Trade Show Booth Duty vs. Field Sales Calls
Some salespeople who are top performers making field sales calls struggle to be productive working a trade show booth. Often, the things that make them great during field sales calls actually work against them during a trade show.
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Why? Because the goals for a field sales call are very different than the goals for an interaction in a trade show booth.
During a field sales call, top performers build rapport quickly. They ask the customers to talk about their operation and the reason they have interest. I call it finding pain.“ If there is no pain there can be no P. O.” The best of the best can empathize and relate, especially to that VP or executive manager; that › s why we use independent representatives. They are high performers, quick to adapt, and clearly see next steps, quickly capturing opportunities. Reps always progress to the next step. They always move toward a P. O.— I watch for this in my travels. If the distributor salesperson does not move toward the close, the rep will. Reps are professionals who close.
Sometimes these highly valued skills don › t translate directly to the show floor. A different set of values and goals apply. For instance, time is much more valuable for the customer at a trade show. A customer could stop at 100 booths in a large multi-day event. Their tolerance for probing questions is very low. Also, the customer is still trying to determine the need for our product.