Competitive Edge: 
Your Source for Exhibiting Success

This training and consulting firm markets to companies that make extensive use of tradeshows as a sales channel. The objective of this brochure was to:

• Identify the signs that a company might need tradeshow staff training
• Point out the benefits of training
• Highlight the uniqueness and importance of tradeshows as a marketing medium
• Explain the training process
• Describe the training content
• Provide a no-risk guarantee
• Offer proof statements in the form of testimonials from customers.
• Generate a response

<cover>

Competitive Edge
Your Source for Exhibiting Success

If Any of These Terms Describe Your Booth Staff…

• Don’t ask booth visitors probing, diagnostic questions; talk too much; listen too little.
• Can’t communicate your key brand, product, or service messages in a convincing and interactive manner—in less than a minute.
• Don’t know how to gain a commitment from visitors to the next action step—or what the next step even is.
• Dislike working shows as a necessary evil or waste of time.
• Treat shows as a social event, not a sales medium.
• Don’t capture the information from booth visitors necessary to advance the sale.
• Stand (or, even worse, sit) around your booth talking to other staffers—not your prospects.
• Don’t proactively engage booth visitors; display a passive attitude.
• Breaks the most basic rules of exhibitorship.

Then You…

• Are missing valuable tradeshow sales opportunities.
• Are handing qualified leads right to your competitors.
• Are wasting a great deal of time and money.
• Have a significant opportunity to reap much greater results at your very next show.
• Should have your exhibit staff professionally trained by the best: Competitive Edge.

<inside page 1>

Since 1991, Competitive Edge has provided custom exhibit staff training workshops and consulting services to dozens of organizations that have maximized their tradeshow performance and results. Your organization, too, can experience:

• More sales leads
• Better-qualified sales leads
• Increased sales revenue
• Greater return on exhibiting investment
• Higher-quality staff interactions with booth visitors
• Accelerated movement of prospects through the sales process
• Enhanced brand positioning and company image
• Improved show staff attitude and morale

 “A Deloitte & Touch study found that companies that provide exhibit staff training before a tradeshow report a 68% increase in lead conversion.”

“We exceeded our goal of obtaining 800 quality sales leads by almost 50%. We captured 1,183 leads! I know this significant improvement was due to your staff training program and in-booth coaching.”
- Ben Schlinsog, Manager, Marketing Programs, McQuay International

Six Reasons Exhibit Staff Training Before Key Tradeshows is Critical:

1. Your success lies in the hands of your booth staff. You work hard to create and deliver a visually attractive and functional exhibit, but even the most stunning of displays is doomed to failure if your booth staff doesn’t work it properly.
2. Working a tradeshow is different than a sales call. Effectively communicating on a noisy, bustling, and distracting exhibit floor is no easy task. To be effective, your staff must understand how shows are different ,and know how to adapt their behaviors and communication skills to exploit the differences.
3. Your company and brand position are on the line. A customer’s overall impression of your company and your brand positioning is heavily influenced by the appearance and behavior of the people staffing your booth.
4. Effective exhibiting is a skill that must be developed. Most booth staffers have never received professional training on how to work in the physically demanding and mentally challenging show environment. This makes booth staffers uncomfortable and hurts their confidence level, causing them to make basic exhibiting mistakes that cost your company business.
5. Intense competition. Customers weigh every word and action against your competition. Your staunchest competitors are right down the aisle ready to take advantage of every mistake your booth staff makes. Trained staff capitalize on this close competition. Untrained staff fall victim to it.
6. Protect your investment. The bottom line is that your company has too much invested and too much at stake to let untrained people interact on the front line with your tradeshow prospects and customers. A small investment in exhibit staff training is like buying an insurance policy on your exhibiting investment. Except that, unlike insurance, Competitive Edge guarantees your satisfaction and results.

“A University of Wisconsin study found that 56% of a visitor’s impression of a company is formed by the behaviors of its booth staff.”

<inside page 2>

Providing Custom Exhibit Staff Training with Competitive Edge is as Easy as 1–2–3!

Step 1: Select an important upcoming show and identify a training location. Staff training workshops can be held right at the show site or in advance at your headquarters or sales meeting.
Step 2: Complete a confidential questionnaire. We review your questionnaire to develop a training agenda customized to your specific needs. Once you approve the agenda, we develop your custom training materials.
Step 3: Listen, Participate, and Learn.We deliver your high-impact “hands-on, minds-on” training workshop. Our training utilizes the latest principles of adult learning to ensure maximum impact, retention, and skill utilization.

Your staff will learn and practice a proven, step-by-step tradeshow interaction process guaranteed to improve its performance and gain maximum results from every interaction.  Some of the concepts, skills, and behaviors that will become part of your staff’s standard operating procedure include:

• How to effectively engage show attendees
• How to disengage from unqualified visitors
• Strategic questioning skills that elicit more sales-advancing information
• How to write a “60-second message” for your brand, i.e., your product or service
• How to identify, document, and communicate your company’s best practices for tradeshows
• How to manage your state of mind and energy
• Concise, persuasive, and interactive presentation techniques
• How to secure a visitor’s commitment to the next action step
• Advanced techniques for building quick rapport
• Strategies for dealing with multiple visitors
• Setting interaction goals for booth staffers
• How to capture better leads
• Team exhibiting strategies
• And more!

To enhance and reinforce your staff training, we also offer in-booth coaching services, evaluation programs, and CD-ROM and multimedia training products.

Guaranteed Results for All Types of Exhibitors from Competitive Edge Custom Training

Whether you are a manufacturer or service provider, a large, established company, or small start-up, and regardless of what industry you are in, we GUARANTEE your custom exhibit staff training program from Competitive Edge will make a profound difference.*

 “Before the training, our staff thought it would be a waste of their time. But, once you started, you had a captive audience. On the show floor, everyone was enthusiastic and reminding each other what they learned. This was the best training session I’ve ever seen.”
- Luz Berg, Marcom Specialist, Spectra-Physics Lasers

“WOW! What a show! We captured 275 leads. 68 were “A” leads with an immediate need. It is extraordinary to see the results we’ve gotten by working with you over the last three shows and working our staff smarter.”
- Amy Ficon, Marketing Specialist, BOC Gases

“Thanks for the excellent job—especially with such short notice. Everyone involved, including our President and Vice Presidents, was extremely impressed with your program and the results we achieved!”
- Joanne Felci, Marcom Specialist, Reynolds & Reynolds Healthcare Systems

<back panel>

Other clients include…
1st Data Corporation
MetLife Resources
Body Masters Sports Industries
Cerum Dental Supplies, Ltd.
SCP Global Technologies
Dentsply/New Image
SKW Biosystems
Domino’s Pizza
Scholle Corporation
Fisher-Rosemount
US Filter
HBE Corporation
US Robotics
Innisbrook Wraps
United Van Lines
Lawson Software
And many more!

With over 15 years of tradeshow and sales experience, Jefferson Davis has been described as “a burst of positive and focused, can-do energy.” Mr. Davis combines his personal exhibiting experience in over 200 shows with advanced communication and consultative-selling skills and a high-energy training style to deliver what training participants have called “the best tradeshow training I’ve ever seen.” He has trained over 50,000 tradeshow staff, is the author of the self-study program, Results-Focused Exhibiting, and writes articles on effective exhibiting skills.

Don’t Let One More Tradeshow Opportunity Pass You By!
Discover how a custom exhibit staff training workshop from Competitive Edge will help you get more and better leads, more sales, and improved ROI from your next tradeshow.

Your Investment
Competitive Edge customizes each training program to our client’s specific needs. Training can be as short as an hour or two workshop and can include optional in-booth coaching, evaluation, and follow-up that spans multiple days. Therefore, each training package is individually quoted and submitted as a proposal that is linked to your organization’s specific needs. We guarantee that your investment will be easily and promptly offset by the strides you’ll be able to take in improving your tradeshow marketing efforts.

Contact: Jefferson Davis, Competitive Edge.
By phone: 800-700-6174.
E-mail: jdavis@compedgetraining.com
Fax: 704-814-7366

Competitive Edge—Your Source for Exhibiting Success
2101 Sardis Road North, Suite 113
Charlotte, NC 28227

* If you are not satisfied with either the training you receive from Competitive Edge or your show results from it, we will revise and redo the training at no charge or refund the cost of the training (travel and materials not included).