Last month Comufy were in New York exhibiting at the Engage! Expo. The expo focuses on engaging youth online and is the largest expo of its kind, featuring speakers from the likes of Disney, BanDai and Habbo Hotel. The expo ran for four days, but the reality is that the expo was a culmination of a couple of months of work for the Comufy team. It was our first expo and as such the process was a definite learning curve!

As a small company the prospect of exhibiting abroad can be pretty daunting, both organisationally and financially. We’re currently financially bootstrapped, but we knew that the expo could be a great opportunity for us to network with potential clients and to give us great exposure. I am hoping this post will help those that want to exhibit abroad to save valuable time and money, whilst helping to maximise the efficacy of their efforts.

1 – International exhibitions are expensive!

First things first, exhibiting is an expensive task. In addition to upfront exhibition costs, you need to account for plane tickets, hotel rooms, living expenses, printing banners, cards and brochures, not to mention the man hours that are required to ensure a successful show. Then there are the extras that they sting you with when you turn up at the exhibition– internet access, equipment rental, storage fees, and so the list goes on.

Having a limited budget, we knew that the only way we could afford to exhibit would be with financial support. Thankfully for us, there is help available. We contacted the good folks at UKTI (the UK government department for trade and investment) to see if they could provide us with any support. Every year, the UKTI help companies of all sizes exhibit abroad. The help they offered us was fantastic. We received a Solo Tap support grant, worth £1,000 to put towards exhibiting costs. We also benefited from one free flight (business class ) via a UKTI – British Airways scheme. These helped to drastically offset our costs.

In addition, we used friends and family to wangle free / cheap accommodation. My cousin’s couch turned out to be very comfortable, and treating him and his housemates to lunch was far cheaper than staying in a hotel.

Don’t be afraid to negotiate on the cost of the exhibition. We put forth the case that our services would be of great interest to attendees but that the listed cost of the expo was too high. After some negotiation, we managed to get our booth for $2,000, down from the original price of $3,000. If you don’t ask, you don’t get, so it’s always worth asking!

Our overall expo costs (minus food and drink) came to approx. £2,000, as opposed to the £5,000 that it would have cost us had we not sought help. Thank you to everyone who helped us out!

2 – The Seven Ps: Prior planning and preparation prevents piss poor performance!

(Thanks to Phil Crosby from iExercise for the Seven Ps reference.)

When running a start-up, you soon realise that everything takes longer than you think. Planning for an expo is no different! Our tasks only came together a couple of days before we left for NY and for a while it was touch and go as to whether or not we would pull it off. We were reliant on four separate companies to print new business cards, t-shirts, our banner, and Comufy brochures. Whilst we could have finalised our designs and copy earlier, various delays and glitches by our suppliers meant that deliveries scheduled to arrive with a week to spare only came through the day before we left. This cost us financially too, as urgent printing and shipping is significantly more expensive. The worst potential outcome would have seen us turn up without key components of our stand, and this would have seriously weakened our appearance and our company pitch.

3 – Cultural differences

In addition to helping out financially, the UKTI also provided us with advice on how to exhibit in the US. Culturally, lots of people think that the UK and the US are very close, given that we have a common language. However, the cultural similarities are only superficial and when you start talking to prospects you soon realise this. The UKTI representatives in the UK and in NY gave us the following key points to bear in mind:

•    When talking with American companies, bear in mind that many of them are not as established as they say they are. Whilst this is also the case for many European companies, particularly young companies, American firms tend to be more aggressive and elaborate in their storytelling.
•    Many American firms will want you to have an office in America or an American partner, before they agree to deal with you.
•    All pricing is expected to be in $USD.
•    Make sure that you have an American telephone number on your literature or business card, as this will give the impression that you have an American presence. Once you have given this out, be prepared to answer calls from the West coast late into the evening.
•    Brits tend to be quite conservative in our marketing and promotional material. Make sure that you ‘Americanise’ your literature and your speech. Use an American rather than UK spellchecker. Make bold statements using strong words and superlatives.

Please note that this list leans towards the stereotypes and that not all American firms conform to the above, but do be prepared for cultural surprises. The lesson to take away here is that cultural differences and nuances are critical, so do your homework and speak with someone from that country before you go. For example, we made sure that our American friends proofread our brochures before we printed them.

The UKTI also offer paid services such as the Export Communications Review and the Export Marketing Research Scheme to help when trading abroad, but time constraints meant that we did not have the opportunity to use these services.

4 – When at your booth

Lots of companies rely heavily on props and gimmicks to attract the attention of passersby. Companies spend money on plasma televisions and Nintendo Wiis, whilst others give out free food, pens and gadgets. Being on a tight budget meant that we were unable to follow suit and we consequently found out that all of this is not necessary. In fact, it can be largely detrimental as your staff focus on these extras rather than your core offering, and many of the people who approach you have no genuine interest in your product.

We opted for a clear, simple and catchy slogan that would pique the interest of conference attendees. In fact, we spent days debating what slogan to use, and our choice of “Kids don’t use email, why do you?!” proved very successful. We had numerous people approach us who wanted to find out what kids do use, after spotting our banner from the other side of the room. Once they engaged us, we were then well placed to weave our pitch into the conversation.

When manning your booth, it is important that your body language, appearance and position attract people to come over.  We found that when we were sat down, less people came to talk to us as we appeared uninterested and unwelcoming. Furthermore, try not to stand next to your colleague as you will inevitably end up talking to each other, and this can prevent people from approaching you as the don’t want to interrupt. But DO NOT blurt out your pitch to every single individual who so much as glances at your stand. Many of the stalls would try and sell to you the instant you looked in their direction, and this has nothing but a detrimental impact. Firstly, you scare people off before they get the chance to process and decide whether or not your services are useful to them. Secondly, you waste your breath and energy on pitching to unqualified leads. Wait for them to look at your banner. Take a look at their badge to see if you can determine what sort of company they work for. If they approach let them pick up your literature and if they make eye contact then introduce yourself. Don’t jump in with a sales pitch! Instead, wait to see if they ask what you do. If they do, don’t jump in with a sales pitch! Sound them out first. Give them a high level overview of what you do. Do they seem interested? Do their eyes glaze over? Then try and find out what they do. This will help you place them and make a decision as to whether or not you can help them, or if they have a problem to which you can provide a solution. Listen to them! Let them do the talking before you give your response. If you just roll out a set reply, you will instantly come across as fake. Instead make your reply relevant to their situation.

Practise your pitch. As difficult as it is, try to get it down to 30 seconds. Have different versions of your pitch so that you are prepared to speak to different groups of people. Learn to differentiate between those who are genuinely interested and those who are not.

If they take literature, or seem interested ask for their card! Don’t assume they’ll call you just because they take your card. Nine times out of ten, if you ask someone for their card once they have picked up your literature, they will respond positively.

Make sure you annotate any business cards that you receive. Once they have left, write down who they are, what they said, and what they look like. When you collect a couple of hundred cards in the space of a few days, I can guarantee that you won’t remember who everyone is unless you make notes.

5 – Not everyone will come to you, so hunt people down.

Whilst many of our contacts came from people approaching our booth, we also made lots of contacts through being proactive. There were lots of seminars and panel discussions that took place at the expo. We made sure that prior to the expo we had researched every individual speaker and marked the ones that we wanted to target. We then approached each individual after their session. Generally speaking, there are numerous people waiting to talk to speakers and you only have a handful of seconds to achieve your goals. If you take too long, both the speaker and the waiting crowd will soon get frustrated. The goal is not to sell to them there and then, but to gauge their interest in your product and hopefully pique their interest enough for them to give you a card or arrange a follow up meeting. Again, ask questions, don’t just tell. See if they have a pain that you can solve and try to highlight this pain. For example, we would ask questions about their current communication strategy when it came to contacting kids and teenagers. Do they still use email? Are they getting good results with email? Are they interested in increasing their open and click through rates? You may have to guide them to the answer that you want, so carefully select your questions. Again, practice makes perfect. One of the best things about a large expo, is that you get plenty of opportunities to practice your pitch and the end result is significantly better than your initial pitch.

When approaching other exhibitors and attendees, find out who the key person is that you want to talk to. If you do this at the outset, you will save yourself plenty of time and effort. For example, we quickly learnt that if you want to speak to marketing, trying to pitch to a sales guy won’t help. Be direct and ask who is in charge of marketing and if they are there. If so, approach them directly. If they are not there, ask for the sales person’s card and write the marketing person’s name on it. Then follow up with sales guy to get the marketing person’s email address. This way you also have a name that you can refer to when you send your initial email, and this will increase the likelihood of the message being opened.

Ken Morse of the MIT Entrepreneurship centre explains this very well. He says that all decisions have a jury of people who are involved in making that decision. Your job is to identify who sits on this jury and to then get the key members to buy in to your idea. The most effective way to do this is to convince them that your product solves a problem that they have. If you can then get a member of the jury to sponsor your idea internally, you are much more likely to see results.

Many of the ideas in this post are not new and apply to more situations than just exhibiting. However, I hope that this article gives you some tips and pointers, refreshing your memory. Exhibiting at international trade shows is a great way to get your brand recognised and to find prospective leads, and thus the above skills will prove useful to most companies.