Getting the most from a trade show.

• Author: Beck, Bill

Sooner or later, it happens to everybody in business. The decision is made to exhibit the company's product or service at a trade show. It can be something as simple as a knock-down modular display in the hallway of a Holiday Inn just off the interstate in Terre Haute, or it can be as complex as a major island booth display at the Indiana Convention Center in Indianapolis, at Chicago's McCormick Place, Detroit's Cobo Hall or the Las Vegas Convention Center.

Trade shows now consume fully 30 percent of the expenditures for business-to-business contact in the United States, second only to the individual sales call in business-to-business expenditures. Hardly a product or service offered for sale does not have at least one national and several regional trade shows devoted to exhibiting the newest technology and developments in that segment of the economy.

Participants in trade shows can spend anywhere from several thousand dollars for a small modular display to several hundred thousand dollars for a custom-built display for major exhibits and shows. Preparation can take anywhere from several weeks to a year or more. For the bigger custom-designed exhibits, designers work with the same computer-aided design/computer-aided manufacture (CAD/CAM) systems that populate the American factory floor today.

Any business owner or executive pondering a trade show should have clear objectives in mind. At least, that's the advice of exhibit designers and consultants located across Indiana.

"You've got to do your basic marketing homework," says Don Hall of Customcraft in Fort Wayne. A 25-year veteran of the business, including a stint as director of promotion and public relations for Magnavox in Fort Wayne, Hall counsels clients to understand why they are going to a trade show before they begin the process.

He suggests that there are basically four reasons to go to a trade show: to sell or introduce a product or service; to gather leads; for public relations or image purposes; and--although he says this often is a lousy reason--because the competition is already at that trade show.

Customcraft, in business for 45 years in Fort Wayne, next advises a new client to get a good feel for the kind of show at which he or she wants to participate. Hall suggests going to the show the year before and walking the aisles to try and get a feel for how the show looks to a potential customer.

"Get as large a space as you can afford," Hall says, adding that first-time clients don't always...