Tips for Treating Your Booth Staff Right
by Travis Stanton, Director of Strategy
Like most trade show pros, I was hooked from the start. Working as a brand ambassador and executing activations for Target, White Wave, and the LPGA gave me a solid foundation and a passion for staff training, key messaging, competitive analysis, and preparing your teams for success. Unfortunately, that passion wasn’t always generated by witnessing best practices. Sometimes seeing the worst were as — if not more — enlightening. I recall being told to rent a Uhaul and pick up magazines from a storage locker the morning of an outdoor event … only to roll up that storage locker door and find hundreds of boxes of magazines and not nearly enough time or upper body strength to load them all.
Another time, I was denied reimbursement for a three-pack of paper towels I purchased for a sampling event after discovering our beverage dispensers all had slow leaks. Apparently, my boss would’ve preferred I flood the Minneapolis Convention Center with soy milk rather than cleaning it up and ensuring all guests left with delicious milk in their bellies and not all over their shoes.
I learned fairly quickly that in order to succeed on site, you needed to be prepared for even the worst, most unthinkable scenario … like the time I spearheaded the launch of a new gift card kiosk with an insufficient number of cards and an advertised promise that generated exponentially more traffic than we anticipated. That scenario later involved loads of stanchions, a team of security guards, a drunk maintenance man, dozens of shockingly hostile customers, and Santa hats. It’s a long story. Suffice to say, I developed a penchant for overpreparing.
I also witnessed the significant value of proactively preparing your people. We were often armed with product info, key messages, and talking points. But we were never trained. We never had a big-picture view of the activation and its objectives. And we never had the opportunity to develop a sense of ownership, meaning my team had no particular reason to care whether or not the event went off as planned. And if/when something did go wrong, we weren’t paid for any additional hours we spent unloading Uhauls, shopping for booth supplies, or bribing maintenance men with bottles of wine to temporarily look the other way. We were on the front lines, wholly responsible for the customer experience, but the event’s success or failure was of no real import.
Of course, my Midwest work ethic didn’t allow me to do any job half-assed. And my fear of disappointing a client kept me from ever throwing my hands up in the air and walking away. What I didn’t expect, however, was how rewarding and energizing it felt to fix problems on site, head them off before they reared their ugly heads, and somehow accomplish 16 hours of work in 8 hours of billed time. The rush made me feel invincible, and I’ve been chasing it ever since.
But the point of this missive isn’t merely to convey how addictive the energy surrounding live events can be (at least for those of us who survive and thrive versus head for the hills after our first show). It’s a reminder to prepare your people, to do it proactively, and to afford them some sense of ownership of your program’s success. Below are a few tips to help you do all that and more.
1. Get them involved.
Whenever possible, bring your staff into the discussion early. They’re far less likely to attack the plan if they help plan the attack, so to speak. No, you need not give them veto power over your marketing messages but make them feel like they’re a valued part of the process. If you treat staffers like they’re invisible, you’ll never see their best work.
2. Set the goal posts.
Make sure they understand your objectives and preferred behaviors. When you point people in the right direction, you’re more likely they’ll actually get there. Plus, setting clear goals enables you to celebrate wins and objectively critique failures. It helps you nip bad booth behaviors in the bud, before they become a cancer infecting your entire team. While nobody wants to feel like Big Brother is watching over their shoulder, most people respond relatively well to realistic, measurable goals … and being held accountable for achieving them. The only people who don’t are generally the underperformers of the bunch anyway, and weeding them out can work wonders for your program.
3. Define their roles.
Along those same lines, it’s important to transfer your vision of the customer journey from your brain to your booth staff. If you want guests to be welcomed into the exhibit, invited to a live demo, and given a branded tchotchke after having their badges scanned, you have to paint the picture — and consider whether it makes sense to entrust each of your team members to take visitors through that entire journey step by step, or if you should designate the most affable staffer as your official greeter, who hands guests off to your most eloquent staffer who moderates the demos, and then your most meticulous staffer who scans badges and enters qualifying data before sending them on their way, stress balls in hand.
You can’t expect untrained staffers to understand the ideal flow if you never let them see inside your head … and sometimes it’s not realistic to expect all reps to be capable of executing each individual piece of that journey. Different people have different strengths. Identify them, celebrate them, and put them in the appropriate roles.
4. Don’t forget they’re human.
I can’t tell you the number of times clients didn’t even consider the fact that we couldn’t all be actively staffing the booth 24/7 — not to mention the times it shocked them that water, coffee, and food are essential components of an optimal performance. No, you don’t need to cater to your staff’s every whim, but you do need to plan ahead for breaks, think about when they will occur, and plan for how you’ll handle each person’s absence during said breaks.
Furthermore, simply providing coffee in the morning, waters in the booth, snacks in the afternoon, or things such as breath mints, hand sanitizer, or outlets for charging phones in the storage closet will reap rewards (side benefit: reps can’t check their phones while they charge them). It doesn’t take much time or money to have those items available, and they will pay for themselves many times over in terms of your staff’s ability (and willingness) to bring and maintain their A game throughout show-floor hours.
5. Empathize with them. If you’re not hosting staff meetings (or at least little pep talks) before and/or after the show floor closes, it’s time to start. During those meetings, I recommend acknowledging the long hours and lack of sleep that might be hitting them on day three of the show. If something isn’t working, own it in a way that enables them to a) see you’re all in the same boat and rowing in the same direction, b) identify possible solutions or workarounds, c) know that while you might not be able to fix it, you are aware of it, and d) move on from it. No, this is not a pity party for lengthy commiseration. But it shows that their concerns are justified, their effort is being acknowledged, and that you care.
6. Empower them.
Unless you’re planning to be in the booth at all times and want to play mall cop, fielding every question and personally addressing any one-off issue or unexpected need, you need to empower your people to do their jobs. Maybe you have a strict policy of one branded pen per person. What if someone walks by and swipes a handful? Does Karen really need to chase that dude down? What if someone asks for three because they are huge fans of your product? It’s a bad example, but you get the point.
Rules are rules, yes, but some are stupid. Whenever possible, let staff know they’re allowed to bend them … so long as there’s a good reason. Having said that, it’s your responsibility to be on call — even if you’re not physically at the event. And if you’re not available, every rep needs to know who is and how to contact them.
7. Prep for success ... and failure.
In an ideal world, you have already created contingency plans to address any and all “What if?” questions your team might ask. If you’re serving soy milk, it’s pretty much guaranteed there will — at some point — be a spill. Where are there supplies they can use to clean up? If you’re handing out gift cards, it’s not unrealistic to underestimate their appeal. Where are extras being stored in case you run out? If you’re exhibiting at a consumer event, it’s entirely possible your team will encounter a disgruntled customer. What’s the process for handling them? I could list a million questions, and while I acknowledge you can’t always be prepared for everything, being able to demonstrate that you’re prepared for some is better than none.
8. Hear them out.
The people staffing your booth represent the most important feedback channel you have. Yes, your CEO’s opinion is important, too, but the five minutes he spent in the exhibit pales in comparison to the experience your team has of standing in it for eight hours a day. Solicit their feedback on everything from the badge-scan or lead-collection process to the availability of in-booth storage. Ask them what worked and what didn’t. Did any snafus occur that you can avoid next time — or at least prepare for in advance? Failure to take this after-action step with your team is indefensible. Do it, listen to them, and address issues whenever possible. You, your staff, and even your booth visitors will notice the improvements over time.
9. Celebrate them. For most people, staffing a booth isn’t fun. It’s not easy, doesn’t come natural, and requires a unique skill set that even your best sales reps may not possess. It requires long hours, time away from family and friends, and the kind of focus that’s going to leave you with an overflowing inbox of communications related to your “real job” when you get back from the show. This does not justify bad booth behavior, and you shouldn’t overlook poor performance. But it’s worthwhile to actively look for something, anything, to reward.
Something as simple as calling out the rep with the most qualified leads during a post-event review can be sufficient. Recognizing the staff member who always showed up to the booth early — with Starbucks for everyone in tow — is an acknowledgement that you were paying attention … and not just watching for missteps. In my experience, rewarding positive behavior is just as — and typically more — important than calling out negative behavior.
10. Hand pick your teams.
Whenever possible, assemble your teams based on their past performance. If your district sales rep was on his phone the entire time at the last show, don’t schedule him for booth duty if you can avoid it. If he absolutely has to be at the show, assign him to do something outside the booth. I promise you’ll both be glad you did. His inattentiveness indicates he’d rather not be there in the first place, and his behavior could literally be a liability when it comes to making a first impression on prospects and potential buyers.
On the other hand, if your receptionist was a rock star at the last show and greeted every guest with a smile, do your damnedest to get her on this year’s roster. She likely enjoyed the face time with your clients, appreciated the chance to travel, and has the exact skill set you want in someone staffing your welcome desk. You might not always have this luxury, but the more you can do to minimize shifts for underperforming reps who would rather be wining and dining clients, the better. In fact, directing them to do so might be the smartest move: “Gary, your superpower is clearly shmoozing our VIPs, and they love you for it. So instead of staffing the booth, why don’t you schedule breakfast and lunch meetings in addition to client dinners, in order to get more quality face time with them at the show.” It’s way easier than telling Gary he sucks and you want to smash his iPhone into his skull.
This isn’t rocket science. But it’s also not common sense, as evidenced by the few exhibitors who are getting this part of the job wrong. Realistically, you probably can’t add all 10 of these tips to your to-do list for next week’s show. But try adding one, then two, and seeing how your team responds. The effort you put into improving your team will manifest itself in your team’s ability to eventually teach other reps on your behalf. And just like that, “good” behavior becomes “expected” behavior … and bad behavior becomes a thing of the past.