Top Thirteen Tips for Exhibiting Success at Trade Shows

As someone who has participated in umpteen trade shows exhibiting services with the goal of generating sales leads, my keen eye has observed trade show booths that seem to be flush with attendees, whereas in others you could shoot a cannon and not hit a sole. Working a trade show booth is hard work. If you don’t think so, you’re probably not doing it right.

Regardless of the size of your company, a trade show exhibit can be a cost-effective way to introduce yourself to the greatest number of potential customers who are interested in the types of products or services you offer. Your role at the trade show or exhibition is to engage those attendees to garner sales leads for immediate purchase and to plant the top-of-mind seed for future contact. But if you wait for customers to come to you, you might as well pack up and head home because you are wasting your company’s time and money. It could even be argued that you are harming your employer’s image by sitting back and watching the world go by.

Here are my Top Thirteen Tips for Exhibiting Success at Trade Shows…

Be Ready. Ensure your booth is set up, neatly arranged, attractive to the eye, and that you have sufficient quantities of sales literature (collateral material) available. Take the time to ensure your pen works, as well as those you are using at the booth. Test the writing surface so you can mitigate any issues with customers filling out entry ballots, etc. If you are using visual presentations, test the Wi-Fi to ensure you are signed on and can receive a signal. Make sure everything works. Ease up on your cologne/perfume, make sure your hygiene is in check, and wear comfortable shoes. Remember, this may be your very first impression with a buyer. Make sure you appear like you deserve their business.

Get Rid of Your Chair. No matter what you think, nobody likes approaching a trade show booth where people are sitting down. You look lazy and uninterested. Being on your feet for an entire trade show is exhausting, but you are there to hype your products and services. Working in tandem with your colleagues can provide ample opportunity for rest breaks, but sitting down on the job sends the wrong message.

Stay Off Your Phone. I’ve heard every excuse in the book as to why someone needed to answer a Tweet or text or call. Treat your shift on the trade show floor as an important meeting with a VIP client. When you are focused on that smartphone, you look obviously preoccupied and distracted. You can’t help your potential customer when you are in that mode. Treat this time as if you were with another customer back at the office, or wherever you conduct your business.

No Eating at the Trade Show Booth. The worst case I have ever personally witnessed was a trade show exhibitor who happened to be representing a restaurant chain openly eating food obviously obtained from a competitor. I was gobsmacked. Even if you do not represent a food and beverage company, eating in your booth while working not only is rude and makes you seem unapproachable, it is rife with the dangers of spilling on yourself or getting some little bit stuck in your teeth, etc. Just don’t do it.

Arrange Your Booth to Draw Attendees In. Having an attendee step into your trade show booth is like getting your first YES in the sales process. The attendee is obviously curious enough in whatever you’re flogging to commit extra time to learn more about your company. It also removes this potential customer out of the traffic flow where his attention will be diverted by passers-by bumping into him or other attendees rifling around near him. Accordingly, do not place a table blocking the widest end of your exhibit. Better that any table you may need be off to the side to avoid it being a barrier.

Be Professional. Act With Integrity. At many trade shows and conventions, you are likely to be exhibiting alongside your competitors. No matter what a potential customer says or does, never ever use this forum to put down or in any way disparage your competitor or another exhibitor. Take the high ground or else this will come back to bite you on the derriere. This is your opportunity to promote your products and services, not compare them to others.

Introduce Yourself to Neighboring Booths. I have often picked up a direct referral from a neighboring exhibitor as they engage an attendee who asked a question or made a comment to that booth. The referral you get in such a situation sounds to the potential customer like a ringing endorsement, even if the other exhibitor knows little of you. Having that kind of segue into a conversation with a potential customer means you are this close to a sale. Do not overlook your neighboring booths.

Hello. Eye Contact. Smile. No matter if you have to say it ten thousand times in a day, make eye contact, smile, and say a genuine hello, even if they are passing you by. Do not judge the attendee on how they are dressed. Every attendee is either a potential customer, or a potential influencer. If they respond, you can gauge their interest through body language and set in motion your sales pitch accordingly. If not, you have lost nothing. Be real.

Move It. Keep moving slowly around and outside your booth. It gives the impression of activity. And as you know from frequenting your favorite hangout, people want to be where other people are. Standing idle makes you look bored. So does having your hands in your pockets, so avoid that too. Besides, if you are moving around, even during a lull in the general trade show activity, you are more likely to avoid the negative images of boredom and disinterest.

Actively Engage Attendees. You must be active in reeling in attendees. Chances are they have only limited time to spend at the trade show, so engage attendees to invest their time with you. You don’t have to act like a carnival game operator, but you do have to initiate the first contact. Do so with enough gusto without seeming creepy.

Invite Attendees to Interact. After you have engaged an attendee, invite them to interact with your booth. There are plenty of examples in which this can occur. Invite them to enter a draw. Offer wrapped candies or promotional giveaways. If you wish to get more elaborate, offer an attendee a complimentary photo against your backdrop. Maybe you have a complimentary 5 minute massage by a professional masseur. Inevitably, while the attendee is interacting with your booth, they are chatting with their colleague, or asking you questions about your product, or maybe only subconsciously imprinting your company in their memory bank. Like any sales process, the more time that attendee spends with your company and its products, the more likely they are to consider purchasing from you.

Own Your Real Estate. This is by far my most important piece of advice. Your booth may only be 10x10 feet, but there is no law that says you need to be imprisoned in that invisible gate. I always step in front of my booth space with brochures in hand so attendees must encounter me. Be omnipresent around your booth actively moving about greeting attendees and inviting them to interact with your booth. This is uber effective when you are working your trade show booth with colleagues. I am usually the wrangler due to my outgoing personality. I spend 3 seconds with anybody coming my way. I am unavoidable but not interfering or pushy. Think of the wrangler as a resume. Its job is to get you to the interview. Same holds true for the wrangler. His or her job is to get an attendee to interact with the booth where the real sales process can begin. Your reach during your trade show presence is increased significantly by utilizing this tactic. I spend zero time inside my trade show booth and sales leads quantity and quality skyrocket.

Follow Up After the Show. No company can afford to send you and your colleagues to a trade show or convention just because. You are there to promote your products and services. If you have taken a sales-oriented approach, you will have captured some follow-up data from attendees you have engaged. Use it wisely. Sift through to separate those attendees into categories. I like to use three divisions. The urgent pile represents potential customers most likely to buy immediately and those who have asked you to send additional information on a specific product or service. Next, is what I like to refer to as lookers, or shoppers. These seemed interested in your company and what it has to offer, but are in no immediate rush to buy. Then there are those who perhaps just stopped by your booth to enter your free draw or did not demonstrate much interest in your company. While all are worthy of a follow-up, spend your immediate time with the keeners, then the lookers, then the ballotters, in that order. If you do this correctly, your entire list should be appropriately addressed within two weeks.

Each trade show and convention poses a myriad of challenges and opportunities. Booth sizes may differ. Placement on the show floor can impact the traffic you experience. However, regardless of what you sell, or where you exhibit, or how large your company is, employing these tips will deliver a profound influence on your next trade show exhibition.

The Truth About War History

It is possible to have more than one interpretation of history. Whether that history is one of your darkest skeletons or that of cataclysmic world events, your perspective shapes the truth of what occurred.

The waters get murkier as external influences interfere, adding another dimension replete with its own agenda. The same events, therefore, can have multiple histories.

World War Two, and in particular the European Theatre of that calamity, created a new international map drawn by the triumphant Allied Forces. Within the confines of what became the most devastating world event in terms of human suffering, were sidebar episodes, no less shameful, no less tragic, and no less evil than the war itself.

Estimates of 50 million killed during World War Two were widely held as a reasonably accurate estimate. However, that figure was established long before news of atrocities emerged from Russia and Asia that easily double that estimate. Shrouded in secrecy in a pre-internet era, totalitarian rulers could conduct mass murder to their heart’s content.

During times of war, morality and humanity rarely take center stage. Often used as an excuse, war itself becomes the reason to violate man’s basic tenants, setting neighbor against neighbor, and dredging up disagreements from antiquity based on perception.

World history is unfortunately rich with examples of holocausts. In more modern times, euphemisms such as ethnic cleansing are substituted, presumably to reserve the former for what the Jewish people and others experienced under Nazi occupation. Or perhaps we do so in an effort to put lipstick on a pig. Regardless of the term used, the practice of exterminating a people based on whatever criterion is not a new concept. Nor is the ideology passé.

We tend to use the Nazi regime as a benchmark due to its chronological proximity. Either we, or someone close to us, were personally affected by World War Two. The other primary reason Nazi atrocities are often cited is the amount of propaganda and profile that it received, and continues to receive by the likes of scholars and Hollywood. Contrast this with the equally grave atrocities being committed in the very same time period by such nations as Russia, China, and Japan, little of which is studied or discussed with the same veracity today, even by direct descendants of their respective victims.

Too, the glare of the Nazi atrocities continues to blind us to those abominations occurring today, particularly if those ethnic cleansings are of those where we are not fully vested, or from where our attentions are purposefully diverted. In an attempt to rationalize, we ask ourselves, How can we equate today’s holocausts within the framework of what we have been taught by the horrors of World War Two?

As in our private lives, we like to tuck our collective ugly history into neatly compartmentalized crates, out of sight, out of mind. Perhaps that is why the old adage of history repeating itself is so accurate.

Rarely do wars solve anything. They merely create another historic chapter in which to arm one side with enough desire for retribution to rile the minions into a frenzy fevered enough to ignore humanity and morality yet again.

Josiah Henson – The Real Uncle Tom and His Canadian Connection

Black slavery in the United States remains a smudge on that country’s history, polarizing and almost imploding the nation. After the passing of the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, Slavery itself may have been officially eradicated, but that in no way meant there was any sense of equality. In fact, many might argue today that the struggle for equality continues.

Runaway Train

During the decades leading up to the bloodiest war ever experienced by America, a movement led by northern blacks, Quakers, various missionaries, and their supporters, developed a comprehensive network of guides and safe houses to assist slaves in escaping their brutal conditions. Known as the Underground Railroad, its storied history dates back to before the Founding Fathers united the colonies, but are most chronicled during its rescue work in the 19^th Century. It was not an actual railroad, nor used trains, but rather gained its moniker due to its use of railroad terminology as code when communicating among its network.

In essence, runaway slaves needed to escape to a haven wherein the state laws that treated slaves as chattel and granted white slave masters impunity in all dealings with their property, had no force. Many runaway slaves resettled in abolitionist northern states, while some made their way into Upper Canada, all with the logistical planning and integrated systems operated by the Underground Railroad.

Things heated up and became more dangerous for the Underground Railroad and its passengers (railroad terminology to describe runaway slaves) when the United States passed the Fugitive Slave Act in 1850, allowing bounty hunters to cross state lines to pursue, capture, and return to owners, runaway slaves. That enactment made the Canadas the most preferred destination for runaway slaves, placing them out of harm’s way of their pursuers.

The Underground Railroad became almost entirely responsible for populating Upper and Lower Canada with a black presence in its day. Even now, family trees can trace ancestral roots to those who found their way north of the 49^th parallel to freedom on the Underground Railroad.

A Slave Like All the Others, Yet Unlike Any Other

Josiah Henson was born into slavery in Maryland on June 15, 1789, on a 3700 acre tobacco plantation and lived a typical slave existence just like the 10 million black indentured servants in America who did so before him.

As was the custom of the day, slave families were routinely split up and sold off by their controlling masters. Henson’s family would not escape this reality, but his mother begged slave master Isaac Riley who had just purchased her (by this time it was in the early 1790’s), to keep Josiah, the youngest child, with her. She must have been very convincing because Riley bought Henson from the successful auction bidder to whom Josiah was sold.

Unable to read or write, Josiah’s illiteracy would not stand in the way of his learning. He was a keen observer and listened intently as others spoke, regardless of the subject matter. As his knowledge base increased, so too did Josiah’s gift of oration. He exuded confidence and wisdom beyond his years, often quoting the Bible, which led to him becoming the de facto preacher among his fellow slaves on the Riley plantation.

While fellow slaves looked to Henson as their spiritual leader, Riley began to depend on Josiah with more tasks and duties. He started out carrying buckets of water to the field hands and weeding between the corn rows. As Josiah aged, he would faithfully serve his master by taking care of horses and eventually became another field hand, and then promoted to superintendent and overseer of the field slaves.

Through it all, Henson developed a sphere of influence he would later parlay into becoming Reverend Josiah Henson. For now, he was the go-to person on the plantation, a role in which he both relished and excelled. Riley would learn the value of his purchase of Josiah, as Henson was to become a most reliable slave, hardworking and loyal.

To some extent history looks upon Josiah Henson in an unfavorable light because of this loyalty. There is a documented case when Josiah was entrusted to transport fellow slaves down south from the Riley plantation in Maryland unescorted. There would have been ample opportunity for Henson and his cargo to escape, but true to his word, Josiah delivered the slaves to their intended destination, and returned, again unescorted, to Riley.

As slavery and slave masters go, Riley certainly wasn’t the cruelest to their property and would have been seen as fairly lenient by his contemporaries. With plantation slaves frequently interacting with their neighbors beholden to another master, it is inevitable comparisons were made and conclusions shared.

As William Still would document in his book, The Underground Railroad Records, published in 1872, many escaping slaves using the network recounted that they left families behind just so that one or a handful had a real opportunity for freedom. For they and their families, the sacrifices made and felt were the only hope for the future.

By now a family man, Henson’s loyalty to Riley in this particular instance may have had more to do with not wanting to leave his wife and children behind than any true sense of obligation to his master. Many slaves had no intention of escaping unless the entire family could make the perilous journey together. For these, they were willing to endure continued untold cruelties for the sake of remaining as a family unit. Given that the Hensons escaped together as a family, it would be more apt to conclude that this was the pivotal consideration for Josiah as he marshalled those slaves southward to an unknown future.

In 1824, slave master Riley fell on hard economic times, largely due to a protracted lawsuit with his brother-in-law and was on the verge of ruin. His only remaining assets were his slaves. Throughout his ownership of Josiah, Riley would often confide in him, but the tone this time was desperate, master shedding tears in front of the slave he reluctantly purchased.

With the sheriff about to seize the slaves to satisfy judgements, Riley had Josiah make him a solemn promise to take the 21 slaves to his brother’s farm in Kentucky. That journey would begin in February, 1825. True to his pledge, Josiah delivered himself and 21 slaves to the farm of Amos Riley in Daviess County, Kentucky, in mid-April.

By the spring of 1828, Isaac Riley sent word that he would not be relocating to Kentucky and had his brother Amos sell off all his slaves except Josiah and his family (Josiah, his wife, and two children).

During that year, Josiah’s gifts of oration and leadership were recognized by a Methodist minister who helped secure occasional leave from Amos Riley for Josiah to preach on a circuit, including in Cincinnati, where he could earn money to purchase freedom for he and his family.

By 1829, Josiah earned enough to purchase his freedom but the transaction would be imperiled due to Isaac Riley fraudulently altering the bill of sale, claiming more than a thousand dollars still owing on the transaction. In mid-1829, the Riley brothers conspired to sell Josiah while he was in New Orleans offloading farm crops from Amos’s barge. They were unsuccessful in their attempt, however, the seeds of distrust were sown and Josiah knew he and his family were to be not long together under the present circumstances.

Now back in Kentucky, Josiah devised a plan of escape, doing so with his family via The Underground Railroad in 1830, making his way eventually to Upper Canada.

Thriving North of the 49

Josiah Henson, his wife Charlotte, and his two young children arrived in Upper Canada (now Ontario) on October 28, 1830.

Finding work and shelter the next day from a man called Mr. Hibbard, Josiah’s labor work ethic and productivity would not go unnoticed, finding himself favored by his employer.

One of his Maryland acquaintances arrived in Upper Canada and would proudly tell the entire neighborhood of this preacher, Josiah Henson, something Henson himself did not pursue at this time. Before long though, Josiah found himself at the pulpit preaching the gospel to a congregation of blacks and whites.

He remained with Hibbard for three years, all the while improving his wealth and acquiring pigs, a horse, and a cow, changing jobs to work for Mr. Riseley, only a few miles away. It was here that thoughts of establishing a slave refuge and religious settlement became serious conversation. Josiah was stoked!

Those embryos of salvation would come to fruition with the founding of The Dawn Settlement, near present day Dresden, Ontario, becoming a prominent destination for escaping slaves on the Underground Railroad and offering a fresh start for those who suffered at the hands of entitled brutes.

Uncle Tom’s Cabin

Of those who read Henson’s first autobiography The Life of Josiah Henson, Formerly a Slave, Now an Inhabitant of Canada, as Narrated by Himself, was Connecticut school teacher, Harriet Beecher Stowe. Already an active abolitionist, Beecher Stowe was so awestruck by what she read that she would base the title character of Uncle Tom almost entirely on the real life Josiah Henson, with the publishing of her novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin, or Life Among the Lowly in 1852 (the novel was originally published as a 45 part weekly newspaper serial beginning 1851).

An instant best seller, Uncle Tom’s Cabin catapulted Harriet Beecher Stowe to worldwide fame, and would sell more than 300,000 copies in the United States (despite being banned in much of the South) and over one million copies in Great Britain within its first year of release.  So profound were the sales numbers of Uncle Tom’s Cabin that it became the best-selling novel of the 19^th Century, and the second biggest selling book in that century, outdone only by the Bible.

It has been, and continues to be, argued that Uncle Tom’s Cabin helped propel America into its Civil War and sowed seeds of revolution worldwide. While considerable controversy surrounds such claims, there exists little doubt that the mass appeal that Uncle Tom’s Cabin engendered served to open the eyes of readers to the plight suffered by black slaves in America, and turned the court of public opinion against slavery.

Josiah Henson’s place in history was forever enshrined alongside that of Uncle Tom and Harriet Beecher Stowe.

After the Passing

Josiah Henson died peacefully at the Dawn Settlement on May 05, 1883, having lived to six weeks shy of his 94^th birthday.

By the time of his death, Henson had been influential as a religious leader, a community shepherd, and an early human rights advocate on both sides of the 49^th parallel. Few before or since have risen to the levels of piety and obeisance than that of Josiah Henson.

Canadians and Americans continue to learn more about the contributions of Josiah Henson. In more recent times, the Ontario Heritage Trust has preserved The Dawn Settlement as a tribute and testament to the significance of Henson. What started out as a museum in the 1940’s by a local farmer has evolved into an iconic visitor destination sitting on five of the original 200 acres of The Dawn Settlement.

In 1983, Canada Post issued its first stamp to feature a black man. It was a 32 cent stamp (then the cost to mail a regular letter within Canada) depicting Josiah Henson. See picture below.

In 1999, Josiah Henson was recognized by the Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada as a National Historic Person.

The original Riley home in Montgomery County, Maryland is now part of the National Park Service’s National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom program. While the Riley home was never Josiah Henson’s living accommodations during his younger years, the site is being preserved and studied precisely because of its formidable and familial connection to Henson.

Links:

Fugitive Slave Act

The Life of Josiah Henson Autobiography 1849

Truth Stranger Than Fiction 1858

Uncle Tom's Story 1876

Ontario Heritage Trust Uncle Tom's Cabin Historic Site

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Thank You:

A special Thank You to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill for providing online access to its vast collection of archives, including those referencing Josiah Henson’s written works used in our research for this article.

The Face of Extreme Islam

According to its just released Intelligence Report, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) says there has been a 42% increase in the number of anti-Muslim hate groups in the United States in 2015 from 2014. This alarming statistic perhaps signifies in some manner how victorious extreme Islam has already become in promoting its doctrine against the infidels of the West.

With intensified radicalism, Islamic Jihadis focus on the United States and the United Kingdom as the poster children for all that is wrong in the world. Those countries that generally support the US and UK foreign policy, such as Canada, Australia, and France, quickly find themselves lumped in with the primary extremist Islamic targets.

As the war of words, chest puffing and exploding bombs embolden each side of what has become both a religious as well as a political conflict, citizens of the West increasingly find themselves torn between embracing religious freedoms for Muslims in general, versus the need to protect themselves from extremism and to ensure safety and security in their country.

Planting Seeds of Destruction

Increasingly from within our domestic borders, the propaganda from radical Muslims is resonating with young disciples, encouraging them to train for martyrdom. Lured by a bouquet of afterlife assurances, and caught up in a frenzy of glory to serve Allah, extremist seeds are planted in the fertile soil of developing minds, so easily done in a western society rife with unemployment, emptiness, and pessimism.

Converts to Islam and Muslims born into the faith alike, at home and abroad, swell the growing ranks of those willing to fight to the death for fundamentalist and extremist beliefs. National security agencies in western countries warn of the radical cells already living among us, determined to destabilize society with promises of home grown violence. Indeed, the recent bombings in Paris are a vivid example of the boldness and tenacity of extreme Islamic youth.

Anjem Choudary is a Top Shelf Extremist

Anjem Choudary, an outspoken Islamist based in London, England and unapologetic crusader of Sharia Law, vows to one day fly the flag of Sharia over 10 Downing Street and The White House. Strong words from an equally resolute personality who was quoted by Press TV in 2013 as saying, "As Muslims, we reject democracy, we reject secularism, and freedom, and human rights”.

If not for the rhetoric of extreme Islam he preaches, most would find Choudary an eloquent and convincing promoter, obviously passionate about his cause, and supremely influential in his teachings. He exudes charisma not unlike history’s despots, that alone making him a dangerous threat to British society and the west.

According to the Counter Extremism Project, a not-for-profit, non-partisan, international policy organization formed to combat the growing threat from extremist ideology, Choudary has founded or co-founded a number of Islamist organizations over the years, only to have them systematically outlawed and proscribed as an illegal ISIS operation by British authorities.

A capable lawyer trained under the British educational system, Choudary seems to have forsaken earning an honest living in favor of receiving public welfare from those he promises to overthrow. Again, from the Counter Extremism Project, “Choudary’s more subversive tactics include advocating that Islamists and would-be jihadists live off of British welfare as Choudary does with his wife and four children in East London. Choudary calls this the “jihad seekers allowance.”

Choudary and his cadre are adept at using the internet and social media to spread their ideology and recruit followers. As quickly as British counterterrorism agencies can dismantle his presence on Twitter and Facebook, Choudary springs up with another account. While no concrete proof exists that Choudary actually trains these neophytes, there is a body of evidence suggesting he indoctrinates them to a particular apex of readiness before pointing them in the right direction for martyrdom training in ISIS/ISIL dominated strongholds.

The British government has charged Anjem Choudary and a counterpart with supporting terrorism by repeatedly violating the UK’s Terrorism Act 2000, with trial set for March 07, 2016. Already stripped of his passport to prevent him from fleeing the jurisdiction, if convicted, Choudary could receive up to ten years in prison.

As reported by the Gatestone Institute, an international policy think tank, “Choudary says he is not afraid of going to prison, which he describes as a fertile ground for gaining more converts to Islam. "If they arrest me and put me in prison..." he warned, "I will radicalize everyone in prison."

The Other ‘N’ Word - Nuclear

Choudary paints a bleak picture, being absolutely committed, by all means necessary, to his beliefs. He has openly endorsed Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, leader of Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) as reported by The Observer, as "the caliph of all Muslims and the prince of the believers". (A caliph is regarded as a person who is a religious successor to the Islamic prophet, Muhammad)

Recently, it was widely reported that extremist Islam is shopping for nuclear weaponry to bolster their campaign for world domination. If successful with such acquisitions, western countries will have to rethink their current strategies regarding extreme Islam as well as those who fund and support such causes.