Does Your Exhibit House Hold You Hostage?

So often during our years in this industry we find things that happen that make you really shake your head in wonder and often even disgust. If you have followed me at all, you know that we believe in partnerships, and relationships.

Every week while talking to new clients and/or prospects we are asked if we can produce graphics for their existing trade show exhibit. Within reason our answer is typically yes. We can reproduce graphics for almost any structure and system.  

But here is where it occasionally gets interesting.

There are a couple local companies, one that we come across more frequently, that refuse to give out graphic dimensions and specs for their products. Yes, you heard me right. Even if the customer owns and stores their own exhibits, this particular "competitor" will not release their graphic dimensions and specs without a purchase order.  In other words, you already purchased an exhibit and graphics from them, but if you want new graphics you have to go through them, and they won't provide the specs without you committing to a purchase. 

Now, this doesn't mean, we can't help you, it just makes it more difficult for us to do so. I am sure that is the intent of these exhibit houses.  What I will tell you, is that if we feel we cannot help you with your graphics, we will let you know. Honesty is always the best policy. 

So, my question is, if you are taking care of your client, why are you so afraid to share that information with them? If you are providing good product, at a fair price combined with great service, why would they look elsewhere? What are you afraid of? Someone doing it for a lower price?  Someone providing a better product? 

My suggestion to end users/exhibitors is to make sure you get any technical drawings, install/setup instructions and graphic dimensions when you purchase a new exhibit. Keep them in a place where you will remember them! If you make modifications to your structure, update your records. If you decide you need to look for a new exhibit partner, then you have all the information you need to help them help you.

We always tell people; we are a full disclosure company. We will always be honest with you. We will always tell you the good and the bad of any situation. We will share any hard truths that are required. We will do everything in our power to make things right for you and a pleasant experience.

When Your Prospect Says No

 Anyone that even remotely follows me knows that I am not a fan of the immediate pitch on LinkedIn.

Recently though, it has gotten worse. People that are requesting to connect with me are pitching me and then arguing with me.  I have had this happen more than once this week!

I know sometimes it is really frustrating to hear 'no' over and over again. Honestly, if you can't take 'no' gracefully, you may want to consider another career.

There are days when I am prospecting that I get the urge or sense that I want to be snippy with a prospect, it is time to move on to something different.  Do something, anything to distract and recenter your focus.  Clean up some data in CRM. Work on a new lead list. Do an expense report.  ANYTHING other than sending another email, message or making another phone call. Unless you want to write that prospect off forever.  Ok, there is a chance that they may not remember you being rude or short with them, but is it worth the risk?

Here was the conversation:

Monday, I received this.  I accepted her connection request.

Hi Lori! I see we share three mutual connections and wanted to reach out. Do you have 20-minutes to discuss how HR outsourcing can help your business? Our approach is different than most companies in this space. The renewal period is also near so wanted to share how we can offset cost long-term.

I have to give her credit; she actually did a little homework before sending me the connection request.  We were local to each other too. Tuesday, I replied.  As a salesperson, I appreciate when someone tells me that they are not a good prospect for me. I don't want to waste anyone's time.

We are a very small company and are all family.  We have no HR needs.

 She immediately responded:  

Lori, I appreciate your response. A lot of the small, family owned and operated businesses we work with find that our services actually give them the chance to enjoy family time outside of the work setting. Insperity may not be the best fit for everyone but, if you are looking to get back some time, I am happy to schedule a meeting to discuss with you how we are able to do this.

 I immediately responded.  Remember I already told her no. Here was my immediate response.

I appreciate your tenacity, but I can GUARANTEE we spend ZERO time on anything HR related.

You would think any normal human being would let it go, but no.

I'm glad I had the chance to connect with you today. If or when Total Displays decides to focus on exploring benefits and payroll, company compliance, and growth, I am more than happy to revisit this conversation with you. Enjoy your holiday weekend!

If that had been her first response, I would have said thank you and have a great day. Instead, I blocked her, and she lost any chance of ever earning my business.

I know I am demanding and expect too much of salespeople. But I am always learning from other's mistakes. I figure if it frustrates me, it may frustrate someone else too. 

If you make live phone calls, practice in the mirror. If you send messages have a polite response already typed up that you can copy and paste as a reply.

Try something along the lines of, "thank you for letting me know, if anything ever changes, please keep us in mind" or "Thank you so much for letting me know, I really appreciate your honesty, is it ok for me to send you my contact information so that you can keep it on file in case your situation changes?"

Both of these leave the door open. I have tricks and tips for how to stay in touch with them without frustrating them or losing them as a prospect all together.  Stay tuned for those at another time.

Why Trade Show Exhibit Companies LOVE the "Freeman's" Of Our Industry

If you get the opportunity to visit with us face to face sometime to talk trade shows, you may notice something if "Freeman" comes up in conversations. 

You may say things such as:

- We use Freeman labor to set up our exhibit

- Oh, we are just renting an exhibit from Freeman

- Oh, we are renting furniture from Freeman

We may visibly grimace. We may even gasp or groan.

Today I am going to share some stories that may make your eyes cross or your hair stand on end. If you are in the trade show exhibit producer industry you will understand 100% and I am sure have your own love stories.

This week, for us was just more than I could bear without saying something.

This is in random order.

1. Our freight carrier showed up in Orlando to pick up from 3 clients. Freeman would not release the freight to them because the material handling agreement had our old address on it. So, let's talk about this for a moment. Freeman will do WHATEVER they can to hijack freight that is already booked on another carrier. Why, you may ask? More $$$$$$.  

2. We spoke with a prospect that wanted to understand our installation & dismantle (I & D) services all over the country.  They hired Freeman to set up their exhibit. Freeman NEVER SHOWED UP. That left this exhibitor scrambling to get their staff to set up their island exhibit.

3. A 5 crate exhibit was coming back to us from Infocomm.  All of our crates are clearly marked DO NOT STACK. Not only did they stack crates? They ripped the hasps off a brand new crate and then...

Drum roll please....

They used the forks of the forklift to rip of the skids from the bottom of the crate so that they could stack the crates together. The top crate probably weighs 1000 pounds and now has no skids for a fork lift to pick it up and move it. It is on top of another crate. This was a BRAND NEW CRATE that they destroyed intentionally. Our driver saw them do it and then load both crates into the truck.

I love the photo of the crate stacked directly on top of the crate that clearly says:

DO NOT STACK

Broken hasps happen.  We get it.  But a brand new crate?

Here you can see where the skid used to be.  They ripped it right off.

So much room here to get forklift tines to lift that crate off the top of the second crate.  Sarcasm intended.

Here are two smaller crates they also chose to stack. At least they left the skids on this one so we can get it down.

So please forgive us for openly sharing our love of Freeman when you mention using them for anything except those things that are absolutely necessary. We love you and don't want you to be hurt.

What are your Freeman love stories?

CRM Current Reps vs. Former Reps

You may remember a blog post that I wrote about a former rep that used CRM data cleaning as an excuse for poor performance. You can read about that HERE.  Accurate data is important, especially making sure critical data is accurate and spelled correctly. But spending the time to remove 'www' in the website field (even though it worked just fine having it there) or adding a period behind every state abbreviation is beyond ridiculous. But I digress.

A good salesperson is often perceived as a "bit" arrogant. It is really easy when you are the brand-new shiny rep to think that you are blameless, perfect and that any previous reps were idiots and morons.  There is a fine line between confidence and arrogance. I'll hire confidence every day, but I will avoid arrogance like the plague.

We are moving to a new CRM system, and I have been reviewing old CRM data and importing it into our new CRM.  I came across this comment in our CRM today from our infamous data clean up rep.

"S/W Sheila. She does not remember talking to 'Sally Sales Rep'. No needs, but confirmed her email and I sent it. Sheila had mentioned that "it could of been someone else" 'Sally Sales Rep'. visited with. After uncovering her title, once again, ''Sally Sales Rep'. was talking to a Admin, not the DM. NEXT: Look-up a new Marketing contact and confirm DM's name. "

 I can't even begin to tell you how many of these types of comments I come across in our CRM. Our new rep decided he was better than our former rep (he also decided he was better than me, but that is a different story).

So here is my unsolicited advice and observation to both a new rep and their boss.

1. As a new sales rep, you do not always know the history of a rep. In this case? 'Sally Sales Rep' was a fabulous sales rep and I would have taken her back in a heartbeat. She had to leave our company to care for a family member.

2. Saying or making these comments? It makes you look small and petty to be trashing your predecessor via notes in CRM. Really. The best way to make a previous rep look bad? Outperform them. Period.

3. This type of passive aggressive and narcissistic behavior is a death knell for the future of this rep. Cut your losses and move on. This type of personality will blame everyone else (remember the CRM data cleaning?) for their shortcomings or mistakes.

4. Are you a CRM admin? Watch out for these kinds of notes in CRM, they are a great indicator of the personality traits of a rep. Culture and personality are incredibly important in a rep. If they don't represent your company well by being rude, snarky or arrogant, they can and will cost you money in more ways than one.

Stay tuned for more about confidence vs. arrogance. But I want to leave you with this.

A confident person brings people together and celebrates everyone's wins.  An arrogant person thinks they are better than everyone else, shouts their own accomplishments, belittles or demoralizes others.

Truly confident people do not need to compare themselves to others or put others down. Their actions and results will show through.  Arrogant people never take responsibility for their own shortcomings.

Be confident.

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Lori Hanken has been in sales and marketing for over 30 years. She is passionate about service and providing value to her vendors, prospects and clients. Lori is currently co-owner of Total Displays with her husband David. They help people look great at events, trade shows, in retail, museums and develop long partnerships with customers and suppliers. If you would like to learn more, email her at lori@totaldisplays.com. She is an open networker, connect with her on LinkedIn here.

Read other Total Displays Blog posts at http://totaldisplays.blogspot.com/

You can also check out our website at www.totaldisplays.com

Do You Wanna? - a Mini Rant

 Just a little mini rant. I know conversation and language has become much more casual than it used to be. I know I am old school. I just prefer to sound professional and intelligent. Once you have built rapport and a relationship you can become more casual in your conversations. But written word, messages, emails I still believe should be professional.

Just this week I have gotten 2 messages on LinkedIn asking me if I "wanna" connect or if I "wanna" use their services.

This was a message I received yesterday.

Total Displays not recommended?

wouldn't wanna connect and bait you Lori so I'll be upfront do your clients have enough online reviews? do they wanna get 10-15 positive reviews per month, handle negative reviews and boost their visibility online.  Do you wanna offer review management services to your clients like other tech-enabled agencies?

Seriously - what is up with this? And yes, I did. My reply was "I don't wanna".  Please be professional in your correspondence.

~End Rant

I can clean your CRM data - BUYER BEWARE

 I haven't written about the trials and tribulations of our CRM software for quite a while. For those of you that may not know, I was part owner of a software company that developed a nationally sold CRM package for a large software developer. I travelled the country training and teaching best practices of CRM.

Over the years we have had great salespeople and we have had people that should never talk to a living person.  Of course, we have had everything in between also.  Sales reps, calls & CRM are three passions of mine.  Each time we make a hire, we learn something new.  Some good things to look for and some bad things to look for as well   I do have to say, sometimes I am not very good at seeing and recognizing those little red flags. I have written about that before. 

Here are some little red flags that I suggest you keep your eye open for...

1. I make 75 calls a day.  Let's break that down a bit.  It sounds great on paper, but in reality, 75 dials does not mean 75 good quality phone calls. If you are doing your job well, you should spend at least 3-5 minutes per cold call and that is if you are a keyboard wizard. 
1. Look at the CRM call & email history (you don't want to sound stupid when talking to a prospect)
2. Check LinkedIn to see if the person still works there or has maybe changed jobs
3. If you even spend just 5 minutes per call?  That is a straight 6.25 hours of calling with NO breaks. 
2. Be aware of people that immediately want to "clean" your CRM data.
1. Make sure they live in that data and understand your process before any major changes.
2. Be sure they run any data structure changes by a CRM manager before just implementing

That being said, I am pretty passionate about making the effort to keep CRM data relevant and accurate. There is nothing worse, than picking up the phone to call someone and the information is not accurate or is missing data. Contact names, phone numbers, websites etc.

We hired a business development rep a while back that bragged on his ability to "clean CRM data". Please do yourself a favor and make sure you vet anyone very carefully that says that they can provide you with this service.

We are moving to a new CRM platform, and I didn't want to do a data conversion. I know there is so much junk/garbage in our database that I have been building new lists and managing that process myself. I know it is extra work, but at least then I know that the leads I am loading are legitimate and that they actually have need for our products/services.

For anyone that is a CRM database manager, you might be the only people that will truly feel my pain. 

Here are some of the things we discovered after he left our employ. We actually paid this man to do this!  Shame on us, right?

He went through EVERY record that was assigned to him and added a period behind the state abbreviation by hand! Yup, every single record. When I mentioned it to him, he said that it was required in order to do bulk mailings. 1. We don't do bulk mailings. 2. The USPS has not used periods after state initials since 1963.  Read more here (only if you are a CRM geek like me) State Abbreviations - Who we are - About.usps.com

Not only the state abbreviations, but he would change the world Lane to Ln.  or Road to Rd. Street to St. You get the idea. Imagine the amount of time it took to make all of those changes.

The website field in our CRM is a hyperlink. It is just habit for me to start an email address with www.  When we imported our data the first time, that is exactly how it set up the website format. It worked just fine as a hyperlink. He changed EVERY record removing the www. What an absolute waste of time and energy.

But that is not the worst of it. He consistently told me our CRM data was a mess and that he needed to spend a lot of time cleaning it up. Of course, that meant he had to spend his time doing that, not doing his job which was business development. Hindsight of course, was that it was likely a coverup for him not feeling comfortable doing his job. Oh, the irony. He complained constantly about the "mess of our data", but he is the one that messed it up!

The absolute worst was when he would completely change a prospect to a completely unrelated company and the original information about the prospect, we had been in communication with was just COMPLETELY GONE.  Most of those I just couldn't even figure out. It was such a puzzle we often gave up and just deleted the record.

So many times, I would find a mismatch between the contact's name, the company name and the website.  For example, contact name Sue worked for XYZ Company, the website was ABC company, and the company name was 123.  Sue never did work for ABC or 123 company. You may think I am exaggerating, but I absolutely am not. I spent so much time unravelling the mess of contact records you would not even believe it. We had an intern that helped unravel all of his accounts to get the data corrected. Luckily, most of my notes were complete enough that I could work my way backwards to figure out who I had been communicating with. But, seriously, WHAT A COMPLETE WASTE OF TIME.

Why am I sharing this now? As I am moving data over to the new CRM, I am still running across messed up data thanks to this rep.  We had documented procedures, I had field by field instructions about what should go where and how to best use our CRM.  He ignored it all. I guess he thought he knew better. The mismatched mess I ran into yesterday?  The person in the database never worked for the company/phone combo listed. The company/phone combo has never exhibited at trade shows and therefore were not even a prospect. I just deleted it all and started fresh with the prospect that I knew was an actual prospect. 

Be aware, of what is going on in your CRM database. It can be your best friend or your worst enemy. CRM is supposed to make your life easier.  My other advice is to not allow any "cleaning" of CRM data until they have used the software for at least 6+ months and have proven they can use it the way your procedures intend. 

Of course, a good rep may have fabulous suggestions on how to improve things. Just make sure they run them by someone that knows before implementing and wasting a lot of time and money.

Your Competitors Love You!

 I have been a bit silent here of late. It felt like what I had to say just didn't have value. There is such a mix of opinions about whether live events like trade shows are safe, have value or should even be a thing. The unfortunate reality is the topic can still be divisive for some and a bit depressing for us. So, I have kept quiet.

On the flip side of those feelings are facts. We are CRAZY busy. We are busier than we were pre-covid. We have taken on MANY new clients in the last 10 months and have built MANY new exhibits. I talk a lot about gratitude and after the previous 18 months we have so much respect and gratitude for the companies that are committing to getting back out there at trade shows and events.

Here is just a little advice.

I received an email from a prospect about a month ago. It was one of the most depressing emails that I have ever received. The gist was, he was going to the show, but he didn't want to, he really wanted his money back, wasn't taking any staff, wasn't taking their big booth and thought it was going to be a waste of time and money. That same week a customer backed out of a trade show they have done for many years.  The show went on, but they weren't going to go. It really discouraged me for a moment. 

Luckily the next conversations I had were the COMPLETE OPPOSITE. People have been having amazing results at trade shows. Attendance may be down slightly, but that gives exhibitors more time to spend with people. The quality of the attendee is up, and they are coming back from shows with more qualified leads than they had pre-pandemic.

 

So, you wonder why I say your competitors love you? If you don't show up at a trade show and your exhibit space is empty? Or, if you have been there for years and all of a sudden you aren't? Your grace period is over. People notice and your competitors are glad you aren't there, and they are happy to talk to your prospects and clients!

The comments our clients have gotten about empty exhibits at trade shows?  Oh, they must have gone out of business if they aren't here.  Or, I'm glad they aren't here, I got to talk to a number of their clients. 

It is ALL about attitude. If you go into a show believing it is going to be a waste of time and money?  Guess what, it is going to be a waste of time and money. If you go to the show excited to be back face to face with people? You will have a good show!

Read more about it here on Trade Show News Network - GREAT article.  https://www.tsnn.com/blog/unintended-consequences-empty-exhibitor-booth

It's time to get back to business.  It's time to show up again.

Make sure you show up in style.