Trade show training for exhibitors who want real R.O.I.
Have you ever walked into a show and spent three days guessing?
Guessing why some visitors stopped? Why some didn't? Guessing if your competitors did better than you? Or if their booth was full of their clients? Or freak*ng pen collectors? Guessing if there was another show that could have delivered better?
And after the show guessing again... was it a good decision to exhibit or a bad one? What it worth it? Compared to what?
Why companies keep justifying the same trade show budget for the same disappointing results
Some exhibiting companies have the conversation above in their heads or at the office year after year. Do you know why? Because they never get the answers to these questions. Trade shows are "Groundhog Days" for them. Some guy or gal in finance raises the trade show budget question every year: "Why are we even going? Can anyone show me a damn ROI for these shows?". To which some other guy or gal in marketing or sales answers: "it's for brand visibility, maintaining relationships! Plus our competitors are going, if we don't people are going to think we're in difficulties, our clients might panic thinking we do!" So the show gets approved. Phew!
A few months later, the team gets on a train or a plane, hopes for the best and attends the show. They meet a lot of people, new people, old people, the usual people. And four days later they're back, exhausted. Thousands of emails waiting for them in their inbox, meetings restarting... so the debrief from the show will wait. Until when? Until they've done their follow-ups and they can see clearly who converted. But then everyone forgets. Or worse, nobody wants to be the one to say "Ahem! Ahem! these shows are they worth it? Maybe we should change our approach?".
But no one says anything. Because, you know, no one wants to be the shot-dead messenger, right?
And that's how shows participation and budgets stays, years after years, the elephant in the room, or the corridor I should say, the one between the marketing and the sales department.
Until one day it... shows.
Most exhibitors learn by doing and guessing. They show up, try things, guess what seemed to work and apply it again. After enough shows they have built beliefs and habits. But the problem with beliefs and habits is that they can be bad ones. And unless what they produce becomes painful enough, or until they're challenged, they stay unconscious. The status quo is pretty comfortable, right?
But eventually, the status quo gets shaken: finance challenges budgets, competition emerges, and the comfort of yesterday eventually stops being comfortable.
And that's when we need to stay relevant, to update ourselves. And that's what our exhibitor's program is here for. It gives exhibitors a time and a space to renew themselves, to be challenged, to update and like Neo in Matrix to "upgrade", their practice. But since the eyes can't see themselves, no one does it on their own. And the best way to do it is with an expert, and at a fraction of the cost of repetitive failures.
With the new insights, the new method, the new tools, the enthusiasm and the confidence one can feel when one truly masters something, they can immediately make a change, on their next show. They can adapt faster. Before the pain of failure or mistakes bite them. Using the science of trade shows, rather than their own biases.
Saving more time and money then learning it the hard way, if ever, on their own.
That's how the best stay relevant, performant, efficient.
Why exhibitor's training produces more than a dozen shows of guessing
What your team learns and carries to every show after
The training I'm talking about are the days it takes to learn how the M.A.G.I.C. Exhibiting™ Formula works and implements it. The 5 key ingredients of a successful show, the 3 necessary before a show, the 1 indispensable during it, and the one critical after it.
It starts with a workshop, online, nicknamed The Igniter.
On day one: we cover how to build a show strategy with measurable targets, how to generate floor traffic intentionally, rather than relying on luck, using marketing that pulls the right visitors in.
On day two: we learn how to generate profitable conversations. How to open them, quickly, with elegance and without being rejected. How to identify whether the discussion with this visitor is worth pursuing in less than 2 minutes. How to move people from "just looking" to "tell me more" and "sign me up for that!" in the 6 minutes remaining. And, of course, how to build a follow-up system that will turn these conversations into sales after the show is over and most people will forget about it.
On day three: we learn how to handle show logistics like a professional event manager, how to run the booth efficiently across three days without burning the team out, how to document everything in real time, and make sure the follow-up sequence is actually delivered.
Shows managers and their show teams leave these days with a method in hand they want to implement and a software they use to make sure they do the right things at the right time after the training.
The three days of the Igniter workshop (that's its nickname) will give your team a battle-tested method. But we've all been to great trainings. The real work starts after, when the next show is in the starting blocks and it needs to pay off.
And what happens then? Questions, doubts, will reemerge.
That's why our program includes 24 months of support after the Igniter. Your team can jump on our Q&A calls, with a trade show expert, when they need it. These calls are live sessions where real situations get addressed: the choice of a booth location, the slogans to put on them, the structure the conversations should follow to save time and get the right info, the best follow-up sequence to improve conversion rates.
And, though it's hard to miss a call in 2 years (no one can be that busy right?), sh*t can happen, we got you covered. On top of these calls, there is a WhatsApp community. Made up of exhibitors running the same trade show system. A live space where questions get answered by an expert, and where wins get celebrated, info about shows get shared, and friendships, business or partnership emerge.
With The Catalyst, show preparation training doesn't end when the workshop does. It continues onwards. Because learning and improving is a never ending process.
How show preparation continues after the workshop with calls and community
We've all made promises to ourselves on new year's eve, right? And we eventually stuck to it, right? To the new us. For what? A week, maybe two, three at max? And then we fell back to our habits, because as it is said, habits are harder to break than atoms.
The first show preparation after The Igniter workshop is that moment. Some of the old reflexes will resurface. That is when you need support, when the rubber hits the road for the first time after. But trust the process, once you've passed that threshold and won your first success, you'd never want to go back. And the second show is where it starts to feel like yours. And we'll be here to hear you smile, and celebrate!
What another show without a system costs your company
The invoice of the booth location and the booth design are not the whole cost. Add the travel, the accommodation, the samples, AND the team salaries for a week (almost) out of the office that most companies forget to factor in. Once you total all these costs, you'll realize your trade show investment runs between 15 000 to 50 000 euros per event.
And when that big investment doesn't turn into a profit, when that mountain of money brings forth a mouse, the pain, the shame, doesn't disappear. It sits with you quietly at every trade show related meeting. You have to justify, to management, to the CFO, to the board, why you keep doing them, when they're losing money. And with so many new things to invest in (AI, etc.), defending a trade show budget this way becomes harder, every year. And it's not the only thing that gets harder: convincing the team you brought back without success from the shows to come again to the next. And they know. They know they'll have to work harder after this show to compensate for the days they were out of the office.
And that's how shows become " touchy" subject, filled with the 4Ds, denial, doubt, delayed decisions, or distractions like finding a new type of pens to bring this year (you can read do your trade show giveaways work for you or against you?).
That's how what should have been a growth engine becomes the budget you're nervous about.
That is what running shows without a system costs a company. More than a budget, it's the credibility of the person running the show, and the ones defending the spend that is at risk.
Because until your shows produce a different results, you'll be stuck in "hope dressed as strategy" mode. And isn't it uncomfortable?
I learned a lot about the methods to use on a trade show and I think a lot can also be used for prospecting in general.
“Thank you ! It was very immersive and I learned a lot about the methods to use on trade shows. I can't wait to put all this in place at a future event, and I think that a lot of points can also be used for prospecting in general. Thank you Cosmebio and thank you Ruben, you are an excellent trainer, smiling, dynamic, attentive and with humor! it was super nice“
Géraldine Quet
North west sales associate, Apimab Laboratoires
A very nice surprise
"This training was a very nice surprise with Professor Ruben, pedagogue, dynamic and sympathetic. I highly recommend it!"
Camille Soutarson
Field sales manager for France, Absolution
What The Catalyst includes and who it is for
What you get
- The Igniter: three-day online intensive workshop with its workbook. (See when the next Igniter is happening)
- The Interface: your one source of truth to create your and manage your next shows, accessible for two years (yearly subscription after that)
- The Antidote: Q&A calls, one per month, for 2 years.
- The Mixer: unlimited WhatsApp community access with a dedicated help line.
And for the companies that need a bigger push than that, an access to our Activator's options:
- a full day of a training rehearsing trade show engagement with the T.R.A.N.S.F.O.R.M. Path™ you'll learn in our workshop
- a coach on your next show to push them to higher engagement performance while having fun.
- extra trade show staff members to widen your "bandwidth" and engage visitors in larger volumes
What this exhibitor's program is not
The Catalyst is not a generic training. It is a formula that was battle tested for more than a decade. It is a practical recipe to implement in your company. The 3 days are meant to kick start that process in your company, so time will be allocated to you actually starting the implementation.
They are built to be fun an engaging as well as highly insightful.
The second day for example is much appreciate by teams of all sorts, especially sales as it gives them a new perspective and a new edge over their work on shows and also outside of them.
It's not a recorded course you buy and forget.
Everything is live.
The training is live, the Q&A calls are live and the WhatsApp community is active.
You' re not only paying for knowledge, you're paying for something more precious, experience and support you can use to build your own.
Who this is for
The Catalyst was designed for companies who exhibit regularly but cannot report to management anything of value or substance, or know they can do better. And so they know something needs to change. You don't make an omlette without breaking eggs, right? And better take a new turn, now, than waiting for another show budget to get sunk into yet another meeh show.
It is for companies who want to make the change faster and with less pain than learning it on their own, the hard and expensive way, by new trial and errors.
This program is designed for these companies, it helps not only learn but own a method that is "antifragile". It gives them the support they need to make sure the new methods gets implemented and executed show after show.
That is exactly how I started working with Aurelien (watch his case study here) who now uses our trade show staff for his largest shows every year.
Who this is not for
The Catalyst is not the right fit if your company is not ready for a change, and if you don't have the time in your agenda to make this change happen.
But it's not only about time. It's first and foremost about showing character and resolve.
The method I teach is a paradigm shift for exhibitors that have learned and implemented it. It has shaked long time engrained habits they or their team had, that they realized, didn't work. That might sound easy, but change is not, and you have to be willing to go through it, to benefit from its fruits.
Haven' t watched the Exhibitor's Edge masterclass yet?
It covers how the M.A.G.I.C. Exhibiting™ Formula works, the mistakes most exhibitors make, and whether The Catalyst is the right next step for your company.