1 / Of the utility of the living rooms
Professional Exhibitions are a place of exchange, contacts, most of time in a festive air. For most visitors this is THE exhibition of the year.
For Marketing Department it means an expiring date when everything will be ready. This is the opportunity for revising all marketing support, put the heat on all press contacts. Forwarding the logistical organization it is compulsory to organize human resources participating at the exhibition.
For a great return on investment, the good expenditures ratio is 50% expenses for the stand itself and 50% on promotion in order to attract people visiting your stand : press relation, advertising, promotions, mailing, gifts, sales people sensibilization...After the exhibition Press, Partners, Sales force and your Boss, have to be inform of the great returns of the exhibition .
Visitor's motivation to visit an exhibition are numerous. In a single place all the professionals of a given sector are concentrated.
It is the ideal place to get information about the last market innovations, in order to see the state of the art on the matter, a kind of mini market survey indeed.
Ideal when when you have an equipment project but also when you wish to monitor competitors. It is the dreamed opportunity for all Competitive Intelligence operators to make their own survey. All demonstrations are available, for the customer... as for the competitor. Moreover many foreign companies are present which often bring another glance.
Exhibition is the ideal place in order to launch new products and services. Recently on INTEROP 97 Exhibition, the telecommunication operators who decided to invest on the market opened on French Telecom market on 1st January 1998 invested heavily. Indeed not less than 55 telecommunications operators were their ! All Europe of Télécoms, some American also, runs this new market . From DEUTSCHE TELEKOM , TELECOM ITALIA and CEGETEL (Générale des Eaux subsidiary) invested millions Francs through stands. CEGETEL in particular had a stand large as a supermarket parking, larger than that of France Telecom one. (In 1997 CEGETEL was the first advertising company in France).
Sales people takes advantage to receive those always unavailable prospects. It is possible to see dozens of customers in the same day. Impossible otherwise. The demos chains up, people who just join the company take advantage to train themselves. Most aggressive sales people goes frankly prospect on competitors stand's : " there is dreadfully better on stand L21...here is my business card ! "
Nightmare of the exhibitor it is the lack of visitor. (Oftently they have invested 100% of exhibition budget on the stand itself, nothing in promotion, P/R see above). Some of them came from the the other end of the world and do not see a prospect all along the week. Better, to foresee Prozac pills before...
Always concerning competitive intelligence, exhibition is the dedicated place in order to contact Partners. In the same idea trade unions, professional associations and Chamber of commerce, sources of huge amount of information are always represented .Professionals meet their former colleagues, exchanges their impressions, their ambitions and their fears. A great opportunity in order to take some contacts for job research. It is quiet common (in France Job market is quiet specific) that more than hundred people in a week, gave their resume during this exhibition.