How to do it differently and develop a competitive mindset.
Attending trade shows and conferences can be good for your business health but they also have the potential to give you a rare look at your own business in a different light. To grow in an ever more crowded environment, you must look for opportunity in ways your competitors aren’t—trade shows are a great place to practice. If you adopt a simple but different mindset when you or your team venture away from the shop, the rewards can be priceless.
A conference is a huge investment but they get you (and hopefully other people in your company) out of the plant and onto new ground. The experience is inspiring for many. A new Tradeshow Week study reveals that industry shows are highly valued by their attendees. Trade conferences offer a getaway from the pressures and suffocation the workplace often represents. They enable a connection with community, access to education and training, and a front row seat to learn about new ideas, products and technologies—it’s almost worth the cost (I’m just kidding).
But there are some caveats as well. For example, this is what everyone else is doing so it is not an activity that will give you competitive advantage in an of itself—at least not without trying. In fact for some people the usual take-a-ways include a hangover, an odd corporate lagniappe and a bunch of literature they don’t understand.
Find the hidden value. Change your motive from mere information gathering to full engagement. We can now get 99 percent of the information we need via the internet. At a minimum, we can shop suppliers, compare product features and benefits, analyze ROI, participate in educational conferences and webcasts and make purchases. So why spend time doing homework at a trade show? Instead of grazing miles of aisles talking about what amounts to be mere table stakes we should place more of our focus on looking for trends to avoid and gaps to fill in the marketplace. Ways to innovate our products and services from others in our category.
Make it a game of connecting the dots.
“Electrocoat 2010—The Thoroughbred of Coatings” is, by most measures, a fairly typical trade show so it will be a good place to start and practice very soon. It will be held May 4-6, 2010, at the Louisville Marriott Downtown and the Kentucky Convention Center. It’s objective is to market the expansion of electro coat technology. According to its website the show is open to everyone in the business, from [entry-level and] new users to senior-level executives.
The Electrocoat 2010 opening keynote topic caught my attention: “Manufacturing After the Crisis.” A fairly heavyweight topic for such a narrowly focused show. I wasn’t surprised that I didn’t find any other topic or workshop that matched or supported the subject either. Nonetheless, Jeff Oravitz of MetoKote Corporation will deliver a message about how “little attention has been given to the challenges faced by [small] manufacturing companies as a result of the economic crisis.” And then, as an upshot, he will tell attendees how these companies “are repositioning themselves to succeed as the … economic picture continues to evolve.” If you haven’t put much stock in keynote addresses, change that habit. Use these prologues to frame up your approach to the event. There’s no magic suggested, it is merely a way to gain a mindset and get yourself totally engaged from the big picture vantage point. If the speaker happens to deliver a relevant discussion, like this one promises to be, it can be a huge boost to morale and make your experience that much richer. Otherwise, don’t be concerned if you aren’t able to connect the dots in just one show, insight can take time.
Here’s a couple of tips to make your next trip a mission:
Divide and conquer. If you go in force, delegate focus teams that look for opportunity around specific initiatives such as customer value, operations, supply chain, technology and process or brand.
- Regroup when you get back—several times if necessary. Discuss what you learned, share observations, encourage those who struggled and act quickly on an opportunity when you see it.
- Raise your expectations for trade shows. Look between the cracks for the hidden value.
Send me your comments. See you at the show.