Day 1 at the Trade Show: Slow Start
Sep. 10th, 2025 10:04 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
canyonwalkerNapa Trade Show blog #4
On break in my room - Tue, 9 Sep 2025, 2pm.
Today the vendor part of the trade show kicked off. Yesterday was arrivals and was also a training day for people who wanted classes from the main sponsor. Plus a chance for our team to enjoy dinner together before everyone's worn out from long days.
I was up early today for internal meetings from 7 until 8:30 then walked over to the trade show at 9. It's so convenient being in the same hotel as the show— and that hotel not being a Las Vegas mega-resort with 3,000 rooms in multiple towers where getting from a sleeping room to a conference room entails a walk of a mile engulfed by clouds of 25 years of accumulated second-hand cigarette smoke.
Right now I'm back at my room taking a break after lunch. It's been a slow start at the booth today. Why slow? Frankly, because of poor planning by the conference organizer.
I got to the booth at 9 today... and it was pretty much dead. It was dead until after 12pm because the keynote speeches were running. We knew the keynotes would be going and they'd suck all the attention away from the vendor area. But the keynotes all ran long, gobbling up the breaks between sessions when attendees might come out to visit us. The physical layout of the show disfavored us, too.
Yes, it's important for a show to support its vendors. We vendors help sponsor the show! We're all paying money to be here. ...And I don't just mean spending money on salaries and travel costs. We're paying fees in the five figure range directly to the host company just to be here. That's in addition to what we pay the hotel for our rooms, the construction team for assembling the booth, and all the travel costs of the staff. In return conference organizers need to treat the vendors well.
What does it take to treat vendors well? Give the attendees reasons to visit us. Put ample break times in the schedule for attendees to browse the vendors exhibit area. Put the free snacks and drink in the vendor area, so there's extra reason to come by. Put the lunch and dinner either in the vendor area or on the other side of us, so attendees have to walk past us.
So far today these show organizers have not done the above. There have been no breaks for attendees to come visit us. Everyone's running long on presentations— one ran 30 minutes over— and they're just slotting the next speaker immediately after the previous. Then at lunch today, lunch was in the opposite direction from where we vendors are. People had no reason to walk past our displays. In fact, worse than no reason they specifically had reason not to go near us— because we were in the opposite direction and nobody had extra time because the schedule was still 15 minutes behind.
Now, you might scoff at supporting vendors at the show as the tail wagging the dog. People are here for the show, right? We're just the advertisers everyone would be happier ignoring. But like advertisers in commercial TV, we're paying to help support the show. We're here because we want the opportunity to talk to prospective customers. And we have metrics. We measure the number of contacts in the booth ("raw leads") as well as the quality of conversations ("qualified leads"). And when those metrics are low, especially the qualified leads score, we stop sponsoring the show.
This is our third year at this show. The past two years it was very productive for us. This year, unless things turn a massive 180° later today, may be our last at this show.
On break in my room - Tue, 9 Sep 2025, 2pm.
Today the vendor part of the trade show kicked off. Yesterday was arrivals and was also a training day for people who wanted classes from the main sponsor. Plus a chance for our team to enjoy dinner together before everyone's worn out from long days.
I was up early today for internal meetings from 7 until 8:30 then walked over to the trade show at 9. It's so convenient being in the same hotel as the show— and that hotel not being a Las Vegas mega-resort with 3,000 rooms in multiple towers where getting from a sleeping room to a conference room entails a walk of a mile engulfed by clouds of 25 years of accumulated second-hand cigarette smoke.
Right now I'm back at my room taking a break after lunch. It's been a slow start at the booth today. Why slow? Frankly, because of poor planning by the conference organizer.
I got to the booth at 9 today... and it was pretty much dead. It was dead until after 12pm because the keynote speeches were running. We knew the keynotes would be going and they'd suck all the attention away from the vendor area. But the keynotes all ran long, gobbling up the breaks between sessions when attendees might come out to visit us. The physical layout of the show disfavored us, too.
Yes, it's important for a show to support its vendors. We vendors help sponsor the show! We're all paying money to be here. ...And I don't just mean spending money on salaries and travel costs. We're paying fees in the five figure range directly to the host company just to be here. That's in addition to what we pay the hotel for our rooms, the construction team for assembling the booth, and all the travel costs of the staff. In return conference organizers need to treat the vendors well.
What does it take to treat vendors well? Give the attendees reasons to visit us. Put ample break times in the schedule for attendees to browse the vendors exhibit area. Put the free snacks and drink in the vendor area, so there's extra reason to come by. Put the lunch and dinner either in the vendor area or on the other side of us, so attendees have to walk past us.
So far today these show organizers have not done the above. There have been no breaks for attendees to come visit us. Everyone's running long on presentations— one ran 30 minutes over— and they're just slotting the next speaker immediately after the previous. Then at lunch today, lunch was in the opposite direction from where we vendors are. People had no reason to walk past our displays. In fact, worse than no reason they specifically had reason not to go near us— because we were in the opposite direction and nobody had extra time because the schedule was still 15 minutes behind.
Now, you might scoff at supporting vendors at the show as the tail wagging the dog. People are here for the show, right? We're just the advertisers everyone would be happier ignoring. But like advertisers in commercial TV, we're paying to help support the show. We're here because we want the opportunity to talk to prospective customers. And we have metrics. We measure the number of contacts in the booth ("raw leads") as well as the quality of conversations ("qualified leads"). And when those metrics are low, especially the qualified leads score, we stop sponsoring the show.
This is our third year at this show. The past two years it was very productive for us. This year, unless things turn a massive 180° later today, may be our last at this show.
