Trade Show TalesBlog

Posts Tagged ‘Business Tips’

Newer Entries »

Trade Show Tips to the Beat of the 1980s

July 27th, 2016 Mel White 1 COMMENT

1980s

The Keys to a Successful Trade Show:  Handling Mistakes

Advicertainment by M. Christine Delea

What do customers want? It’s not complicated. They expect you’ll be good to them. How you respond makes all the difference, and saying and showing them that I’ll be good to you sets the right tone. However, even when you are paying attention and putting customers first, unexpected things can and will happen. Being human means that mistakes happen.

How we handle our mistakes is what sets us apart from our competitors. Admitting that your customer is correct — it’s a mistake, you take responsibility, and “Where is my mind?“— will go a long way toward repairing the situation.

Straight Up

StraightUpClear communication will be remembered more than the original mistake if it is sincere and straight up. And what goes around comes around, so it benefits your karma to treat others well when they stumble.

At the trade show, when a coffee clerk messes up your order, put it in perspective. When you are stepping out of the elevator and a distracted child spills juice on you, give that kid your sweetest smile. It’s all about attitude.

  • When your colleague steps on your foot,
  • When you realize someone at the office packed the wrong cards,
  • When the cab driver goes to the wrong address,
  • When the venue lists your meeting in the Abracadabra Room instead of the Magic Room…

Keep the faith and remember that things can only get better.

Salt In Your Tears

M_BrileyNo one wants to deal with a loud, belligerent, angry jerk — and that is why they sometimes get what they want, because a reasonable person just wants to get rid of them. However, those people also get spit in their soup, lost spa reservations, and no vacancies for next year’s trade show. The calm, pleasant person is more likely to get problems solved, and can eat their meals worry-free. That’s a good thing.

Sometimes it snows in April. Sometimes a butterfly in Costa Rica flaps its wings and your luggage ends up in Allentown instead of Georgetown, the location of your convention. That’s life. Accept the fact that mistakes happen, and it’s best to deal with them pleasantly. You’ll feel better about yourself if you own your mistakes and forgive those of others. And the jerk with the red face and the gross soup? Let him blunder his way to high blood pressure. He’s not worth the salt in your tears.

With accountability and a forgiving attitude, you can be a Zen master at the next trade show. Who knows, you may even be asked to come dancing to some Classic 1980s tunes. It’s all part of the positive karma of participating in a trade show.

Posts in the Series:

**********************************************

Based in Portland, Oregon, Classic Exhibits Inc. designs and manufacturers portable, modular, and custom-hybrid exhibit solutions. Classic Exhibits products are represented by an extensive distributor network in North America and in select International markets. For more information, contact us at 866-652-2100 or www.classicexhibits.com.

[subscribe2]

 

Tags: , , , , ,
Posted in Business Tips, Classic Exhibit Systems, Guest Post, Trade Show Exhibit Tips, Trade Show Marketing | 1 Comment »

Conformity No Longer Leads to Comfort: Word on the Street — April 1st thru April 5th

April 7th, 2013 Mel White COMMENTS
Conformity No Longer Leads to Comfort: Word on the Street -- April 1st thru April 5th

Word on the Street by Kevin Carty

Yes Yes Yes, I am on another Seth Godin rant. Like the others, this one is too good not to share, especially in light of what we are seeing in our own businesses and industry

“The Industrial Age” is dying, and we’re experiencing a new economy, one based on connection, knowledge, and most importantly, choice.

And what comes with choice? A need to BE DIFFERENT. We see this everyday. So many of us find ourselves bidding on the same projects:  projects that have a budget, a predefined space, and a list of prerequisite client-based needs. So, to win that business, we have to be different in the intangibles! Most potential clients see us as the same widget, in the same price range, meeting the same needs. Yet someone wins the business. And how do they do that? Seth provides some answers.

The following are excerpts from his newest book, The Icarus Deception:  How High will You Fly?

The Connection Economy

Successful organizations have realized that they are no longer in the business of coining slogans, running catchy ads, and optimizing their supply chains to cut costs.

And freelancers and soloists have discovered that doing a good job for a fair price is no longer sufficient to guarantee success. Good work is easier to find than ever before.

What Matters Now:

  • Trust
  • Permission
  • Remarkability
  • Leadership
  • Stories that spread
  • Humanity: connection, compassion, and humility

All six of these are the result of successful work by humans who refuse to follow industrial-age rules. These assets aren’t generated by external strategies and MBA’s and positioning memos. These are the results of internal struggle, of brave decisions without a map, and the willingness to allow others to live with dignity.

They are about standing out, not fitting in, about inventing, not duplicating.

TRUST AND PERMISSION: In a marketplace that’s open to just about anyone, the only people we hear are the people we choose to hear. Media is cheap, sure, but attention is filtered, and it’s virtually impossible to be heard unless the consumer gives us the ability to be heard. The more valuable someone’s attention is, the harder it is to earn.

And who gets heard?

Why would someone listen to the prankster or the shyster or the huckster? No, we choose to listen to those we trust. We do business with and donate to those who have earned our attention. We seek out people who tell us stories that resonate, we listen to those stories, and we engage with those people or businesses that delight or reassure or surprise in a positive way.

And all of those behaviors are the acts of people, not machines. We embrace the humanity in those around us, particularly as the rest of the world appears to become less human and more cold. Who will you miss? That is who you are listening to?

REMARKABILITY: The same bias toward humanity and connection exists in the way we choose which ideas we’ll share with our friends and colleagues. No one talks about the boring, the predictable, or the safe. We don’t risk interactions in order to spread the word about something obvious or trite.

The remarkable is almost always new and untested, fresh and risky.

LEADERSHIP: Management is almost diametrically opposed to leadership. Management is about generating yesterday’s results, but a little faster or a little more cheaply. We know how to manage the world—we relentlessly seek to cut costs and to limit variation, while we exalt obedience.

Leadership, though, is a whole other game. Leadership puts the leader on the line. No manual, no rule book, no überleader to point the finger at when things go wrong. If you ask someone for the rule book on how to lead, you’re secretly wishing to be a manager.

Leaders are vulnerable, not controlling, and they are racing to the top, taking us to a new place, not to the place of cheap, fast, compliant safety.

STORIES THAT SPREAD: The next asset that makes the new economy work is the story that spreads. Before the revolution, in a world of limited choice, shelf space mattered a great deal. You could buy your way onto the store shelf, or you could be the only one on the ballot, or you could use a connection to get your resume in front of the hiring guy. In a world of abundant choice, though, none of these tactics is effective. The chooser has too many alternatives, there’s too much clutter, and the scarce resources are attention and trust, not shelf space. This situation is tough for many, because attention and trust must be earned, not acquired.

More difficult still is the magic of the story that resonates. After trust is earned and your work is seen, only a fraction of it is magical enough to be worth spreading. Again, this magic is the work of the human artist, not the corporate machine. We’re no longer interested in average stuff for average people.

HUMANITY: We don’t worship industrial the way we used to. We seek out human originality and caring instead. When price and availability are no longer sufficient advantages (because everything is available and the price is no longer news), then what we are drawn to is the vulnerability and transparency that bring us together, that turn the “other” into one of us.

For a long time to come, the masses will still clamor for cheap and obvious and reliable. But the people you seek to lead, the people who are helping to define the next thing and the interesting frontier, these people want your humanity, not your discounts.

All of these assets, rolled into one, provide the foundation for the change maker of the future. And that individual (or the team that person leads) has no choice but to build these assets with novelty, with a fresh approach to an old problem, with a human touch that is worth talking about.

For Classic Exhibits, connection/relationships are a huge part of our success and growth. Many of you have introduced us to new customers, markets, and projects. I have often said that we have grown by securing a larger piece of the pie. And much of that is based on your work and your references.

Thanks for letting me share a little Seth with you again. Hope you had a great weekend.

Kevin Carty
http://twitter.com/kevin_carty
http://www.linkedin.com/pub/kevin-carty/3/800/32a

[subscribe2]

Tags: , , ,
Posted in Business Tips, Kevin Carty, Word on the Street | No Comments »

The Right Questions to Ask When Hiring

July 5th, 2012 Mel White COMMENTS

A Good Interview is More about Conversation

Ordinarily, I dismiss articles about hiring tips, mainly because they are either simplistic, silly, impractical, or inane. This one by The New York Times contributing writer Adriana Gardella makes perfect sense. Adriana’s post appears in the The NY Times “Your the Boss” section, The Art of Running a Small Business.

At Classic Exhibits, for administrative, sales, and management positions, we always conduct the first interview over the phone. It’s usually a short interview, typically about 20 minutes. Phone interviews save us time and allow us to focus on the person and personality.

We almost always begin with the following statement:  “We’ve had a chance to review your resume, but we want to give you an opportunity to tell us about yourself. Share whatever you think is important and take as much time as you need.” By not giving them any clues or doing all the chatting in the beginning, the interviewee has no point of reference. They can not parrot any answers because you haven’t given them anything to parrot. Some candidates use the opportunity to sell themselves, others merely repeat their resume, and still others panic and say very little or reveal information they probably shouldn’t. It’s always a little unpredictable, and even when they are invited for a face-to-face interview, the same question invariable elicits the same response. And, they know it’s coming.

In the end, I agree wholeheartedly with this quote in the article:  “A good interview is more about conversation,” said Deirdre Lord, who owns The Megawatt Hour. “There’s a chemistry.” As a boss of mine once said, “You hire people for what they know. You fire them for who they are.” Good interviews give you the chance to find out who they are.

The first two paragraphs of the article are below. Click here to read the full posting.

“In a perfect world, owners would only hire employees who care as much about the company as they do. But as the members of the She Owns It business group recently discussed, it can be hard to find motivated workers who share that enthusiasm. Alexandra Mayzler, who owns Thinking Caps Tutoring, said she had become pretty good at spotting the keepers during the interview process. You just have to know what to ask and listen to the answers.”

“Ms. Mayzler, who majored in psychology during college and describes herself as an ‘armchair psychologist,’ said it was easy enough for a smart person to figure out what the interviewer wants to hear and answer accordingly. Viewing the interview process as a decision tree, she said that one of her first questions was typically, ‘Did you go on our Web site?’”

–Mel White
http://www.linkedin.com/in/melmwhite
mel@classicexhibits.com

*********************************

Based in Portland, Oregon, Classic Exhibits Inc. designs and manufacturers portable, modular, and custom-hybrid exhibit solutions. Classic Exhibits products are represented by an extensive distributor network in North America and in select International markets. For more information, contact us at 866-652-2100.

Tags: , , ,
Posted in Business Tips, Mel White | No Comments »

Newer Entries »