Trade Show Booth Training

The above video is an example of booth training that I provide for clients. This training was fifteen minutes the night before a three day convention. It was mainly a refresher course since I had worked with most of the staff previously. You can see from the video that the training was actually fun! The goal was to meet the staff and explain how we can work together. Since I’m a trade show magician, I also gave them an example of the magic that we will share with attendees.

This type of training is important to help your staff understand how to maximize the effectiveness of my presentations and increase your ROI. In the training, I explain how I build a crowd, the types of routines I perform, how we capture leads, and how I get people into the booth. I also explain how the booth staff can make attendees feel welcome and start a conversation as they are invited into the booth.

Here is the full transcript of the video. I’ll be sharing an outline of my full training program in a future blog post.

John:

Just by a show of hands, how many people know William? Okay, that’s cool. So, this might even be shorter than 15 minutes. But, William is going to talk about what he is going to be doing, how he is going to be gathering crowds, and then what your responsibility is as booth staff. So, if you’re not booth staff you can just listen and be amused. You’re even going to show them a trick, right? And then we’re going to give you a trick to learn and practice. You must know this trick by Monday morning. So, by tomorrow morning. So, I’ll hand it over to William.

William:

And it’s easy, so don’t worry. So, my name is William and I am going to be doing magic presentations in the booth and my main goal with this is to really gather a crowd around the booth and then invite those people inside so that they can talk to you.

So, the magic is fun and everything, but that’s really secondary to getting them in the booth and starting up conversations. So, we’re going to do this several ways. First of all, let me talk about the show aspect. It’s going to run anywhere from a 5 minute show, maybe a 20 minute show if we’re really trying to build a larger crowd. And I’m going to run these shows anywhere from every 30 minutes to 45 minutes depending on the amount of people that are in the booth. If the booth is full and you are having fun talking then I won’t start a show. If the booth is empty, but there are people in the alleyways, I will start the show and start building that momentum.

An it would be really great if you can help me do that. So, the show is really broken down into 3 stages. The first stage is when I’m trying to get the crowd. I’m going to be in front of a podium similar to this one and I’m going to be talking as people are walking by trying to grab their attention, trying to get them in, but I can’t see behind me or really to the sides of me.

So, if you’re standing next to one of the pieces of equipment and you see some people walking by like this, just say, “Hey, we are about to start a magic show. It will be fun.” And they will say, Oh, where’s that?” “Oh, it’s the guy that’s loud on the mic. Go see him.” And this will just help me catch those people that I can’t catch. So, that will be very helpful.

So, I’m going to start the show with a couple of people at once and then we will build it, 2, 3, 4, until we can get to 10, 15, 20 people. Just kind of depending on how many people are at the booth at the given time.

Once the show is going, you are my backdrop. So, normally I have a beautiful theater curtain in the back of me, but you are that. So, what that means is please don’t be on your phones when I’m performing because I’m here performing for everyone and if somebody’s right here doing this on the phone, it just doesn’t look good.

The other thing is, if I say for example, “We’ve got the workshops coming up every day at 12:25. We’re giving you free lunch. Come on in, grab a postcard.” If somebody is by a postcard and you hear me say that, just raise the postcard up, that way they know, “Oh, I can come in the booth and I can learn about these workshops that they’re holding.

So, once that crowd is building just be attentive. And you’ll know when I start because the mic will go on. And then towards the end of my routine. Once I feel like we are at capacity. I’m going to perform a trick that everybody can learn. And I guess that’s another piece of bait so people will come in. So, we will show you this trick in a moment. It’s called three card monte. I’m going to do the trick and say, “If you want to learn how this is done come on in and talk to our team members. They will be happy to show you.”

And then it’s like, “oh yeah, we’re scientists, we want to know how that works.” And so they’re going to come in and go, “oh yea, how does that work?” And if you want to show it to them you can. If you just want to give them the cards, they actually come in these packages and they have instructions right here. So, if they go, “yeah, I’ll take the instruction book, but what I really want to know is about that LC Triple Quad, tell me about that. Right? Then you can just say, “Here you go, let’s talk about our equipment.” Because that’s really what they’re here for.

Now, when I’ve got that crowd going on. John, correct me if I’m wrong. But a few of you are going to have scanners that you’re actually going to be taking pictures of the names. So, I’ve got the crowd there in front of me, we’re building it. Whoever is in charge of that, you’re going to go around and just take pictures.

Now, you’re not going to hurt my feelings at all. Like, “Oh, I don’t want to interrupt his show.” No, it’s perfectly fine. Go talk to the people. “Hey, do you mind if I get your badge.” And just go around and do that. Because that’s what we’re here for is to capture those leads. And then we are going to put them into our CRM so we can follow up with them via email. So, that we know how many people stopped by the booth.

Now, once they get one of these, or they want one of these, or they want to check out the equipment. They’re going to come in and then you can scan them again and then follow up with them at that time.

So very quickly, I’m going to show you how this trick works. That way you kind of know what to expect. Since you’re close right here, do you mind helping me out? We’ll just use this table right here. Your name Sir?

“Eric.”

We have 3 cards here. I’m going to show you each one and what they are. A 5, a 9, and a 4. So, this is a game of 3 card monte. You might have seen them play this. All you do is find the red 9 and you win John’s money. That’s all you have to do. And it’s very simple. I’m going to do this. Very slowly, you’re going to slide it out and just hold it just like this so we can place our bets. Alright Eric? Just like this. Slide out the red 9. Don’t look at it because this is where we bet John’s money.

William: “How much of John’s money do you want to bet that you’ve got the red 9?

Eric: “How much money?”

William: “Yes.”

Eric: “A thousand dollars.”

William:

I’ll even show you, I’ve got the 4 and the 5. Turn it over and show everybody. You got the 9. Ah, you didn’t win John’s money but your a winner when you work with Agilent. So, congratulations sir.

And at this moment is when I can start talking about Agilent and I’ll be talking about the Prime LC, the Ultivo, as well. These are going to be the talking points. So, I’m going to point them out. So, if you see me, you can just wave so that everybody goes, “Oh, they’re over there.” And then I’ll say, “If you want to learn how this works, please come into the booth and we’ll be happy to show you how it works.”

So, John’s passing these out right now. As you get those you can open them up. You can discard the instructions or pocket them just in case my instructions aren’t clear enough. But it’s very simple and very simple to do.

It uses 3 cards and what we call a gimmick in magic. So, as you open these you are going to notice that one of the cards is really two cards. Well, I guess 1.5 cards, right? So, on this side there’s a little flap right here. And then you’re gonna take the Agilent card. And the Agilent card is going to go underneath the flap like this. And you just want to try to line up the edges here. And then the final card is going to go on top of my red 9. I’m not sure what you have. So, it goes the card, Agilent card under the little flap, and then this card covers. So, what you’re left with is this.

So, it looks like there’s only 3 cards there and I can move these pretty loosely like this and I just stick it under the flap and put it on top. You’ve got it. So, now what’s happening is when they’re pulling this card out, they’re really pulling out the Agilent card. And then I just do this and it hides that other card. It is a scam, yes. That’s how we work we, we magicians. If you didn’t know.

Yeah, so it’s very easy. This is something you can show. “Oh, yeah there’s a flap on it now let’s talk about our HPLCs. Right? So, this is really the goal of this is that this is fun, to get them in, to get them talking and that’s really it.

So, my question for you guys is do you have any questions about how I work or how the days are going to progress over the next 3 days? I know that I’ve worked with a lot of you before.

John do you have any questions?

Staff: “Someone has the ipads and we are going to take photos?”

John:

Pretty much everyone in front. We don’t go in and knock people over and body check them and take a picture. Usually, there’s like a semi circle around and it’s like, “Excuse me. Would you mind if we just grab your badge?” Because there is no bar code as I’ve said before on these badges, so we have to take a physical picture on our ipad. We’ve got two ipads for that and then the rest of the ipads are for you.

William:

And it flows pretty well once that starts growing. And I might for example stop two people and I might do a trick and when I’m finished with that trick, you might want to come up and say, Hey do you mind if I get your name badges?” And then you scan them and then I continue.

And then we might get 4 or 5 people and then 6 people and they’re just going to go around saying, “Hey, do you mind if I scan, scan scan.” And this will continue, continue, continue. You’ll see because I’m going to be doing pretty much the same routine over and over. You’ll probably know my whole show by the third day. But that’s good because you’ll know where the ups are where the downs are. So, if I’m about to reveal something big, maybe don’t scan a badge at that time. But at any other time, “Yeah, he’s just talking a lot, I can just go around and scan.”

John:

And he does talk a lot. Sometimes he’ll engage people. So, what will happen is that there will be like two people standing there and it’s like, “Hey, do you want to see some magic?” Once you get two people there, that leads to four people, that leads to six people, that leads to ten people. So, the crowd builds and we’ve had 30 people at some and that’s been big crowds.

William:

Yea, it really depends. Sometimes, I’ll have 15 people and I can tell there’s nobody else on the floor. This is going to be it. At that time, I end the show. Sometimes I’m going and just there’s more, more, more, and all of a sudden you’ve got a lot of people. It just kind of depends. Sometimes, I only have two people and that’s it for the entire show. And so that show I might make it five minutes or eight minutes just so that we can quit and then get them into the booth.

John:

And so we are on an isle. We are like on an island. And there’s this big fat isle next to us right where he is because nobody is there. There’s no booth there. So, that’s imminent domain in my book. We get to take that over so we will build a crowd in that corner and then call them all into the booth.

The booth as I mentioned before to you is a little tight. It’s only a 20×16, so you know if you’re not in there doing staffing the booth to stay on the perimeter so that people, if they see a bunch of Agilent shirts they may not come in. If they see like 20 Agilent shirts in there.

So, if we just have enough people at each of the stations then were good. William will work on building that crowd then it’s up to you guys to be proactive when he finishes up. And as the day goes by you’ll see the trick that he finishes up with. It’s usually going to be this monte. So, that’s even easier

William:

And that actually does bring me to a good point. I say, “Hey, guys come on into the booth.” And if you’re just talking to one another and I say, “Come on into the booth.” Or if you’re not paying attention, then they come and there’s nobody there. So, if I say, “Come on into the booth.” If you can just go up to them and say, How do you like the show? Is there something you’d like to see?” And then I can help. Once they get into the booth, I know where everything is. So, if somebody says, “I want to see the Prime LC.” “Oh, yea, that’s here. You can talk to Beth.

John:

So, he knows enough about the equipment. He used to think they were daiquiri makers, you know to make daiquiris. But, now he knows enough about the equipment…. No, you still need to be there. He knows what an Ultivo looks like, he knows what prep is. No, he won’t be in a grey shirt.

William:

I’ll be in a suit so I stand out a bit differently and I need my pockets. So, please be as welcoming as you can when they come into the booth so we can start those conversations. I think that’s it John.

John:

Okay, so now you can magically make them disappear by saying the the word Dinner.

William:

Dinner!

That’s a wrap! If you’re interested in trade show magic, training, and gathering crowds at your booth, click here to get in touch. We can set up a free consultation where we can discuss what goes into making your next show a huge success.