We shouldn’t but we do. We hope hope hope that the next attendee who walks in our booth is Superman. Not Superman Superman, but the sales equivalent of Superman. Faster to sign a contract than a speeding bullet. More powerful than the VP of Purchasing. Able to leap over objections in a single bound. We yearn for Superman (or Superwoman) to enter our trade show booth space.
I receive Seth Godin’s daily blog post. To say “I receive” his posts doesn’t do them justice. They’re always the first or second email I read in the morning. This one was especially relevant.
Here’s a simple marketing strategy for a smaller company trying to compete in a big-company world:
Choose your customers, trust them, treat them well.
Say yes. Bend the rules. Show up on time. Keep your promises.
Don’t exert power merely because you can.
Be human, be kind, pay attention, smile.
Not everyone deserves this sort of treatment, not everyone will do their part to be the kind of customer you can delight and serve. But that’s okay, you don’t need everyone.
I attended the E2MA Red Diamond Congress in Boston last week — my third time at this annual two-day conference. The RDC is a small, but growing, group of stakeholders in the event and tradeshow industry which includes show organizers, general contractors, associations, distributors, tradeshow managers, suppliers, and labor.
I’m getting old, but not too old to learn from my mistakes. Over the past year, I’ve largely ignored printed sales collateral as a tool for Classic Distributors. That’s not to say we haven’t created high quality PDF’s (such as Tablet Stands and OTM Neo and Express Furniture), but they have been mostly promotional sheets, not product line sheets. My feeling was — It’s all online on the Classic website or in Exhibit Design Search.
When we introduced our newest Charging Stations at EXHIBITORLIVE, we expected them to do well. Our definition of “well” should probably change to “Yowsa!” They’ve been a big hit. As with any new product, there are questions so Kevin and Mel sat down for a casual Q&A video about the charging stations.
We recently introduced a 100-Day Money Back Guarantee on the Sacagawea Portable Hybrid System. No one in our industry has offered a money back guarantee before. It’s a first and in our opinion long overdue. As you can imagine, we’ve had a few distributors ask us about the logic behind this. So here goes.