I walk around conferences and wonder at how many companies spend tons of money on crappy booths, not necessarily aesthetically since some of them are beautiful, but that don’t give me a compelling promise or reason to stop and care about what they are doing.

If I had a booth, it would be designed to do one thing–make a compelling promise to get my target prospect (not everyone, just my target prospect) to stop and look further.

Then very quickly I would give them a reason to “raise their hand” and give me permission to start a relationship with them. That is to say, my only goal would be to start that relationship and get their contact info so I can continue it.

I pass all kinds of booths that do nothing but throw their fat logo up which means nothing to me. Yeah, you have a pretty logo, but I don’t care. Why should I stop and talk to you? Why do you have something that these other people don’t? If that is not readily apparent, then yes, you are wasting your money on the booth.

If the only thing they can do to improve the situation is ambush a “captive” audience in a conference presentation, then they need to go back to Marketing 101.

–end rant–

In general, decision makers in an audience want to learn how to select a vendor and hear problem-solving stories — and demos don’t sell them at that early stage.

My approach when speaking has always been to teach the audience how to solve their problem. This helps them see just how challenging it is to do — and helps them see the value of my product or service.