Why Tradeshow Training & Education?

It happens all the time. A company works hard to put together an attractive, enticing exhibit for a tradeshow, but when it’s all over, the results, in terms of quality booth traffic, qualified leads and at and/or post-show sales are nowhere near what they expected.

The problem usually lies, not with the exhibit or the show, but with seven exhibition industry facts:

• The average company allocates 31.6% of their total marketing budget to tradeshows.
• Only 24% of exhibitors set specific objectives for tradeshows.
• 82% of exhibitors do no little or targeted pre-show marketing.
• 49% of booth visitors are dissatisfied with how exhibitors met their
  information needs.
• 76% of salespeople view tradeshow leads as “cold calls”.
• 87% of tradeshow leads captured are never effectively followed up.
• Only 14% of exhibitors have any organized form of post-show follow-up.

These eye-opening facts tell us that:

• Companies spend a fortune on tradeshows.
• The majority of companies are making critical exhibiting errors and oversights causing their tradeshow investment to end up as “expensive appearances.”

So what is driving these facts? Two more industry statistics complete the story:

• 98% of college degreed marketing professionals did not receive one single hour of exhibit marketing education as part of their curriculum.
• 86% of booth staffers have never received one single hour of professional skills training on how to manage visitor interactions on the challenging tradeshow floor.