[ How to make sure your convention exhibit staff is motivated and enthusiastic about your tradeshow. ]

Motivation ABC's: Tune Up Your Booth Staff, Part 4

Create a Team

For best results, everyone in the booth should be working together as a team. Having a group that helps each other wherever and whenever necessary doesn’t just happen. Great teams don’t serendipitously occur — they are made.

Designate your teams before the show. Pre-show time is needed to give team members time to get acquainted, develop trust, and learn each other’s strengths. If you’ve got a large staff, split them up, mixing technical and sales staff. That way, you’ll always have customer service and product knowledge skills on the sales floor. Have them establish plans of action for working the show, and promote a certain level of autonomy within the groups. This creates a sense of collective responsibility.

Be sure that the whole team is aware of and fully understands the company’s goal for the trade show. Additionally, teams should set goals for the show. These will dovetail nicely with the personal goals set by individual staff members. Offer incentives for those teams that meet – or surpass – those goals. When you have good team chemistry, you’ll find team members coaching each other and striving to keep the collective morale up.

Revisit your team roster throughout the show season. If a certain group doesn’t click, mix it up. Switching team members may enhance overall performance. If you have a staffer that doesn’t work with any team, perhaps utilizing them at the trade show is not the best use of their skills.

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