How To Work A Booth At A Trade Show Or Conference – Websites.ca Talk Ep. 43

Sean Corbett:
Hello again, Websites.ca Podcast listeners, Sean Corbett here, Websites.ca Marketing. Today we’re joined with one of my favorite past guests and my very good friend, Ross Mann. He’s an entrepreneur. He heads the consultant agency Solid Solutions, and he’s also the inventor of one of the key geological apps, Formation Finder. We’re not going to talk about startups and we’re not going to talk about websites today. We’re actually going to go a little bit offline, but you can tie that into your online efforts for sure. We’re going to talk about conferences and trade shows, which Ross, I think you have a ton of experience in. Is that right?

Ross Mann:
Yeah, I’ve put them together and I’ve also attended plenty.

Sean Corbett:
Awesome. Well, thanks again for being here. Yeah, I guess let’s just jump right into it. So I will ask you at some point some of your history with conferences and trade shows, but I wanted to start from a different angle, which is if we have listeners and they have industry trade shows, I think it’s rather obvious, right? They’ll probably be considering or have attended industry trade shows. But for all the other listeners, for all the other brick and mortar businesses out there, can you maybe run us through some of the main benefits of attending a trade show or conference? Then also on the flip side, who would a trade show or conference not be for? What kind of business would not benefit from them?

Ross Mann:
Well, the most benefit I’ve found when I’ve attended them is obviously networking. Maybe I should back up. There’s a few ways to attend a conference, right? You can be a attendee where you buy a ticket or a pass or whatever, and you go there and they have breakout rooms where they teach you some things. They have keynote speakers where you listen to the keynote speaker. Then you go to the trade show and people try to sell you stuff. When I’ve done that, I’ve found it valuable from a networking point of view, and meeting other people, seeing what they’re doing, seeing kind of the people that have done it very well, people that are just starting out, seeing where you fit and having a lot of discussion, especially out of the conference, is very valuable.
So after hours, there’s usually something going on. Sometimes people put on parties or breakout sessions after the show or just hanging out at the local area and there’s a lot of attendees still there. So networking, comradery, getting questions answered from other people. Then obviously the trade show, when you’re an attendee, you can find out problem solving answers, if you will, like people that have built products and software for you or processes or whatever that could help streamline your business. But for me it’s always been networking.
The other aspect would be being part of the trade show. So being a vendor in the trade show. I also was a speaker as well and there’s benefits to that, but being part of the trade show is where I found the most success. The benefit there is that, one, you get the flip side of everything I just said, so people come to you with problems that you might be able to solve. They come with you with problems that you might have not have thought of before and that might help add new product lines or new ways of thinking about your own business. One thing that was very valuable in the case of Formation Finder, we realized that we could create strategic partnerships with other vendors at the trade show.
So not only were we selling to the attendees, but we realized quickly that the people in the trade show, other vendors could become sponsors of ours or strategic partners where they can enhance our product or vice versa, we can enhance their product, and that was all very valuable. In the case of being a vendor, there’s downtime, a lot of downtime while people are in the breakout sessions. So you get a chance to chat with them and discuss with them what they’re doing and everything like that. So my group and I, we always utilize that downtime and kind of basically sell our network to the other vendors and it paid off quite well, that’s for sure.

Sean Corbett:
So a lot of that sounds like, correct me if I’m wrong, a lot of that sounds like B2B and not very much B2C. Is that right?

Ross Mann:
Yeah, it’s been most successful for me, B2B. B2C is a lot harder. So if you’re a business selling to generally everyone, even if it is kind of niche, but the population is quite large or obviously quite large, a lot of people don’t go to conferences generally. There are conferences, like a good friend of mine runs comic book conventions and that’s a B2C kind of situation, but with his business he’s been very successful. The attraction is the entertainment side.

Sean Corbett:
Yeah. The celebrities are bringing people in. So yeah, you’d want to leverage celebrity or mass market appeal in a very unique way to pull that off, right?

Ross Mann:
Yeah. If you’re in that type of business, that’s just a whole other ballgame. It is kind of like an amusement park onto itself, n so much like a networking business selling, but you’re selling the approach or the access to those people individually rather than say a movie. So it kind of doesn’t fit the model that I’m used to, but in that business, the speakers are the product.

Sean Corbett:
Yeah. That might be out of scope for this conversation. We might want to keep it focused on the B2B then in that case because that’s a good point.

Ross Mann:
Yeah, yeah. Well, my point was that on the retail side, the average Joe is not gunning to go to a conference for average things, right? They’re not going to go to a couch conference because they love sitting on the couch or a TV conference because they love watching TV. They’re users of those products, but they’re not going to those conferences, right?

Sean Corbett:
Yeah, for sure.

Ross Mann:
So yeah, it would probably be out of scope. But that’s the point is that if you’re selling like that, conferences may not be a way to reach your customer, but going to conferences could be a way to improve the backside of your business. So if you are someone that sells TVs, let’s say, you can learn how better sales techniques, other people that are in the industry providing products that could improve your business and so on.

Sean Corbett:
Or you could have a wholesale win of your business, right? So you’re doing the wholesale stuff at a conference looking for a distributor, or vice versa, a distributor looking for a wholesaler, that kind of thing.

Ross Mann:
Yeah. You go to a conference for your product and the audience members are wholesalers. One of the big ones around here is franchise conferences. So a lot of people want to start their own franchise business. So the average Joe that goes there are people that want to buy a franchise, similar to the wholesale kind of concept. So it’s not your retailer, it’s more of an insider kind of game.

Sean Corbett:
Got it. Yeah. So you and I have a mutual friend, I won’t say who it is on the podcast, but we were discussing consulting with him to attend maybe some conferences in 2023. One of the first things he said was he’s up for it, but he doesn’t want to buy a booth. Then I said, “Why?” He said, “Oh, no one visits booths at conferences or trade shows.” You and I had a good laugh about that. So for the next section of this talk, let’s just cover what are the big mistakes or misconceptions people have when they attend? What are the mistakes they make when they attend? What are the misconceptions they have about what works and what doesn’t at trade shows and conferences?

Ross Mann:
So as a person who has put on the booth and been in the trade show and also set up trade shows, most people are boring. They don’t seem to understand that they’re there to sell their product and that the person that’s going to the conference doesn’t necessarily want to go to the trade show. I’ve just at the beginning said that there’s value there, but most people think that they’re going to be sold. At the front of people’s heads, they don’t want to be sold, even though we know deep in the back of their head they do. So you kind of have to make yourself stand out.
So the biggest mistake I’ve seen is, one, they set up a standard booth. You can buy booth products just like you can buy any type of advertising with the little things that pull out and they have a random table and a backdrop and chairs and they sit behind the desk blocking the backdrop and they’re playing with their phones. They’re waiting for the customer or the attendee to get their attention to talk about their product. It’s quite prevalent. I’ve seen a lot of people do it. That’s the biggest mistake, because an attendee’s not going to go out of their way to talk to you. They may not even see you. They may not even know what you’re selling. You kind of look the same as everyone else, especially if you’re not flashy or have a special looking booth.
Now, I have seen recently that that’s kind of changing, that some booth are now becoming more and more interactive, but definitely 10 years ago it was not, and even maybe even three years ago it was not. You still see the people standing behind the booth. So what we’ve always done is especially in Formation Finder, my business partner and I thought ourselves as carnies, like carnival barkers. So it wasn’t enough just set up a booth how people came. Our mission was to talk to everybody. So we’d set up an interactive booth. I’m not just talking like a computer that people play with, but the actual props of the booth are interactive.
They can touch our booth, they can pull things, put things on, interact with them, interact with us, and then we had a desk for the computers, because it was software based, so we had to have a computer, but we stood in front of it. As people walk by, we would pull them in, not physically, but talk to them. It’s great. Everyone has a name tag so you can say, “Hey Jim, how’s it going at company or place, location, whatever.” That usually will get their attention and then you can have just a conversation with them. In case of Formation Finder, we were doing juggling, because we had pins.
Kind of part of our product was pinning stuff on a digital chart, so we made actual giant pins that we would juggle with with my partner back and forth. Hand the pin to people so they can hold it while we talk to them, just giving them something to hold onto, like change the perception of what they’re receiving, so that was good. So [inaudible] back and forth on benefits and drawbacks, but the biggest flaw is people not engaging with their customers like anything else or just sitting back hoping customers will come to them.

Sean Corbett:
Yeah. The image I’d want to put in the brain of the listeners is that there’s a flow of human beings, right? You have a hallway, let’s say, and booths on either side and the flow of people that you want to reach is in the middle. Ross, what you’re saying obviously is when you sit behind, you’re putting now a border in front of you and the people you want to reach. So simply getting in your brain that you can come around the other side and get into the flow of traffic, and then like you said, the great opener that most people have in most trade shows have a name tag or some kind of business iconography.
But yeah, that image of the carny barker was perfect, because I don’t know if our listeners listening, we grew up in Alberta, so you had Stampede and I was up in Edmonton, we had Klondike Days. If you think about that, there’s those shoot a pistol, throw a ring on a bottle top, whatever, but those guys who man those booths that would always come out into the thoroughfare, have a pitch of some kind that would attract you as a kid, then go back behind their booth, get you to do the interactive thing.

Ross Mann:
Yeah. I’ve taken my own advice very literally. So I’ve stood in the middle, the very middle center of the hallway between booths and talked to people as I conceptualized as a rock in a river, and that water had to flow over me. I talked to people and in that particular case, I wasn’t the main person to talk to. Most people that did do the talking were kind of doing it the old way and I couldn’t change much of it, but I was there. I was there to sell. So my thought was that the only thing I can do is reposition myself.
So I put myself in the middle, literal middle of the hallway where we were in the conference center and people washed past me and I would pick them off, talk to them, open them whatever way I can, and then push them into, again, not physically, but sell them into going to talk to the main person. So go over here, “Oh, that’s an interesting idea, go talk to so-and-so.” Then so I eliminated the barrier that that person has set up with the table by creating an opener and then making a connection. That attendee now is willing to cross that barrier, because I’ve kind of given them permission to do so.

Sean Corbett:
It’s psychologically also a mini venue change because you’re taking them from the motion of the hallway back behind the booth. So it does very quickly build some quick rapport.

Ross Mann:
It could be like, yeah, a venue change is a good idea. You could actually lean into that and create a more intimate booth. So going the opposite way of what I just said, rather than being interactive, you create intimate. So like two chairs, like an interview style, they sit down with you and you talk, especially in the consulting business, which I have experience in. So I grab them in the thoroughfare and then venue change them into the more intimate booth setting where they can have a one-on-one talk with the principal of the company. I’ve seen that kind of work. You could definitely expand that. I don’t really see a lot of people doing that. People are going around doing the big flashy now, which is cool, but to get a bang for your buck, you want to stand out and you could literally stand out in the open and then create an intimate situation to do a sales.

Sean Corbett:
Yeah, I love that. My marketing mentor says in an age of social media where everyone has access to everyone 24/7, the differentiator is to make yourself hard to access. So just by the way you described setting up the booth, if you want to go in that direction, right? You close it off. You maybe even create a little waiting list like chairs of where people have to wait to talk to the principal and you’re going to look completely different from all the rest of the booths. But like you said, that only really works if you have a team scenario where one person is willing to go out and flag people down.
Then another thing, so all that stuff is great. I think one time you and I debriefed after you went to a conference, if you remember this. What you had told to me is when the day started, you, just like everybody else, did not want to get up and sell, didn’t want to have to put in the effort, didn’t want to have to go and grab people and do the performative nature of things, but you did it whereas everyone else convinced themselves to sit on their cellphones. But then you told me after about 30 minutes of that, it totally energized you and it changed your whole outlook on the day, and by the end of the day you were exhilarated and had a great time. So sometimes people just need to actually get out of their own way and get over that mental hurdle too, right?

Ross Mann:
Yeah, it’s like anything. It’s kind of like an inertia scenario, like getting over the hump, getting out of bed, your bed’s comfy. Once you get going, or starting a workout or something, a run, once you get going, it’s not so bad. You just got to get, like I said, over yourself, over your hangups and just get out there. People actually do want to chat with you. I rarely get blow offs and stuff. So when people chat with me about what I’m selling and my products, or my consulting products, who I’m consulting with and stuff, it feels really good.
It feels cool to talk to people about your stuff and that is very energizing. At the end, I’m jazzed and I’m pumped. I don’t want to stop. At conferences, like I said, there’s a lot of after things going on, so I’ll roll into that and keep going. But at the end, it’s like any high energy, high physical thing, you then feel exhausted afterwards. You got to [inaudible] across a little bit.

Sean Corbett:
Well, that’s why you partner up with a couple extroverts and then they-

Ross Mann:
Yeah. I have been most successful with extroverts, because they love it. They feed off that. I’m the opposite. I love to do it, but I don’t feed off of it long-term. It’s kind of a put on for me.

Sean Corbett:
Yeah, no, that makes sense. So you did sort of touch on this, but it’s a question that I wrote down. We can expand on it. Maybe you can give me some specific examples or something that the audience could take away and try. But my question essentially was talk about booth management from the point of view of performance. So you used the word carny, right? But when we went into this talk, I thought of if you’re going to a conference, you have to think of yourself as a performer. The whole thing is a performative act.

Ross Mann:
Yeah, yeah.

Sean Corbett:
So yeah. Do you have any specific examples? You mentioned the pins and stuff like that. If you want to go into things that worked well for you in the past.

Ross Mann:
Well, on booth set up, colors, layout, the standard stuff, entrance like we’re just talking about if it’s intimate, like how you would arrange that. I’ve found that no matter what, having something handy literally in your hand that’s generic enough that almost anyone can receive it is a great part of the opener. So hey Jim, and as you’re talking to Jim and asking them how they are at so-and-so, you’re extending your hand out with a pamphlet or a knickknack or something that they will a hundred percent take.
They don’t know what. But when you give it to someone, if you give things to people, if you offer something to people, if there’s not clearly something that they don’t want like something crazy, but if it’s simple and it’s at a conference, like a pamphlet, knickknack or something, they’re going to look at you. They’re wondering why their name. People would never seem to know why I know their name even though it’s right on there. Sometimes I’ve even made jokes about how I know their name because they clearly don’t understand why I know their name, but I’m handing them something and they’re taking it.
That whole action is a series of small yeses like you and I talk about, right? They’ve looked at me, they’ve acknowledged that I’ve said their names. So that’s a little bit of an acceptance. Then they’ve taken something from me. Then once I get into that conversation, I don’t care what it is, sometimes it’s the thing I’m giving them that they actually do want to talk about, but it has to be generic enough that it’s some sort of value.

Sean Corbett:
Sorry to interrupt you, but could it be a mini branded water bottle, let’s say? Just a gift, just a sample, a gift?

Ross Mann:
Anything. That could be a little expensive. A nice card stock, cheat sheet of whatever. I’ve seen a lot of success with the cheat sheets. So if [inaudible]-

Sean Corbett:
So not a business card, but some kind of fascinator, basically.

Ross Mann:
Business cards don’t move the needle anymore. Because of the cheap ones, right? Anyone can get them. I’ve actually had people had me really expensive business cards, metal in one case, and that was a conversational starter for sure. Whoa, why you spend this type of money on your business card? So you could do business card. You got to do it out of the normal. Everyone can get the cheap ones that feel like plastic or whatever. So you do want it cheap, but you want it out of the ordinary and you want to have some sort of immediate perceived value.
With Formation Fighter, it was a pin, it was very physical and they handed it back, but it was the action and it was very on brand for us. Just to describe it to the audience. We took a towel rack, cut off the ends and make it a little bit shorter, and then we spray painted red a round hockey ball and put it on the end. So it looked like a pin that you put on a map, but in real life, and we’d hand that to people.

Sean Corbett:
Because again, these were surveyor types and so on that would have used your software to search for geological formations on a map.

Ross Mann:
Yeah. Pins on maps are not a stretch of concept. You see them all over the place. They’re on physical world. People put pin on the map, and then Google maps and stuff, they’re putting digital pins on maps. So it wasn’t a stretch. People, when they came to our booth, they clearly understood what was going on and we’d make them hold it while we gave them everything, all the information and stuff like that. So in terms of to get back to the layout, as I’m handing it to someone and I’m conversing with them and figuring out what they need, another nice display of additional pamphlets that I can reach to and hand it to them.
Once I’ve narrowed down, I’m doing the action in the office, you can’t see me, I’m physically reaching behind myself, because I have it memorized where things are on the booth desk and I grab the one I’m talking about and say, “Oh, well.” And then I start showing them what’s on the pathway and we start talking about that.

Sean Corbett:
So you have a second thing, like an upgrade thing to hand them once you’ve segmented them?

Ross Mann:
Yes, exactly. Once I figure out their segment, I can give them something even more value.

Sean Corbett:
Interesting.

Ross Mann:
That might be it. They might be busy, they’re like, “Okay,” then they walk away. But if they show even more interest in it, then I can bring them further into the booth physically and show them more items. So if you have some product that they can actually touch and feel, again, that’s a good idea. If like in the case of Formation Finder, we try and get them to start using the product online at our booth. In some cases, people have studies or reports or examples. They can start playing with that or reviewing that in the physical world. Like say if you’re a dentist, I haven’t done any dental ones, but maybe if you’re selling tools to dentists, you have some mockup tools that they can start playing with.
Part of this too is to figure out where their problems are, what problem you’re solving and bringing them deeper, deeper into your layout. Then if you do have where they need to talk to a different person, what you’re also doing is you’re buying time. So if that person’s talking to one person and not the person you’ve just kind of brought into the ecosystem, you need things around you to discuss and buy time while they wait. Then you can usher them into the orbit of the principal. Or in some cases, if you know the principal’s talking to someone about the same stuff and it’s not like an intimate setting that we just discussed, you could try and interject them into that conversation and now you-

Sean Corbett:
Right. So a group could be circled around the second person listening to them simultaneously.

Ross Mann:
Yes.

Sean Corbett:
Okay. So there’s an aspect at play here that’s very similar to a high-end restaurant where you want people to feel the luxurious experience, loved, it’s unique, whatever. But also you got to turnaround tables too, right? The second person has to be aware that they can’t have an hour long conversation with their favorite guy at the conference, because you’re going to be sending them more guys every couple of minutes.

Ross Mann:
Yeah. That actually kind of ties into when you said that a lot of people that have done booths don’t understand that they need to get up and sell and move. Same with the principal or the knowledge holder or the industry expert. Some of those people really love what they do and they really want to talk to a client and they love to talk. So they have way too long of a conversation. In case of Formation Finder, we had this dialed in as well. The industry expert also needs to be skilled in what’s going on and understand what’s going on. They need to have a better conversation than what I’ve had with them, or if it’s me or whatever, vice versa. But understand that there’s a time constraint. So they got to give them the information, make the connection, and then move them on.
The fact that this conference is other people to see, there’s breakout rooms, keynote speakers, all these things going on, there’s actually an easy out. “Hey, it’s great chatting with you, Jim. I know conferences can be super busy. So again, feel free to reach out to me when you’re done. If I don’t hear from you, I’ll reach out to you. But there’s a great vendor around the street, around the corner.” Like I said, we formed strategic partners, so we had no problem teeing them up with the next booth that was our partner. Even if we made that arrangement on the spot, like, “Oh, hey, you guys are really cool. We’re not competitors. I’m going to send people over to you after I’m done with them.”

Sean Corbett:
Oh, okay. I didn’t get what you meant right away, but that’s awesome. So you get to the conference hour one, and then you say whatever, right? Let’s say you know them ahead of time. You go, “You guys have a booth. We have a booth. We’ll just make an agreement. We’ll suggest to every person at the end of their time with us that they go see you next and you do the same for us.” That’s just a nice easy way to ensure you get more traffic. Is that basically what you’re saying?

Ross Mann:
If they’re going to send them back to us, that’s cool, but usually I’m a better booth anyway so they’re coming to me first. So people just don’t get it. Even there was one that was great. They ended up actually being one of our sponsors. They were buying advertising from us after this conference, but they had a margarita machine, and so they were giving people free margaritas. I don’t know if there’s alcohol on it or not. I don’t know. I didn’t really ask, but they had a Slurpee margarita thing. That was their interactive, let’s get everyone going.
Our booth was so much more colorful. My partner and I were so much more dynamic, and the product that we had is something they really wanted to use that they were blowing by that Margarita machine. But I love the fact that that margarita machine was there because I could have the conversation with someone and they say, “Hey, have you had the margaritas yet?” They’re like, “No, I haven’t.” “Well, cool. Well, go have a margarita. I’ll email you tomorrow.” It was an out

Sean Corbett:
Okay, right, right. Then. So yeah, so you get your out to move them along, but then also you get a great relationship with those people who ended up advertising. Okay, cool.

Ross Mann:
[inaudible] from us, the idea was that, “Hey, I can send traffic to you in a physical world. What do you?”

Sean Corbett:
Yeah, yeah. No, for sure. Like you said, it’s two birds with one stone because you do have to move the people along at some point. So that leads to one of my final questions, which is essentially, I mean, we have to remind the listeners like we always do for any endeavor that we do, you have to have some kind of call to action at the end, right? You want to get something. In your case with Formation Finder, I assume maybe you could sign them up for an account on the spot, and maybe you can talk about that. But I would say you have to grab, you’ve got to get some kind of contact details at the end of the interaction, right? Either an email or phone number or both?

Ross Mann:
Yeah. In the case of Formation Finder, we could sign them up. Formation Finder had a front facing free product. So our goal, at least in the initial conferences, was that we needed to see a significant uptick in the free user base, which we did after the conference. So you could see as we were using the conference, they go up, but if there was some sort of seed change increase over time after that, then we consider it success. Once we had a premium module where we could sell to people and they could sign up, then yeah, we could send them up on the spot. That did work.
Making a connection, grabbing their contact information, writing down, this is something I learned in politics, was writing down what you talk to them about, so you can have a very appropriate, very targeted followup, personalized followup. I’ve seen it done in the most boneheaded ways in other conferences that I’ve worked for and worked with that people just grab cards. Well, let me grab your card. Sometimes they’ll throw it in a giveaway. They have giveaway items in a draw and stuff like that.
At the end, they have these giant fishbowls or buckets or whatever of disjointed contact information. Oh, who did you talk to? Sally? Or Why did you talk to Sally? I don’t know. Did Sally talk to anyone? Did they just throw it in themselves? What’s going on to Sally? You have no context. If you’re giving away, I’ve never given anything away, by the way, because people just throw stuff in to give away. So it destroys the context of your lead generation.

Sean Corbett:
So would you maybe say, if you give me your address or business address, I’ll send you a whole follow-up package in a week. That’s better because then you get the address and they take it more seriously because they don’t just… I think what you’re describing is when you get up to your hotel room at the end of the night from a conference, you have a handful of crap. If there’s two beds there, you dump it on the other bed, then you fall asleep and throw it all the way in the morning, right?

Ross Mann:
Yeah. From the vendor side, from person working the trade show, I just have a bunch of cards that everyone put in because they wanted to win a bottle of wine or something like that. I don’t have any context.

Sean Corbett:
Right, right.

Ross Mann:
So depending on your product, you ask for what you can get, you write it down. If I don’t have something I can give them, although you and I have discussed type of signup packages or thank you packages, which I’d probably try and implement if I was to do this again. But I always went with the ultra personal, so I would remember what their name was, write down almost immediately why I was talking to them, like a paragraph of notes. They’re from this place, they like this stuff, they have a wife, they have a daughter, they have a son, they have a dog, whatever. I can create a dossier in the client management system and then send them a very personalized email or call them up or something.
Even with Formation Finder, with the public side, we always, because it’s public and it’s free, a lot of people could sign up, and so you would think that we wouldn’t want to have a personalized touch, but to get to critical mass with that, I took every single person as individually personalized as possible, because I figured if I could talk to one guy at one company, he’d probably get everyone in his department on board. So I took the extra effort to take them out for coffees or talk to them and all that stuff. But you need better contextual information as the takeaway.
Now, if you had a call to action, you give them homework. It could be cool. You ask them for something, like you said, you send them a thank you package or a signup package. Imagine if you were attendee, then you got all the junk, like you said, you throw it on the second bed, forget it. You throw it out because you can’t fit in the plane you’re going to carry on or something later. But imagine if a book showed up at your house when you got home on the topic that you guys were discussing.

Sean Corbett:
Yeah, yeah.

Ross Mann:
Or something like that. That’d be wild.

Sean Corbett:
That’d be awesome.

Ross Mann:
Right. So yeah, so the call to action could be just to reconnect again, and if you’re doing it right, they’re going to want to reconnect again. If you’re cold, non-energetic, disinterested in actually getting their business, don’t care, want to work volume, it’s just anything else in sales. If you don’t actually understand what you’re doing, why you’re doing it, why it’s important to your attendee, you’re not going to get success from it.

Sean Corbett:
No, for sure. That makes sense. Just to double back for a sec, within your framework of what we described, the rocket in the river, grabbing the people, leading them to the booth, handing them off to a higher level principal, who’s going to give them a little more value and it’s all organized. Who’s the person who would be tasked with keeping the contextual notes?

Ross Mann:
If it’s done right, the principal, because they need to follow up. I like writing paragraphs, but in the case of some of our mutual clients and friends, if it’s just enough to have a reminder of what you talked about, because some people have good memories about conversations, right? So it’s like, oh yeah, Jim with a purple shirt. Oh yeah, now I remember Jim with a purple shirt. I’m going to write this giant email to him, right? So it could be as simple as that, but the person that’s having an intimate conversation needs to write it down, because they have the intimate details.
Again, when people aren’t selling well enough or they’re not collecting that at the end well enough, I get upset because why are we here, right? You’re not there just to shake a bunch of hands and meet. It is similar from a billboard versus an interview. If you want to just put up a billboard and blow through people, you could do that. But the conference doesn’t have to be that way.

Sean Corbett:
No. Yeah. So just to make the audience aware, basically within the framework we talked about or the structure, they would have to also understand that, let’s call them the setup guy. The setup guy has got to give the principal enough time after each interaction too, and not immediately interrupt their chain of thought or their chance to write down the notes by bringing the next person in. So there’s a bit of an elegance, and it’s orchestrated. Essentially every step is orchestrated is what I’m getting from our talk today.

Ross Mann:
You’re a team, and it doesn’t work when you have someone like me out there setting everyone up, and then someone in the background not knowing why they’re getting set up a bunch of people and not knowing what to do with this. You got to communicate with that. It works best if the team members around you understand that that’s the goal and understand what to do for their role, then you have a lot of success. It could be as simple as just communicating with them that that’s what you’re supposed to do, and hopefully people that are around you are willing to do that. If you are the principal, then you can select the team that was willing to do that for you.

Sean Corbett:
Perfect. Well, yeah, that about wraps it up. Last thoughts on this, Ross?

Ross Mann:
Conferences are expensive. “Build it and they will come” doesn’t exist in many things, and conferences is one of those things. Setting up a booth and spending all that money and not doing it right would be absolute insanity. You should do it right. You should think about it. Think about your audience, think about what they want to see, think about how they want to be spoken to, think about the call to action, the follow up. Put thought into it. You’re going to spend thousands and thousands of dollars on a booth, you got to put equal amount of brainpower into your approach while working that booth.

Sean Corbett:
Awesome, man. I always get so many ideas talking to you, so I really appreciate you coming on today.