Betting on your Future? Not a Good Plan
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by Susan Friedmann,CSP, The Tradeshow Coach
- Miss out on great sales opportunities because your booth staffers didn’t ask the right questions.
- Alienate would be buyers with pushy sales tactics, off color humor, or crass booth behavior.
- Make any of a dozen common mistakes that cost companies customers.
- Ruin your standing in the industry by appearing inept and poorly prepared next to your peers.
- Discourage would-be partners from considering doing business with you: after all, you obviously don’t have your act together!
- And even more!
Recently, the lottery in NY -- the state I call home -- reached a record jackpot, larger than ever before. When I penned these words, the grand total of funds just waiting to be won was over 340 million dollars. As you can imagine, this got people talking. Almost every local newscast covered the huge jackpot. People were lining up at convenience stores across the state, hoping against hope to cash in and win big. This got me thinking about the two types of people: gamblers and planners. Both would like to have the big bag of cash, but they take different routes to achieve it. A gambler might plunk down a dollar -- or two, or twenty, or two hundred -- in hopes of winning big in a lottery, while the planner follows a less exciting route of saving and investing. At the end of the day, who’s more likely to have the big bucks? Chances are, it’d be the planner. Tradeshow exhibiting works the same way. You can gamble on having a good show, approaching it in a frenzy because 'everybody’s doing it’ and you’ve heard there’s big money to be had, or you can approach it methodically, making a plan, doing your research, and making those actions that are prudent and improve your bottom line. Some gamblers win. That’s what keeps lotteries going, after all. Some exhibitors show up with only half an idea of what they’re doing, a horrible exhibit and only fledgling show skills, and yet still have a triumphant show. But the odds are against most gamblers. For every winner, there are thousands of losers. For every successful 'We just wing it’ exhibitor, there are hundreds who look at the time and effort expended and realize they could have done much, much better -- if only they’d taken the time to learn what they were doing. Are you willing to take that chance? I’m not much of a gambler myself, but even I know you should never lay money on the table without knowing what’s at stake. Ask yourself, what could happen if I leave my tradeshow performance to chance? You could luck out and have a fabulous show. You could also:
