A World Without Trade Shows

March 23, 2020

Written By:

John French: johngfrench@frenchllc.com

Jim Elliott: j.elliott@jamesgelliott.com

How can managers make their numbers in a world without trade shows?

Trade shows are an essential part of the sales process for many marketers. Well, at least they were until yesterday.  Now, trade shows are being cancelled and postponed by the thousands, worldwide.  

Trade shows have become increasingly important for media too.  According to MediaRadar, print advertising has been declining for years as digital has increased along with trade shows.  Based on the company’s findings, trade show revenue typically contributes 15-20% of the full year B2B publisher sales. This includes both sponsorship and exhibitor revenue.  B2B publishers have a disproportionate share of their events in Q2, so they have immediate exposure especially now.  This is one of the reasons why companies like UK-based Informa Plc are trading at £381, down from the high of £867 on January 2.

Media salespeople have been using shows to meet potential advertisers and sponsors who don’t take their phone calls or meet in person anymore.  As trade shows disappear, even temporarily, a major component of their sales strategy for many media sellers is going away.  

French+Elliott, a consultancy designed to help media owners fix problems being experienced by their properties, are well equipped to propose alternative strategies.  John French was president of Primedia when the SARS virus closed his company’s international trade shows; Primedia moved fast and prevailed.  Jim Elliott, a Connectiv Board member, has been running the James G. Elliott Co., Inc. for 35 years and has led his sales team through challenges like recession and upheaval several times.  

John French strongly feels that leadership is most important in times of crisis.  In times like these, he says, the best people are the ones that keep their heads. Those leaders don’t cry, “This is terrible, we’ve never faced this before.” They say, “Yeah, it IS terrible, it IS unprecedented, but the question is, what are we going to do about it?” Great leaders are informational, calm, and measured, saying, “Okay, now that we can’t do this or that; here are the three or four things that we are going to do in the next two weeks.”  French says that any time there is a crisis, everybody has a choice. They can either run with the crowd with their hair on fire or they can go the other way and say, “Okay, that’s the way it is, and I can’t change it, but is there opportunity here? Is there something in the way I communicate with a customer to make things better?”

Communication works best with a hefty dose of real, sincere empathy.  John says, “Whether it was your trade show that was cancelled or an industry trade show, acknowledge that neither you nor your customer are happy, and that you’re very sensitive to their problem.  All of your communication should reflect that you know your customer still has to achieve goals and quotas to make without this event happening.  If you don’t point out that you both have been hit hard because of this cancellation, you will have lost the opportunity for a real connection.”  Don’t make this common mistake; don’t just hit them with cold communications that say, basically, “The show’s not happening—you’re on your own—see you next year.”

 When they know you understand their predicament and empathize with them, and if you can bring them ideas to recoup some of what they lost, your customers—clients as well as potential advertisers and sponsors—will be more likely to think of you as a resource.  Why did they want to attend the show?  They wanted to meet buyers and demonstrate their products to them. And, many of them, and their customers, wanted to learn through the educational tracks and seminars.  Here are a couple of thought-starters:

• Why not create a service using some of the available technologies and platforms like Zoom to create video clips of your customer’s CEO talking about their product and then using your knowledge of your audience to deliver it to the right people?  You can charge for it because there will be money earmarked for the canceled show that won’t have been spent.

• Start communicating to replace the information flow. You could take some of the seminars that were going to be presented at the show, the educational tracks, get them videotaped and release them drop by drop throughout the course of the year, and have people who would have been buying booths sponsor them through your media.

• Talk to as many people as possible and get information to their advertisers about things they have heard, or understood, that they would have gotten at the trade show.  

Steps like those above are not going to be “the next big thing.”  Their main purpose is to be a stop-gap until in-person events resume.  But if done right, they can add a layer of empathetic communication that can continue when things get back to normal.

The need to build brand awareness without a trade show could also lead many of your customers back to that old stand-by, print. If your people can sell your customers on the value of print, you will simultaneously revitalize your print sales and solve the customers’ problems.  But who is going to make the case for print?  Jim Elliott points out that print needs to be sold differently from digital or trade show booths, and many advertising salespeople haven’t had much recent practice.  He says, “If their print sales muscles have atrophied, publishers may need to make it a priority to retrain their sales team.  Print sales could make the difference.” Do your salespeople understand the value of print, and where it fits in the mix; can they sell it?

When the trade shows do come back, everybody’s going to flock back because they missed them.  If you make the right moves now, you will be prepared for a bumper crop of successes. Profitable print sales will be up, and you will have trained yourself to use the new products you never had before, because you never had to. Necessity is the mother of invention. You had to get better, and you did, and now you will be stronger going into the next year.  It’s leadership, empathy for the customer, ideas, and sales execution.

We appreciate the help of Todd Krizelman, CEO of MediaRadar, for his thoughts in the development of this piece and for his team’s help in providing trend data.

We welcome your comments and would be happy to continue this discussion if we can be of help to you.