Sales opportunities of consumer exhibitions

Kullmann believes that return on investment is seldom measured by companies exhibiting at trade fairs and shows, which means that they cannot gauge how effective their spend has been - or they don't care about ROI and regard the exercise as simple 'flag waving'.

Captive audience

In addition, it means that they ignore the opportunity to conduct significant business with a captive audience that has - by virtual of electing to come to the show - demonstrated an empathy with the product or service and a desire to learn more about it.

To illustrate his point, Kullmann referrs to a quote he recently prepared for a prospective client. Assuming this client made a very modest sale of R25.00 to five out of 100 visitors to the shows it participated in, it stood to make a return on investment of nearly 34%, calculated after meeting all the exhibition costs. However, if this client manned the stand with a tenacious sales person who sold to 8 of every 100 visitors, the return on investment leaps to 114%.

"Our prospective client had a low cost product which it has traditionally sold via retail outlets on the back of advertising and promotion," he explains. "The idea of exhibiting at consumer shows had occurred to them but they didn't know which shows to attend, how to design or structure their stand, nor what kind of returns they could expect.

ROI

"We suggested exhibiting at 19 different consumer-orientated shows around the country and prepared a proposal that clearly highlighted the cost of exhibiting and the return of this investment.

"These shows attract around 1.3 million visitors and the cost to exhibit plus design and build, set-up and breakdown the stand around R1.2 million. This meant that the 'cost to advertise' amounted to just over R1.00 a visitor.

"But, if the sales person on the stand were to actively sell to just five visitors out of 100 as opposed to just 'flag wave', he or she should be able to achieve a turnover of R 1 687 305 at R25 a sale and a profit of R 424 799 and a return on investment of 33.6%.

"Being a little more tenacious - and it should be quite easy, given these consumer shows are usually themed and therefore visitors are already predisposed to the product category - and selling to eight visitors for every 100 walking through the door, he would sell R 2 699 688 worth of product, realise a profit of R 1 437 182 and a return on investment of 113.8%.

Applies to B2B shows

"Given figures like these, I simply do not understand why companies to not make more and better use of exhibitions. And the argument applies to business-to-business shows as well," he says.

Kullmann does caution companies that do want to start exhibiting to work with reputable stand designers and builders. "To safeguard your return on investment, work with a company that knows the business, that can partner with you to ensure your goals and objectives are met," he concludes.