Staff & Volunteers

To ensure a top notch performance, begin preparing your booth team four to six months prior to the event. You will need the answers to the following questions:

1. How many people are needed to staff the booth?

A number of variables need to be considered. How big is your exhibit? How long is the show? Will you need employees to give product demonstrations, work the hospitality suite, teach seminars, or supervise contests? Ensure you have enough staffing to have your booth manned at all times, while giving your team a break every four to six hours. No one can be ‘on’ for twelve hours at a time.

2. Who are the best people to represent the organization?

Working a trade show requires a unique mix of skills. You want employees with excellent product knowledge, superlative people skills, killer sales instincts, and a warm, engaging personality. These people should be motivated self-starters, able to think on their feet and work with little or no direction.

3. Has staff training been organized?

To ensure success, prepare your team with all the skills and tools they need. Training should cover assessing visitor types, asking qualifying questions, handling difficult attendees, lead generation and follow up, and many other factors.

4. Has a pre-show meeting been scheduled?

Pre-show meetings play a critical role in ensuring that your team understands their goals and objectives, expected roles and duties, and is adequately supplied with background knowledge to handle any unexpected surprises. Use this time to clarify any areas of confusion and to address any staff concerns.

5. Is the booth team familiar with the products or services being displayed?

To effectively sell products, you need to have thorough, complete product knowledge. Too many times, organizations send out rookie employees who only possess rudimentary knowledge. This is frustrating for attendees, who won’t come back to find another employee who might have an answer – they’ll go to the competition instead.

6. Has a practice demonstation session been organized?

Never assume that your employees know how to use the products that they sell. It is entirely possible that they are not completely familiar with every feature, especially if you are introducing a new product. Take the time to thoroughly train your team, and have them practice demonstrating the product to familiarize themselves with the show floor routine.

7. Will a technical representative be available to answer questions?

Depending on your product/service line, it may be entirely appropriate to send a technical representative to handle specific product questions. Train this person in the basics of salesmanship, but keep their duties largely relegated to providing technical answers. Make sure they are aware of the possibility of trade show espionage, to prevent them from sharing too much information.

8. Has a dress code been established?

Well before you arrive at the event, a dress code should be established. Uniforms may be appropriate for your company, but if they are not, clearly specify what you want your team to be wearing. “Casual business” gives far too much leeway. Instead, spell out “Black trousers or skirt, white shirt, black blazer, red tie,” or the equivalent.

9. Have badges been ordered for all booth personnel?

Everyone on your team needs a badge to enter the show floor, access hospitality areas, and move freely about. Order these badges well ahead of time, so that any errors or omissions can be remedied in a timely fashion.

10. Do booth personnel have sufficient business cards?

It is amazing how many business cards you can hand out during the course of one trade show. Make sure your team is adequately prepared.

11. Has a booth schedule been planned?

A complete schedule will cover every moment from show arrival to departure. Include who will be staffing the booth, break times, technical support and assorted responsibilities. It may be a good idea to include ‘check in’ time into the schedule, so sales people acting as booth staff can check messages back at the home office and make needed phone calls. This will alleviate a great deal of staff anxiety.

12. Who will oversee booth installation and dismantling?

Often overlooked, these two items can quickly become logistic nightmares if no one is prepared to address them. Delegate two people to this detail. Many show organizers provide this service for a fee, but you may still want to have staff members on hand supervising.

13. Does that person understand the move-out procedure?

Someone has to arrange for moving the exhibit out of the convention center, ensuring it is properly packed, and coordinate shipping the whole thing back to the home office. Again, a team should be clearly delegated this responsibility, and provided with all the tools and resources they’ll need to succeed.

1. Create an intentional communication strategy. Your Management team must understand and support a common vision. This requires clarity. Clarity begins with effective communication. Make sure communication from your Management team reaches all employees.

2. Do not set up intentional competition in the workplace. Try to insure that individual skill sets compliment one another rather than compete with one another. Spread the responsibility and authority around by alternating leaders for various tasks. Look for star potential and introduce coaching & mentoring as a skill set.

3. Create team ownership in the decision making process but it’s not management by committee. Avoid group think by making sure that individuals express opinions openly without intimidation. Responsibility must be accompanied by authority and accountability.

4. Build trust and respect by giving trust and respect. Act as a coach or mentor and not a boss.

5. Create off site team building activities quarterly. Social gatherings, athletic activities, laser tag or other activities that build unification and trust in each other.

6. Don’t just talk about empowerment and delegation, believe in it and demonstrate that belief by allowing the team members to make decisions and take independent action.

7. Take complex plans and strategies and assign accountability and ownership. This creates more efficiency and leverages creativity. Assign responsibility according to individual passions.

8. Brainstorming must be encouraged to release team innovation. Bouncing ideas off one another stimulates creative thinking which leads to creative solutions. This in itself bonds individuals into a common purpose.

9. Ask for solutions assigning both responsibility and empowerment. Ownership of ideas and initiatives builds commitment. Involving the team in creating direction and solutions through empowerment generates commitment to the tasks necessary to meet objectives.

10. Challenge your management team. Reliance on team effectiveness minimizes risk by being more flexible and adaptive than relying on a single individual. No one individual alone can jeopardize success. The loss of one team member can be overcome without losing sight of the objectives.