10 Skills Your B2B Trade Show Exhibit Team Needs to Succeed

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In order to get a positive return on your trade show investment and maximize sales from your show, you need to have the right people at your trade show booth. Not everyone has the right personality or skills to shine at a trade show booth. While you can’t change a person’s personality, you can help your team learn the skills they need to be successful at any trade show.

Very few people can enter a trade fair stand and immediately feel at home. It takes training, practice and time to feel confident and communicate in an authentic way while still getting the results the business needs.

With that in mind, below are 10 key skills your B2B trade show exhibitor team needs to have (or learn) to be successful.

1. Identify specific goals

Anyone working at your booth should be able to identify specific goals for their attendance. Daily goals should answer questions like: How many people do I need to talk to each day? How many leads do I need to get?

In addition, general goals for participation in the event should be identified. This can include things like increasing brand awareness with specific audiences, building customer relationships, and more.

2. Know exactly who to address

In order to be successful at a trade fair stand, every employee should know exactly who to talk to during their work. You should know who is most likely to be interested in your company’s products and services.

Demographic information like job title, day-to-day responsibilities, and the type of company your most valuable prospects work for are important details that will help your employees to qualify booth visitors and ask appropriate questions.

3. Prepare yourself with the right questions

To save time and maximize the return on your trade show investment, your team needs to know what questions to ask visitors to quickly qualify them as viable prospects. By asking guiding questions, they can not only get a clear understanding of whether visitors are viable leads or not, but also what stage of the buyer journey they are at.

As such, they should be able to prepare questions to ask visitors—starting with simple questions and then moving on to more in-depth questions once a visitor has been qualified as a potential lead.

4. Get up and welcome

Sitting behind a table at a trade show is a big mistake. It makes your team seem aloof. Instead, everyone should stand so that they are on the same level as the visitors. They should also understand how to stand comfortably for long periods of time without getting tired or feeling pain.

Your stand staff should also make a point of welcoming every visitor and every passer-by who makes eye contact. You need confidence and an outgoing personality to feel comfortable doing it.

5. Funnel traffic

Standing behind a table or counter is better than sitting at a trade show, but stepping into the aisle and directing traffic to your booth is even better. The more people directed to your booth, the more potential leads your business will get.

The best booth attendants know that directing visitors doesn’t mean selling. It means giving people a real reason to stop by your booth. Once they arrive at your booth, your team can engage them in conversation and ask questions to qualify them.

6. Work the crowd

Exhibition halls are usually very crowded. Many people pass by your booth at the same time, and many of them stop to see what your company is doing. Therefore, it’s important that your team knows how to acknowledge people appropriately—even if they can’t immediately pull themselves out of a conversation with another person.

Your team members should also be able to gracefully end conversations so they can talk to more people. If an employee spends all their time talking to one person, your business loses the opportunity to acquire additional leads.

7. Take notes

No one working at an exhibition stand can remember everything they spoke to each visitor about, but this information is crucial when it comes to making contact after the event. Because of this, your trade show team needs to be able to take notes on leads. This could later mean the difference between closing or losing a sale.

Experienced booth staff will ask potential customers for business cards—even if they can simply scan a visitor’s badge to capture their contact information. If you ask for a business card, the team member can write down important details about a prospect after they leave your booth – personalized details that aren’t captured in a badge scan. This information can make the follow-up after the event more personal, impactful and successful.

8. Practice, practice, practice

The best booth attendants know they need to practice everything from standing and greeting to asking the right questions, directing traffic, closing conversations and more. All of this takes practice.

Even experienced stand builders practice before an event for the simple reason that no two events and no event audience are the same.

9. Listen well

Booth attendees are most successful when they have excellent listening skills. Just as listening is important to selling, it’s crucial to get key information that can later be used to convert prospects into buying customers.

The good news is that your team members who don’t already have this skill can take steps to improve their active listening skills before your next trade show.

10. Be assertive and personable

No one wants to face an overly aggressive salesperson at a trade show booth. Instead, you need to balance assertiveness and liking. Prioritize conversation and relationship building over closing a sale or no one will want to talk to you (and word will quickly spread to avoid your booth).

Key insights into the skills needed by a B2B trade show exhibitor team

Few people work at a trade show booth for the first time and shine. Like most skills, working successfully at a trade show exhibit requires dexterity, but with practice and experience the necessary skills will improve.