The three-dimensional sales tool: trade shows target a market and show products in motion.

• Author: Hughes, Ann

The Three-dimensional Sales Tool

Trade shows target a market and show products in motion.

Hoosier business people may think that trade shows are a waste of time and money. Most of them are in destination cities such as New York, Las Vegas and Atlanta, they think, making them too expensive and too remote from the Indiana marketplace to fool with. They think wrong.

True, some of the megashows are sited in the aforementioned locations, but a lot more of them, in terms of overall attendance, are held right here in the Midwest, according to the Trade Show Bureau, a Denver-based organization that tracks the industry.

Five on the bureau's list of the top 15, for example, are booked into McCormick Place in Chicago, and three into the Kentucky Fairgrounds and Exposition Center in Louisville, Ky. Thirteenth on that list is the Midwest Mobile Modular RV Show that's held every August at the University of Notre Dame's Joyce Athletic and Convocation Center near South Bend. So that shoots down distance as a major argument against trade-show participation.

The arguments in favor of renting booth space and setting up a display on the exhibit floor go beyond accessibility, however. Estimates place the impact of trade shows on the U.S. economy at $21 billion a year. Almost one-third of trade-show visitors are in top management and have the power to make purchasing decisions. More than half of that number plan a purchase within 12 months after a show. That's action you can hardly afford to miss out on.

Going to trade shows affects the bottom line as well. The bureau found in a recent study that 54 percent of convention sales leads are closed with a phone call or a letter after the show. This compares to the four and a half personal calls per lead that it takes to close a sale generated in the field.

"Exhibiting at a trade show is the most cost-effective way of selling," says Larry Minnick, a 30-year veteran in the exhibit design business and president of The Exhibit House Inc. in Indianapolis. It's a chance for a company to target a market and to show its product in motion. "It is a three-dimensional sales tool."

Contrary to popular opinion, trade shows aren't just fun and games anymore, driven by the old-home-week dynamic and a desire to spy on the competition. It is anticipated that trade-show attendance will fall from 39 million people in 1990 to 38 million in 1991, according to figures compiled by the bible of the industry, Tradeshow Week magazine. But, says Darel J. Hamilton, director of marketing for the Trade Show Bureau, the quality of the attendees is improving. "What we're finding is that they are much more serious," he says, "because they're learning that trade shows are second only to the business press in terms of...