Objective of a trade show conversation

On my way to Albuquerque to do some staff training and I’m thinking that this blog should be about something that’s often taken for granted and not giving must focus; what exactly is the objective for a conversation with a visitor to your booth?

I always assumed an exhibit staff knew why they were spending time with visitors but I am often proved wrong. Often, the conversation is almost totally driven by the staff person as they talk to the visitor about what they want to talk about. Or it could be the reverse and the conversation is dominated by the visitor. This might be a good conversation but it could also be that this visitor is a real time-waster; they just like to pontificate, demonstrate their vast knowledge, or they have have the buying potential of three-year old.There isn’t a lot of effort on a part of the staff person to keep the conversation focused on an objective that meets the needs of both participants.

As an exhibit staffer, meeting both your and the visitor’s objective should be your number one priority. Typical objectives include:

• Qualified lead generation
• An appointment
• Commitment to respond to an email or to take a phone call
• Commitment to attend a function, reception, seminar, etc.
• A sale (this still happens at a lot of shows)

So suppose that the number one objective is qualified lead generation. When the staff is focused on this, they have to understand the visitor’s needs, timeframes, issues, and preferred method of follow-up. These are the qualifiers for a good lead. And when the booth is really busy, how long does it take to get to this point? Usually only five or ten minutes. After that, they can politely dismiss the visitor and move on to qualify another visitors. Very efficient.

Without clear, time-dependent, achievable objectives, conversations can be completely open-ended at the mercy of whoever wants to keep talking – possibly wasting both person’s time.

There are always exceptions for this objective driven strategy; when your biggest customer wants 30 minutes of your time in your booth, that’s probably a good use of your time. But in general, keeping the focus on meeting some specific objectives for a trade show conversation will result in more and higher quality lead generation, better experiences for your visitors, and a more successful show.

Presenting the “So What?”

What does “Presenting the ‘So What?’” mean?

“The What” are the features of your products and services. What they do, what differentiates them, how big they are, what they cost, etc.

“The What” are the facts, specifications and descriptions of your products and services.

“The What” says nothing about how your products and services bring value to your visitors and to their customers.

What is the “So What?”

The “So What?,” takes “The What” and adds some need the visitor has to produce a “So What?”. It’s a form of the classic “features + needs = benefits” formula.

Talking about the “So What?,” personalizes your products and services to each visitor.

All of the “whats” are only features that have no value unless the visitor has a need for it and cares about it. Doing this is also called features dumping. The huge risk that is taken when you are only talking about the “What” is that it puts the burden of translating these features into something of value – benefits – on the visitor. And most visitors won’t do it.

When you simply laundry list a bunch of features it communicates that there is more complexity and more cost to the listening visitor. Two things you probably are not trying to do.

Don’t leave it to the visitor to make that translation from a “What” to a “So What?” Do it for them by understanding how your product or service will result in value to them. Find out what the visitor cares about. Their issues, plans, problems, and needs. You do this by asking questions, not by unloading “The What” on them. Here are some general, open-ended, sample questions to move from “The What” to the “So What?”:

• “What specifically are you looking to improve or change?”
• “What are you looking for to improve?”

• “How can our product improve your time-to-market or your client’s experience?”

• “What problems are you experiencing?”

The “So What?,” will be how the features of your products and services produce benefits based on the visitor’s needs.

The sales research I’ve seen over the past 20+ years consistently says that people will commit to purchase virtually anything based on the product or service fulfilling two or three high value needs. Not four needs or ten needs; two or three. So how do you know which two or three “Whats” will turn into the higher value “So Whats?” Ask some questions to understand how your product or service will:

• Generate more revenue
• Decrease some current expense
• Avoid some future expense
• Shorten their time-to-market
• Improve their quality of life

So how do you deliver the “So What?”

You need to make the link between two or three key needs that the visitor has expressed to the corresponding features of your product or service that address or meet those needs. To do this, re-state each visitor’s need and supply the connecting feature one at a time.

You want to give your trade show booth visitors a different, more positive experience? Talk about what your products and service mean to their specific situation. Talk about the “So What?”

Competitive tactics at Trade Shows

Ethical things you can do

1. Wearing your own exhibitor badge. Of course. If it’s on a lanyard, it could have turned around so you can’t see it.
2. Asking a visitor in your booth to turn their badge around so you can see it. Or, asking them for a business card to verify their identity and affiliation.
3. Entering a competitor’s booth (unless it’s against the show’s rules) during normal show hours.
4. Listening in on a conversation or a demonstration in a competitor’s booth.
5. Yielding your position so a competitor’s own visitors can be in front of you or closer to the staff.
6. Greeting and engaging visitors in and around your own booth.
7. When asked a competitive question, not criticizing, mocking or vilifying the competition.

Unethical things you shouldn’t do but I’ve seen

1. Wearing someone else’s badge.
2. Lying about your identity and affiliation when asked.
3. Entering a competitor’s booth before or after show hours when no one is there.
4. While in a competitor’s booth, asking a question or making a comment that could potentially embarrass  the staff or put them in an awkward position.
5. Not yielding your position so a competitor’s own visitors can be in front of you or so they can see better.
6. Greeting, engaging, and escorting in and around your competitor’s booth, and then escorting directly over to your booth.
7. When asked a competitive question, disparaging, mocking, degrading or speaking badly of your competitors.

How to give your booth visitors a different experience

If you have this gorgeous booth with color-lit fabric, robotic spotlights, LCD screens, interactive displays, and a raffle, the visitors to your booth will have a different, memorable experience. Really?

I was doing some of my staff training at a show for a client and when I had a chance to wander the show floor I remember watching a guy escape from a straightjacket while riding a unicycle in a booth. It was amazing! Now ask me what booth it was in. I really don’t remember. So it was a memorable experience and a different experience but I couldn’t tell you what booth I was suppose to tie that different experience to.

The reason was that my experience watching the escape artist wasn’t personal. I had no connection with any of the booth personnel and that’s what visitors remember.

I think a different, positive experience for your booth visitors is dependent upon their interaction with your exhibit staff. And the research supports it. 80% of what visitors remember most about their visit to your booth is their interaction with your staff – good and bad.

So what will make a visitor’s interaction with your staff different and positive? Well, let’s take a look at the usual experience a visitor might have in some of the other booths at a trade show, maybe even in one or more of your competitor’s booths. They enter a booth, eventually get someone’s attention, they hopefully get asked a question or two, and when the staff person gets their chance to talk, they launch into a passionate description of your products and services. They also provide examples of how your product is used and how it can solve problems. Their product presentation is comprehensive. The conversation concludes with the visitor being asked for a scan of their badge.

Anything wrong with this? The missing piece, the piece that will give your own booth visitors a different experience is the lack of focus on the visitor. The example above could have been an interaction with any visitor to your booth because there is nothing personal, customized, or possibly relevant to an individual visitor. But this is the usual experience for a trade show visitor; they must make the effort to translate the monologue of a booth staffer into something they care about. This can be a lot to ask and can make any booth visitor feel less important.

So to me, this is a booth visitor’s typical experience not a different, memorable experience. If you want to give your visitors a different, positive, and memorable experience, try this:

1. Get your staff to prepare for their most important, VIP visitors by letting everyone in the booth to expect them (give them their name and company so they’re ready to personally greet them), by orchestrating a VIP visit by lining up presentations and demonstrations, asking your executives in the booth to greet and/or meet with them, and most importantly, to have an objectives for their VIP meetings.
2. Ask your staff to not assume that your products and services have any value for your booth visitors until a clear need has been established. This will keep your exhibit staff from running at mouth, features dumping, and talking about stuff the visitor does not care about.
3. Have your exhibit staff greet visitors quickly.
4. Have them be ready with some good, open-ended questions to ask visitors so they can find out what they’re interested in, how much they know about your products and your marketplace, and what issues or problems they’re trying to solve.
5. After discovering what the visitor wants to hear about in your booth, your staff should make a guess about how long the visit will take
6. Your booth staffers should focus on what the visitor cares about not what they care about; they might not be the same thing. Yes, you may want everyone to leave your booth with a new marketing message or knowing about two or three things, but other than that, their entire visit should be focused on them.
7. Your staff should manage the visitor’s time expectation by giving them their best guess on how long their visit will last.
8. A polite request to scan their badge should be made to generate a highly qualified lead.
9. At the end of an interaction with a visitor, your staff should ask for a commitment for the visitor’s preferred follow-up method.

By focusing on what your visitor’s are interested in, what their issues are, and what they would like to fix or improve will give them a different, more memorable experience in your exhibit booth.

Working a café area in an exhibit booth.

Do you have a café in your exhibit booth? If you are giving out coffee, smoothies, or any other type of beverage plus any snack or food item, then you do.

Are you getting the most out of the additional booth traffic the café is generating? Sure, your booth visitors are getting something of value for free, but will they even remember where they got their coffee and cookie? Probably not.

Your booth staff is the key to making your café work as well as it should. As more and more companies are offering food and beverages as give aways in their booths (especially in Pharma booths as tsotchkes have been banned under the Pharma Code), your exhibit staff should know how to use your café to generate even more goodwill, establish new relationships, and produce more qualified leads. And yes, this does happen. We train our client’s staffs to do this and you can train your staff too.

Most visitors understand that nothing is really free and that if they enter your booth to get a coffee and cookie, they’ll essentially be trading some of their time. So if you only give out coffee, guess what? Most visitors will get their coffee and walk right out of your booth. The solution? Give them a beverage and a snack so that they’ll be more likely to remain in your booth. They’ll either sit down or stand at a table as this will free up their hands so they can eat and drink.

So this means you need to offer seating, tables or both. I like cocktail style tables and chairs as they are higher so when one of your booth staff is talking with them, they’re at more of an equal eye-level.

What if there’s a line for coffee as is often the case. Remember, the objective is to make a visitor’s time in your booth or in line a pleasant experience.

The visitor knows that when they’re in line, they’re captive. Your staff should greet them in line with a smile and comment on the line, how long the wait should be, how the conference is going and what they like about it, and what they might want to do next. And since the line is usually for the beverage, you can offer the visitors in line the snack before they get to the counter. In fact, we had someone carry a tray of cookies up and down the line offering it to the visitors. They were very appreciative.

If the conversation gets a little warm and fuzzy, they should try to find some area of mutual interest or commonality; where they’re from, what they do, etc. Your staff should not take advantage of their captivity by talking about something of no interest to them or by pitching products and services.

If there’s a long line in your booth it can cut off areas, create bottlenecks, and obstruct traffic. So you and your staff also need to know how to move a line. I learned this when I worked for amusement parks for six years.

To move a line, take the time to talk the first couple of people in the line where the move to the left or right is going to start. Tell them what you’re going to do and why and ask for their cooperation. Tell them if they move, you’ll help ensure that everyone behind them follows their lead.

Ask these one or two visitors to move and then raise your voice and speak to however much of the line behind them can hear and ask them to move also telling them why. Go down the line to be extra polite, thanking people for moving, telling them why, etc. You can also ask for any questions about the booth as you do this.

Once a visitor receives their coffee and cookie offer to help them find a place to sit. It’s European seating which means it’s perfectly fine to offer seating at a table that already has some people sitting at it. Just be polite and introduce everyone.

To get the most out of your booth café, check up on your visitors who are seated like a host would. Ask if they’re enjoying it, if they want anything else, etc. Once you’ve had contact a few times, encourage any questions and invite them to remain in the booth. Some will. And those can turn into qualified leads.

And I usually encourage my clients not to give out any beverages or snacks to exhibitors, but there are always exceptions.

How to handle tough question in a trade show booth

Tough questions are those questions you hope no one will ask. But be ready for them because someone probably will.

Tough questions can be about late products, defective products, future products, news reports, indicted executives, stock prices, potential acquisitions and mergers, or a technical question that you don’t know the answer to.

Some visitors who ask these tough questions are just playing knowledge bowl with you; they think they know more than you do and they want to show off. Some tough questions are from competitors or even disguised competitors. Some are from the press or investors and you shouldn’t be talking to either of these types anyway because for you they become CLCs (Career Limiting Conversations). And some tough questions are legitimate and could be asked by your most customer, that’s assuming you have customers.

Your first reaction on how to handle any tough question might be to do what you do in your office; pull rank and start yelling, blame someone else you’re competing with for that promotion, or mentioning again how your father is the CEO and you don’t like where this conversation is going.

But at a trade show in your company’s booth the following general guidelines should help you handle tough questions:

1. Anticipate which tough questions you’ll hear, and have some answers ready. You’ve probably heard a lot of these same tough questions before from customers as your products are lousy and your customer service is handled from a gulag in Siberia. But if there are some new issues, before the show, circulate whatever tough questions you anticipate hearing among the other people in your company staffing the booth. Get their help and input on some suggested answers.
2. Respond to a tough question with a question of your own that asks why they’re asking the question. This can disarm an obnoxious or inappropriate question and will also give you a little more time to formulate an answer. This technique of answering a question with a question needs to be done smoothly and conversationally otherwise it comes across as being defensive. Remember how that felt when you tried it with the police? Not good.
3. During the show, share effective answers and responses with your colleagues in the booth. Trade shows are real-time marketing so don’t wait until next year’s show or even until the next day. Keep the communication ongoing during the show. I know this flies in the face with your communication strategy with your spouse, but trust me on this one.
4. Hand-off difficult visitors or unanswerable questions to the appropriate people. I’m thinking your PR person, CFO, and other management and executive-types. Let them earn their big bucks. Plus it’s fun to watch them squirm.
5. Know how to handle the three classic sales objections that come across as tough questions in a trade show booth; real objections, misunderstandings, and skepticism.

1. Real objections. Admit to them, apologize (if you need to) and then move on. Don’t dwell on it by continuing to explain or apologize. Less is more here.
2. Misunderstandings. Take partial or full responsibility for the misunderstanding, explain how it really is, then move on. Most people just want to know what’s really going on.
3. Skepticism. If a visitor just doesn’t believe something you said, and in this rare case, it’s actually the truth, try this three-step process: First, state your personal conviction, next offer proof, lastly restate your personal conviction. This format is sometimes called the “Skepticism Sandwich.”

And now, here are some sample tough questions and suggested ways to handle them:

TQ: Why is your pricing so high?

A: Move this to a cost of ownership or benefit discussion. You can say something like, “Actually our pricing is competitive with everyone else in our marketplace. Our list prices might be higher, but when you take into account the total cost of ownership, we’re actually lower. We think there is tremendous value in our products’ reliability and our customer service is best in the industry. I suggest you add in these additional, but harder to measure factors, when you’re doing your cost-justification.

TQ: What company are you going to acquire next?

A: This is a question for your investment, financial, or C-level people. Simply say that you are not qualified to answer those types of questions and if you did, you’d probably be asking around for a good head hunter.

TQ: When is that new product finally going to ship?

A: If the information on the new product is public, go ahead and discuss it. If it’s not public, don’t discuss it. Sort of like how you handle your embezzlement conviction.

TQ: How are your earnings going to be this quarter?

A: If your financial info has been released, go ahead and discuss them. If they’re not public yet, don’t discuss it.

TQ: How do your products compare with those from XYZ (one of your key competitors)?

A: You’re not in your booth to talk at length about your competitors. There are two elements for a good answer to this competitive question; Don’t mention your competitor’s name – lump them all together and describe them as, “your competitors”, and don’t criticize the competition – take the high road.

Hope this helps. Have fun at your next show.

Handling competitive questions in a trade show booth

At trade shows competitors are everywhere: In other booths, in your booth, in the aisles, in the conference sessions, in the bus, in line for food, in the rest room. And when you’re in your own booth, paying thousands of dollars just for the space you should not spend any time with them.

But since the second biggest reason visitors go into an exhibit hall at a trade show is to evaluate competing products. If you’re at the right show, your competitors will be there and you’ll get asked competitive questions by some of your own visitors.

Back in my days selling engineering equipment for Xerox, we were taught how to handle competitive questions and that model still works. It’s great. Here’s how to use it:

If you get a comp a competitive question like, “How does your product compare with the one from XYZ?” Answer it with these two criteria in mind: (1) Don’t mention the competitor’s name in your answer, and (2) Don’t criticize or talk down the competition.

Say something like, “We compare favorably with all of our competitors. Tell me exactly what you’re looking for.” Remember, you are at a trade show to talk about your products, not your competitor’s. And don’t help your competitors by adding to the visitor’s awareness of your competitors by mentioning their name. Also, if you criticize them, the visitor might defend the competitor – not something you want to happen.

When you talk about your own products and services emphasize your differentiators, the things about your products that the competitors can’t match. And remember to not just features dump by listing off all of the things that are better about your product or service. Hook a differentiating feature to an agreed upon need to produce a benefit. This makes your selling technique of focusing on the visitor’s needs a differentiator too. Something your competitors may not do.

So be prepared: Know who your competitors are. Understand their strengths and weaknesses. Ask questions that lead to your competitive advantages and their weaknesses; your differentiators.

And be aware at trade shows because everything is public: Know who you’re talking to and what company they represent. You can be overheard anywhere; the plane, elevators, restaurants, etc. If you can’t see a visitor’s badge, ask them to make it visible. When you’ve collected a bit of a crowd for a presentation or demonstration, continue to interrupt yourself and greet visitors so you know who’s going to hear you.

The First Three Minutes

I know a lot of you have been exhibiting at trade shows for five or 10 or 20 years.

My experience over the past 22 years training people on how to improve their communication shills, especially in public situations like trade shows and conferences, has proven to me that no matter how long you’ve been in these environments, very few of you consistently perform at a high level. I think there are a couple of reasons for this: that this is little preparation or thought given to the unique skills needed and there is no compelling reason for most people to try to improve their skills.

My point here is, if you’re going to take the time and make the effort to go an expensive trade show, in other words – any trade show – you should review and practice a few things that will make the most of your time. Even professional athletes and performers warm-up and rehearse before every game or performance respectively. But most people I know who are going to work in an exhibit  booth or hall or host a reception or party just show up without any preparation, figuring there are at their peak readiness right from the start.

I encourage you to make the most of time at your next trade show by realizing that your face-to-interactions with the other attendees will have more influential and impact on your business than anything else. I don’t care if you provide the best food, drink or have the nicest exhibit booth. These all pale in comparison to how you interact with the other attendees.

In this article, I want to focus on one element of preparing for a trade show: Making the most of your conversations. Productive conversations can happen in your exhibit booth, another exhibit booth, receptions, restaurants, hallways, and anywhere else you might have a conversation.

So here are a few tips to have more productive conversations. First, believe it or not, there is a fair amount of research on the structure of conversations. I’ve condensed a bunch of it below:

1. Recognize the importance of the first three minutes.
2. Be aware of how you interact now. Do you use the same pattern of conversation?
3. Are you aware of how you sound and what you say?
4. Be genuinely interested in meeting people and learning from people.

If you, like I have, take an honest assessment of yourself relative to those four items above, you’ll probably realize that you don’t think about them much, don’t analyze them and maybe didn’t even realize if you are a little weak in a couple of areas. Let the research continue:

The basic structure of any conversation looks like this:

1. Introductions
   1. Uncovering identification and demographic information.
   2. Finding out about each other’s jobs and responsibilities.
2. Informational questioning
   1. Taking about what’s going on real-time, right now.
   2. Discovering mutual interests and people you both know.
3. Active listening
   1. Offering feedback and questions to what the other person said.
   2. Building on their subject of interest by offering your opinion, insight or related story.
4. Rapport building
   1. You’re enjoying the conversation.
   2. There is give-and-take, the conversation is not completely one-sided.
   3. You two actually care about what the other on is saying.
   4. You share some mutual interests, attitudes or you’re both open enough to enjoy contrary opinions.
5. Agree to continue or not
   1. After three minutes it is perfectly acceptable to continue or to move on and leave the conversation. Just be polite and excuse yourself.

For a trade show, or any other crowded, non-one-on-one setting, the time frames are shortened to get through these five items.

And, if you get stuck in the middle of the first three minutes of a conversation, here are some things to do that will unstuck conversations:

1. Change the subject.
2. Ask real-time questions.
3. Ask them what they want to discuss.

So far, I’ve given you some things to do. Now here are some things not to do. Try to avoid doing the following within the first three minutes:

1. Giving advice. Unsolicited advice is rarely appreciated. Even if asked for advice, give it sparingly. Most advice is criticism and even from a good friend, is hard to take. Criticism from a stranger is rarely appreciated, rarely followed, and rarely stimulates good feelings.
2. Asking too many questions. It’s not an interrogation. Asking open-ended questions to get basic information is fine, but asking question after question is not. Avoid personal questions early on in the conversation. But you can ask a nosy question in a lighthearted way and probably receive a lighthearted answer. Sometimes questions are used to uncover the other person’s feelings before you have to reveal yours. This is not always fair. Playback the questions you usually ask in your head and maybe add an assertion that communicates how you feel about the issue.
3. Don’t be silent except when listening. And don’t do all of the listening. It shouldn’t be a one-way street.
4. Fact flinging. Or the other extreme: not joining in because you think your opinion isn’t strong enough by itself. Shared personal experiences and feelings are what make relationships, not facts.
5. Self-focus. Thinking that a monologue about you is interesting to anyone else. Or a monologue about a subject that you alone know about. Pretending to be an expert is a technique that many people use.

If you read this whole article and really made an honest assessment of how you currently conduct your conversations versus what some of the research says, try to improve your conversational skills at your next trade show and I’ll bet you’ll meet more people, establish more relationships and have more fun.

Location, location, location?

It’s true in real estate. Is it true for your exhibit booth? Yes it is and no, probably not, depending upon the size of the show.

One strategy is to be inside the triangle. If you look at a map of the exhibit hall and draw a triangle with the point down at the main entrance to the hall, you want your booth to be inside the triangle. Another strategy is to have a booth near food or even the restrooms. The reality is, if you’re not one of the first 20 or 50 exhibitors to pick a location, you are probably going to have to do some extra things to attract visitors to your booth.

For a large show with 500+ exhibitors location is important, especially if you have a small booth. And at these large shows, a small booth might be a 20×20 or smaller. A 10×10 or 10×20 booth can really be missed. These companies must make an extra effort to get noticed. They need to make sure there is some traffic to their booth. Some of the things they can do is some pre-show promotion, maybe an in-booth contest, raffle off a Ferrari, get Brad Pitt to sign autographs in the booth, etc.

For smaller trade shows where there are only 150 exhibit booths and sometimes show rules dictate that none of them can be any bigger than a 10×20, location is not all that important. I walked up and down every aisle at a show like this a month ago and read the signs in every booth and it still only took me 30 or 45 minutes. I think that means that your average visitor to the exhibit hall will walk up and down every aisle too. And they’ll take their time. Walking the exhibit floor is fun for them and they want to visit with old friends and learn about new products and services. And they especially like it when the exhibitors jump out into the aisle and obstruct them physically – especially if the visitor is from a really big company.

It is tough to be missed at a small show. This is not to say that the booths in the front and center of the hall won’t be busier; they will be. But, if you do the right things before and during the show, you’ll maximize your investment. Before the show, do some pre-show promotion. The most effective thing to do is to extend personal invitations to the people you really want to see. Make phone calls to them, send them formal invitations.

During the show, your staff can be proactive about greeting visitors as they walk by. And at a few shows I work, which is not the case at most shows, exhibitors are encouraged to work the hall outside their own booth. So do that, have your people walk the aisles and greet visitors. And, if there are other exhibitors that have services that are complimentary to yours, offer to take your visitors over to them when you’re finished with them if they return the favor. Escorting visitors to other booths really does work. You’re handing off an already qualified visitor.

Pre-Show/Pre-Con Meeting Product Presentation Guidelines

I have attended literally hundreds of my client’s pre-show and pre-con meetings. I know what you’re thinking but I am not a pre-show or pre-con meeting junkie – they pay me to do staff training at these things. And I’ve become an expert at being bored but looking interested for hours and hours. Anyway, an area that could be improved at just about every one of these meetings are the product presentations. Often times every product presentation has a different structure, presents different categories of information, and they never tie in their product to anyone’s else’s product.

The real problem is how all this comes across and how it’s understood by the audience; the exhibit staff. There is always a ton of information delivered at these pre-show and pre-con meetings and staff is subject to the classic “fire hose” of information. Yeah, I know, the comprehensive pre-show/pre-con package was sent out to them at least a week ago, but most of the staff walk into the meeting having not read anything. They are starting at zero.

So when the booth’s products and services are presented in varied ways, highlighting varied things, not being tied into an overall solution or message, the audience will retain a very small percentage of what they hear. These retention rates are well-proven. Think teenagers or husbands.

What I think is effective, is when a presentation template is agreed upon and adhered to. The audience will find these consistent-looking presentations easier to follow and they can focus on the pertinent information.

Speaking of pertinent information, when I ask some of the exhibit staff about the content of the product presentations, they roll their eyes and say that most of it was unnecessary to know and only a little bit was anything they felt they really need to know.

So I also encourage any product presenter have their content reviewed by a member of the exhibit staff who will give them their honest opinion. What the product people and presenters think is important may not be to someone in the booth.

This template should help your presenters prepare for their short (five minutes or less) product presentation:

The objective for the presenters is to have the audience (exhibit staff) walk away from meeting:
Knowing who each presenter is and maybe a quick bio of how long they’ve been at the company, what they do, and maybe the color of their couch.
What product or service you’ll be talking.
Two or three key features (why people might want to buy it).
A couple of questions the staff might ask to find out if the booth visitors might have some interest.

To make sure the presenter stay on-time, offer the following guidelines:
You have 5 minutes (or less, not more) for your presentation. We will hold up a sign saying “60 seconds” when you have that much time to go.
State your name, your title, responsibilities, and if you want, how long you’ve been with the company.
Introduce your product (show it if you brought it) or service.
Talk about the top three features.
Talk about why someone would buy it or be interested (benefits).
Offer a couple of questions to the rest of the people for them to use with their visitors.

A well-paced, well-structured pre-show or pre-con meeting can be the positive kick-off a successful show needs. Hope this helps!