Trade Shows are generally a major expense for
companies. There are concerns about
planning, presentation, travel, getting the “right” visitors to your booth and
especially, making sure that they leave with the “desire to buy” from you.
One of the major decisions is “who to send to represent the
company” at a trade show. It is unproductive and expensive to bring
everybody. Still, customers like to see
friendly, familiar faces. According to
Susan Friedman in an article at http://www.conventions.net on “The
Secret Weapon Every Savvy Exhibitor Should Use”:
“While starting new business relationships will always
be important, a new emphasis has been placed on strengthening and maintaining
existing relationships.
“Consider your current customers. Ask yourself
-- or even better, ask them, how they feel about your products and
services. How about your customer service? What makes doing business with
your organization unique, enjoyable, and/or remarkable?
Sometimes customers prefer to see their trusted, local representative, who has been “so helpful” in the past. Nowhere is this more important than in Customer Service.
I have been in Customer Service situations my entire career,
no matter the particular job title.
Focusing in on those repeat, satisfied customers is one of the best ways
to create “word of mouth” referrals that typically are critical to landing new
business. At trade shows, I cannot count
the times when it was important for customers to bring an observation or
complaint to the show floor. Despite all
the sincere demonstrations of the show floor personnel that they will get some
“action”, customers usually leave with a feeling like “maybe this time it will
be different, but don’t count on it.”
They feel this way, because they know show floor personnel have many other
responsibilities, they are working long hours and they tend to forget
things. They may have the best of intentions. But, results here are not really
counted. Nonetheless, it was very
important to the customer and the relationship to your company.
Also, it may be important to be nimble, accurate and
flexible in presenting your product to a specific customer need. Or, financial decisions need to be made that
can make or break a sale at the trade show.
We use what we can, spotty cell phone service, conference calls or email
– none of which is immediate or reliable.
Telepresence offers robust, HD videoconferencing
services that can connect to any device, any OS on any network. What better way to contact the home office
and bring your expertise into the conversation?
We event connect to any legacy videoconference system with a public IP
or SIP connection.
Whether you are in your hotel room, hotel meeting room, on
your iPad, iPhone or Android device you can all be connected together with
low-latency, high quality videoconference that will not drop the call and share
a desktop or other materials on your computer.
What better way to impress a customer with a service problem
than to meet in a private room and put him in direct contact with the person
that can assist with the situation?
What better way connect from anywhere to your home office
videoconference system to make executive decisions based on factual information
from your home office experts?
Holding training sessions on site during the
convention? Bring in the best experts
remotely to make your training more memorable and effective – even if the
presenter is a continent away.
Is this difficult to accomplish?
No, state of the art videoconference systems make it simple
to connect, stay connected and add in as many participants as you need. It is simple to share content and simple to
privately “chat” with select participants to emphasize or clarify a point, or
record the conference for future reference.
Is this expensive?
It is surprisingly affordable and with so many value-added
attributes, it will help make your trade show experience a success.
Dave Desmarais is President &
Founder of Perinata Inc., a firm specializing in cost-effective remote
solutions for Communications, Broadcast and Electronic Events.