – 70/30 split in favour of digital
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4. Effective Stand Design using the 60% and 15ft rule
5. Ask good questions of visitors
6. Understanding how Exhibition Selling is different from day to day selling
7. Ensure you have a follow up plan – 6 Days/48-hour rule
We run an exhibitor masterclass specifically on this so if this is if interest just get in touch.
Avoiding Discounting
I will exhibit if you give me 40% off.
Discount is such a dirty word and the truth is that the more discount you give, the harder you have to work. I also know from 30 year’s experience in selling exhibitions, that the client you give the most discount to, is the one that will give you the most stress before, during and after the event. So in reality you are spending more time, getting more stress and have to work harder with the client who pays you the least amount of money. This makes no sense. I used to sell the most expensive exhibition in Ireland…we had a direct competitor and they were 55% cheaper than us. I used to get this thrown at me on every call. Did we discount? No, in fact it made us even stronger on our rate. We sold double what they did every year. I’m not saying this to be arrogant, but rather in reality that yes our clients ask for discount but it doesn’t mean we have to say yes. Will we lose some clients along the way…yes. Sometimes you have to let the client realise the real value. As you can probably tell I’m not a fan of discount. I’m not saying it never happens if we don’t ever have to do it…however it should be the absolute last resort.
When you discount, you are saying my product is not worth as much as I want to charge you for it. That in itself is a red flag to your client. If you think about our industry. People don’t take space for what it costs, they take it for what they get for that cost. If we are getting asked for discount all the time, we haven’t sold the real value if what we do. That’s up to us. If you take discount a step further, if you reduce your price this year they will want even more discount the next time. It’s a bit cliched but it really is a race to the bottom.
When somebody looks for discount, they either don’t value what we do to pay the price or are comparing us against another show. We have to sell the value of what we do well, not what our competitors dont do well.
So how do we avoid discounting?
Walk away – yes sometimes we just have to walk away and say no. In my experience at least 75% of times this happens, the client comes back to us. Why? Because they respect good products and realise they have to pay for them.
Pride in Price – Many sales trainers think you should leave price until the end of the sales call. I disagree. I think you should bring it up yourself and earlier as it shows how confident you are in it. I also believe it will actually save you time weeding out people who are never going to buy.
Being more expensive - Being more expensive is only an issue if you can’t justify it. We don’t discount because we give you XYZ value. This value(more visitors, better quality, speaker content etc) comes at a price. We as salespeople can focus too much on cost or price when our clients are focused on what they are getting.
Alternative Discount – Our clients want and are perfectly entitled to look for the best value. However price and discount aren’t exclusively connected. There are other things we can offer them instead of discount. It may be more favourable payment terms, free social media posts, inclusion in newsletters, better locations in the hall, some form of preshow promotion, access to premium content etc. There are many more things you can think of within your own company and these should be used so as to hold your SqM rate. It’s all too easy to just give discount away but these ensure you need to sell more stands.
All these things you can offer have an imputed value to our clients and can be leveraged to avoid financial discount.
For way too long we have accepted that discounting is part of selling and it doesn’t need to be. We are professional salespeople and we need to value the time we invest with our clients and this involves us being proud of what we sell but also what we charge for it.
The exhibition industry has continued to innovate and we as salespeople in this sector need to do the same. We all need to be better and adopting a new strategy will help you deliver that change and be more successful.
I have an unwavering respect for all the Organisers out there who work hard to deliver great events and results for their clients and it’s why our industry is so powerful.
If you need help to be even better at what you do then check out a brief overview of the S.T.A.R. Program here and get in touch for a zoom call.
Keep well and stay in touch,
Stephan Murtagh, Director, The Exhibition Guy Group,
+353 86-7750420