Ruben Uzan, trade show performance coach and creator of the M.A.G.I.C. Exhibiting™ Formula
Most companies who walk away disappointed from a trade show are convinced the problem was the show. Wrong location, wrong audience, not enough traffic, you name it.
But here's what most companies are never told: a bad show never destroys a well-prepared team, but plenty of unprepared teams destroy good shows.
That gap, between what a show can produce and what most companies actually extract from it, is what I work on with exhibitors. Some call it: trade show performance.
I like the word, because a show is both an economic performance, and a human one, as in entertainment, act, or presentation.
The trade show expert who changed my career in Montreal
Ever watched Steve Jobs talk about connecting the dots? You can only do it looking backwards. Here are mine.
At 19, I found myself building stands at the Buchemesse, the book fair, in Frankfurt in Germany, during spring break. All because I said I spoke German on my CV. But Germany corrected that quickly. What I didn't know was 20 years later I'll be building what's inside the stand, performant trade show teams.
A couple of years later, after finishing univ I didn't want to land in a boring job office. I landed myself a job at Club Med, as a resort entertainer, being paid to engage complete strangers and make them feel at home, part of the family and enjoy the summer on the red sea. I did not know yet that, this, was the most valuable skill a trade show team can have.
I made a friend there, a jewellery business owner. A few months later, she came to Paris. She and her business partner were investing in a big Paris show, Bijorca. I saw them fly in and out of Paris for that, twice and walk away both times with nothing. Too expensive. Sorry, too little return.
Fast forward nine years. A Canadian work visa in my pocket, I landed in Toronto. Every recruiter said the same thing: interesting CV, but no Canadian experience. Go have one and come back.
That's how I landed in a workshop about "selling yourself on the Canadian job market" in Montreal, led by someone called Julien Roy, one of Canada's top trade show experts. After three days of training he asked me to come see him and asked me: "Have you ever thought about working on trade shows? Cause I saw you engage with people like and create such connections with total strangers, you should consider it". I did not even know that was a job. He called me a few days later. And what followed was four years on trade shows with one of the best in North America. Only then, I connected the dots.
If you want you can read the full story of How I became a trade show expert or hear me talk about trade shows, in modern days.
When I returned to Europe, I discovered fast that what works in Chicago or Toronto does not land the same way in Paris or Brussels. Americans are inductive: do it, if it works, then it must be true, they trust you. Europeans are deductive: explain why it works first, then I will trust you.
So to help European exhibitors, this time, I had to rebuild the system from the ground up. I took Julien's foundations, and layered on it research in social psychology, behavioral science, and what my training in NLP and Systemics taught me, so as to be able not only to teach what works and how, but why it works. The result is a method that can be explained, taught and replicated this time, across cultures. I named it the M.A.G.I.C. Exhibiting™ Formula, as a dedication to one of the founding books of NLP : “the structure of magic”.
The formula covers the before, the during and after of any conventions: choosing the right show, attracting the right visitors, converting eight-minute floor conversations into qualified leads, managing the team during the show, and extracting real R.O.I. from the event.
Why American trade show training does not work in Europe
I train exhibiting teams from startups to large coporations
For more than ten years now I have trained exhibiting teams fom 5 continents, from startups coming onto the trade show stages for the first time to grow their business, to large corporation defending their market shares.
Over the years, large shows like Vivatech have asked me to teach their exhibitors trade show performance as a service they wanted to give them. They understood that their client's success is their success. And it's pretty simple: when exhibitors make business with their show, the show reputation grows and it brings more exhibitors in the next year. If you're a show organizer, reading this, and you want to help your exhibitors make their participation at your show profitable, let's talk.
Over the yeas, I've built what I call the Exhibitors Lab.
What happens in there?
Exhibitors learn to implement the method I've developped over the years.
It starts with a three-day training program, supported by a software to manage shows built around it, Q&A support calls for up to 2 years, and a lifetime access to my whatsapp community. It is built for teams who want to correct the course or up their trade shows game. It is called The Catalyst.
And for ones who need an extra push, on the field, they can opt for the Activator's options. I train their trade show staff team, at their office, and coach them on their booth. I video record it so we can run an analysis like a coach after a game.
If you're looking for ways to improve your trade show game, before you consider joining, start with watching what I called the exhibitor’s edge, that explains both the formula I teach and what it did for previous clients.