Trade Show Booth Clowns and How to Close Sales when They're Around

It’s trade show season and in between trying to sort through my Proxima Sales reviews and case studies, our Proxima Sales LinkedIn company page and group messages, managing my tiny pile of paper mail, and trying to figure out the voicemails helpfully transcribed from the original Urdu, I got an email from one of the best trade show floor salespeople I’ve ever met.

Denise, is organized, has her subject matter sewn up and prepped into brief bits. She has non-obtrusive qualifying questions ready to sort those who are interested in PurpleHat from those who really want one of the cool purple hats, in short, Denise is the sales leader you want representing your company at any convention, conference, or annual meeting.

Denise is running into Clown control issues at this season’s meetings:

·      Her CEO drives traffic away from the booth in droves with his loud antics and aggressive approach.

·      His long-winded buttonholing of every passing human, in addition to making him someone to avoid, also keeps the rest of his sales team from sorting the traffic visually or verbally for qualified, interested visitors.

·      Mark also exempts himself from all of the badge swiping and booth visitor tracking systems that his sales management team have painstakingly set up–so even the good leads are likely to leave with a hat and no real sales contact. The team will go back to the office with a mountain of non-leads mixed in with the golden opportunities.

·      No-one can determine whether leads who were scheduled to stop by the booth to meet their rep and demo the software were allowed near a computer by Mark in the Middle of everything and everyone.

·      Mark also sees himself as a world-class stand-up comic? Oh yes. Each visitor is greeted with a howler from the CEO cheat-sheet of inappropriate and irrelevant ice-breaker humor from the 1980s (all described as unprofessional and probably illegal) in a workshop HR made me attend in 1995).

·      If a hardy and determined prospect makes it to asking for technical information on Mark’s company solution suite, they are more likely to get the whole life story of how Mark built “his baby” rather than the data, and business problem solving messaging, that could drive a buying decision.

·      In between running off booth traffic of all stripes, our booth clown motivates his team by telling them that, “if they handled booth duty like he does, they’d be out buying boats with their fat commission checks.”

·      This is not the first time Proxima Sales has reviewed similar complaints from high ranking technology salespeople. Sometimes the booth clown is the regional guy from Sacramento, but more likely it is the founder, CEO, partner, or the lucky brother in law, the no-training needed, Business Dishevelment director.

So what is the solution for the booth clown conundrum?

Well, there are tactics to try but none of them are without risk and none work without fail.

·      One option, favored by our current victim of the booth clown CEO is to decide that it’s time to take your highly valuable, productive, and marketable skills elsewhere. Did we mention that Proxima Sales is hiring experienced road warrior technology salespeople? If you join Proxima Sales you’ll meet Denise. She’s on our client’s booth team, now.

·      It scan be a successful strategy to set up a VIP hotel suite (even at the Days Inn) for offsite meetings for the booth clown during key exhibit hall hours. This strategy works best if you pre-schedule meetings with high interest, low probability (read broke) leads for the clown – a booth clown with an audience is a happy clown.

·      You can try to gently cue someone in the company, who has influence with your tradeshow booth clown, to your situation. The influencer may just be able to get him to tone down the circus act, at least a bit.

But most often, we see the booth clowns graduate from driving away booth traffic to driving away top sales talent.

In more than a few cases the tradeshow clown then decides that trade shows are a “waste of hard-earned money and time.” And he is right. For a real booth clown, staying home is the very best way for him to handle trade show booth traffic.

Proxima Sales offers outsourced trade show staffing and booth contact optimization services that a few wise sales managers have used effectively to keep the booth clowns away from the exhibit hall. No guarantees though. In our experience a true booth clown CEO will find a way to have his three days in the exhibit hall spotlight. For these companies, skipping the show and hoping that Mark spends the rest of his time in a more productive and less annoying task area may be the best strategy for success.

Proxima Sales team leaders are traveling virtually full-time, this time of year. We attend various conventions, industry meetings, trade shows, and conferences, in all of our major core subject matter and technology areas of expertise. The Proxima Sales team has a structured system for making each convention visit effective and efficient. We would be happy to share our system with anyone who wants to give it a try. But that’s another post.

About Kate@proxima-sales.com

Katherine Parker, Kate to her friends, has been closing major sales for technology and professional services companies since the road warrior’s best friend was a Compaq luggable. In addition to leading new business initiatives at Proxima Sales. Kate still makes at least 50 quality sales calls each week into the markets she knows best.

Proxima Sales closes sales for clients offering complex intangibles within the North American market and some EU and Asian countries. 

You can find Proxima Sales on Twitter  @Proximasales