10 Key Points for Preparing the K2016

Its almost the end of May and we are less than 150 days away from the K2016, the worlds No. 1 trade fair for plastics and rubber.

By now you will have set your event strategy and probably are busy with your media & communications strategy, all while your stand builder is building your booth or repurposing existing elements of your booth kit. You might plan running a prospect campaign before the summer holidays and then a second after the summer holidays.

Do you still have Plenty of Time Left?

Typical event budgets range from 100k-1m+€. How do you get a good ROI? How do you ensure productiveness of your booth team during this 10-day-marathon trade fair?

Let's take a step back and see what my personal experience with the K-fair (and others fairs like the European Coatings Show) is. As far as I can remember, my first K-fair was in 2001 and it was unlike anything I had previously seen at that time (e.g. the Europlast in Paris). As a junior Area Sales Manager Austria & Switzerland (two small markets where you can test & try), I helped my colleague and executive assistant carry tons of brochures and customer gadgets to the stand. We had lots of customer contacts, but I remember the unproductive time between talks. And we had lots of enquiries from Asian distributors, students and other non-customers. After the fair, we still had many brochures left to schlep back to the office. Then, from year to year, I got more involved. And in 2007, when I already had moved into strategic marketing, I masterminded Huntsman Pigments' trade fair strategy for the K2007.

Ten Key Points for a Successful Trade Fair Strategy

My ten key points for a successful trade fair strategy have been:

	The trade fair presence has to progress the execution of existing marketing, branding and sales strategies.
	A quantitative objective can be for example the customer revenue one sales cycle after the event. Measuring the value of a trade fair presence is possible by logging all contacts and tagging business in the CRM either "initiated" or "progressed" on the relevant trade fair. Supporting KPIs like "qualified contacts per day per colleague" can help adjusting the strategy and coaching the team during the event, in particular on long trade fairs like the K2016.
	Defining your target contacts for the fair not only helps you with qualification/disqualification during the fair, but is also needed for engaging through your prospect campaigns before, during and after the event. Consider prospects and customers from other business sectors as well. There will be a lot of coatings and rubber professionals meeting their suppliers on the plastics fair K2016!
	Trade fair selling is very different to any other form of selling and requires a specific skill set. You want your team engaging actively with prospects instead of hanging around immersed in their smart phones or chatting with each other. I have successfully used DVDs and CDs from Barry Siskind Training, which I integrated into my training for booth staff.
	The concentration of time and prospects on a trade fair leads way to setting up an experimental environment for trying out different sales approaches with quick feed-back during the event. Some other disruptive possibilities are: Using a booth color-laserprinter for printing prospect specific info folders, instead of pre-printed literature. Offering free WIFI to visitors. Offering lounge chairs with NormaTec recovery sleeves for freshing-up tired trade fair visitor legs (this is what triathletes use for freshing up their legs).
	A trade fair is a fantastic environment for gathering competitive intelligence and customer feed-back. A quick market survey of 3 questions can easily be integrated into the standard contact report sheet.
	Journalists are always interested in news and can help you promote your company and offering. Get interviewed before, during or after the event! Good contacts are David Eldridge Editor at European Plastics News (Crain); Hamish Champ, Editor at Plastics & Rubber Weekly (PRW, Crain); Norbert Sparrow, Editor in Chief at PlasticsToday (UBM Canon); Günter Kögel, Editor in Chief at K-Zeitung (Giesel Verlag), Karlhorst Klotz, Editor In Chief at Kunststoffe (Carl Hanser Verlag) and Chris Smith, Editor in Chief at Compounding World magazine (AMI conferences & publishing).
	Some trade fairs like the TireTech combine a technical conference with an expo / trade fair. But you can also create your own mini-conference on the K2016 by renting a meeting room and offering compelling topics of interest to your prospects.
	LinkedIn is a great platform which can support your sales process with social selling in each and every step.  A good place to start is the K2016 Networking group, which currently has 4,312 members and where you can network with exhibitors and visitors as well as publish about your trade fair presence. Twitter is a good platform for the real-time, hourly reporting on what is happening at your booth.
	Your most important action after the show is turning trade show leads into buying customers. A good practice is agreeing with your prospects about the best kind of follow-up and then executing that plan in time. It helps when you can already put leads into your CRM during the trade fair. This is another reason for having WIFI on the booth. A well defined sales process supports you in managing the many leads you will collect during the fair!

Are You Ready for the K2016?

• What is your approach? Where are you with your preparations for the K2016?
• I can help you turning the K2016 into a money-maker! Let's talk!
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