Why Exhibit?
Click on the points below for a more detailed explanation of the benefits of exhibiting.
- Meet potential customers
This is the most common reason for exhibiting. The organisers will be delivering hundreds of potential customers of your products and services who will be piling through the door on the day. Make sure your organisation is totally geared to meeting them.
- Demonstrate new products
Brochures, videos and even CD-ROMs are all very well, but nothing beats being able to show your product in a working situation for your visitors to see how it can apply to their needs.
- Meet buyers face to face
Research shows that over 70% of the message picked up by one person from another is through face to face contact yet so many of us rely on the telephone, where we have no ability to read the body language of our contact. An exhibition offers the opportunity for you to meet with prospective buyers and let them assess you in the flesh and remember; people buy people first.
- Sell yourself, as well as your company
First impressions are vital, and a host of pleasant, presentable hosts inviting visitors onto the stand can say more than the most expensive exhibition stand.
- Meet a niche audience
Your organiser will have devoted substantial effort to identifying and contacting those segments of the market interested in seeing you and companies like you. Their resources are likely to far more substantial than yours and for a visitor, the other attractions of an exhibition mean they will make the effort to come to the event.
- See buyers not usually accessible to sales personnel
Research shows that directors senior and managers attend trade shows, either as visitors, speakers or fellow exhibitors. This is an excellent opportunity to see people who often are shielded from telephone calls by their staff and who feel that less senior managers should be dealing with the more "traditional" sales calls.
- Exploit the relaxed environment
Many companies use the "trappings of power" plush offices, giant pot plants, tyrannical secretaries, power desks and low visitor chairs as a way of intimidating sales people. Yet exhibitions are great levelers; that person approaching your stand could be a Managing Director or Tea Boy but can still be reached with a gentle word. And the "neutral" environment of an exhibition can translate to more relaxed and productive meetings.
- Uncover and reach multiple buying influences
Many major business decisions are rarely the sole decision of one person; usually they are the result of multiple influences within an organisation. Your presence at an exhibition can allow you to identify and then make a "pitch" to all the relevant parties; management, Purchasing, Finance, IT and tailor the pitch to their specific needs.
- Be compared with other suppliers
Many visitors to the show will be using the show as a cost-effective and time saving solution to the perennial issue of comparing potential suppliers.
- Make immediate sales
Many Trade Show exhibitors argue that this doesnt happen very often, that the exhibition is a tool only for generating prospects. That may be, however, many companies especially those using Public/Consumer shows - confirm that exhibitions are the perfect environment to secure "impulse buys", especially if the event is firmly placed in the calendar.