MotoskinGraphix

Over Thanksgiving weekend Kim and I did the Houston Autorama event. We had a 10x10 space which is half of what we are used to and need for display.

!. A 10x10 booth gives you only a brief window to consumers as they walk past. You have to have impact in your display to grab attention. We did it with lighting and our shirt set up. Would much rather have at least 20 feet of visual and thirty would be awesome because at an auto event there is much eye candy to draw attention.

2. Know the market period!!! If everyone is selling car related gear, have some car gear that is unusual but the majority should be unique and geared toward the demographic you sell. We were right on the money with custom vinyl and the stock transfers we do. Very many comments about you guys have all the really cool stuff...makes me smile when I hear those words...instant sell!!!!

3. Meet and greet everyone who shows the slightest interest no matter how busy you are. Can I help you is BS and should never be uttered from your mouth. Those words lead to I'm just looking...which for sure lead to What are you looking for which is a car dealership.

4. Produce shirts in front of folks...its a free show and people are fascinated by the steam, heat and results. People will gather like flys to honey when you are putting on a show.

5. Upsale...always upsale a name on the back, two sided shirt, a hoodie!!!

6. I have something special been saving for just the right customer!!! Works everytime if you have something special not on display and its premium dollars to get it. A super close for a hard customer.

7. Listen to your customers...

8. Listen to your sales speak and revise and conquer. Talk with your mate about what is happening with the booth sales. Never be afraid to ask for the sale...its number one!!!!!!!

9. Have fun...the customer wants that vibe if you are flowing like caramel...they are willing to pay for the vibe if you let them in on your secret!!!!

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David
www.motoskingraphix.com
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T-BOT

Quote: Originally Posted by MotoskinGraphix 4. Produce shirts in front of folks...its a free show and people are fascinated by the steam, heat and results. People will gather like flys to honey when you are putting on a show. !!!!

funny you said that.

i know a guy that peeps come from every where to have and watch him make t-shirts. Its like a real show. The cool part is that he is not acting the part. He has had a some what famous actor request if a movie is ever made about him that he (the actor) wants to play the lead part.

If you ever seen the SCTV Commedy show, where John Candy plays the part of a guy trying to sell the network boss the idea of a tv show about a t-shirt making guy, this is exactly like the guy I know. Serious.

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Jasonda

Excellent, excellent post David! Thanks for sharing.

Quote: Originally Posted by MotoskinGraphix 3. Meet and greet everyone who shows the slightest interest no matter how busy you are. Can I help you is BS and should never be uttered from your mouth. Those words lead to I'm just looking...which for sure lead to What are you looking for which is a car dealership.

I'm happy you wrote this. I think it's so important to be original with your greeting. People are always expecting "Can I help you" or "Hi, how are you", so they screen it out instantly. You might as well say "Go away without spending any money here" because that's what happens.

Some greetings that have worked for me are "Have you seen this before?" or "Do you have one of these" for an original/unusual product, or "Come try it out", "Come on over, I'll show you how it works", or "Have you been looking for one of these?". Of course some of these won't work for tees, but the reason these work in general is because they invite an action or a response that the person has to think about (as opposed to something they can say on autopilot, like "fine thanks").

 

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Rodney

Quote: 8. Listen to your sales speak and revise and conquer. Talk with your mate about what is happening with the booth sales. Never be afraid to ask for the sale...its number one!!!!!!!

Another strong point. Never be afraid to ask for the sale. That should be a mantra

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hammered

Yeah, working retail for the short time I did I found out one thing. Never open a potentional sale with a close ended question. Ive found, instead of using "Can I help you?" to "What can I show you today?" Or "What can I help you find today?" Things like these coupled with a friendily wisecrack can really make a buyer out of a browser. Also I found that most do NOT find it rude to ask for the sale if you do it right. My favorite way, depending on the customer is to say something a little off level like, "YA know the boss beats us with a big stick if we dont sale stuff? Youre not gonna let the boss beat me are you?" HomeDepot put me in a 2 week sales class for this kinda thing. And I thought Id never learn anything from those guys.

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gmille39

Quote: Originally Posted by MotoskinGraphix Over Thanksgiving weekend Kim and I did the Houston Autorama event. We had a 10x10 space which is half of what we are used to and need for display. !. A 10x10 booth gives you only a brief window to consumers as they walk past. You have to have impact in your display to grab attention. We did it with lighting and our shirt set up. Would much rather have at least 20 feet of visual and thirty would be awesome because at an auto event there is much eye candy to draw attention.

You didn't happen to take pics of your booth did you?

 

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gmille39

My wife and I went to Mexico and the one guy in the market we bought had this line. "Come here and let me sell you my junk" We cracked up and spent $50 on his "junk". Same blankets, maroca's, etc. everyone else had, but he had the line.
Anyway, may have relevance to this.

 

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Rodney

Quote: My wife and I went to Mexico and the one guy in the market we bought had this line. "Come here and let me sell you my junk"

Hehe, I must have seen the same guy years ago when my wife (then girlfriend) and I went to Mexico. I remember that phrase cracked me up.

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Twinge

We did an event Thanksgiving weekend as well, and tried to put some of Jasonda's ideas into play from her post about shows a while back. (I had been thinking about responding to that thread, but this one is recent and related so here we go.)

Sadly, they didn't seem to help much, hehe. We got decent traffic at this event (some in the past have had very few people coming through), but people weren't biting.

I don't think it really matters much if you're standing and ready to talk to the customer, judging from both the unimproved reactions when I was (or sitting on the stool we got) and by other vendors selling just fine sitting down. I do think the height equivilence is nice though -- that's why we're going to get a couple of tall director chairs, so we can be eye-to-eye but not break our backs. Being active and standing may matter more at trade shows as opposed to bazaars/events/fairs, I can't say there.

Of course, that's not to say you should look uninterested to the buyer either. I saw one vendor answer his cell while there was a vendor in his booth, and another was reading a paper while people were in his booth. Now that, THAT will probably lose you some sales, hehe.

Another comment I remember seeing in her list was that customers that touched the items were more likely to buy. This also didn't seem to apply (to this event anyway); people that sifted through the rack or the shirts in the tables did not seem any more likely to end up purchasing than those than just looked at the designs rather than touch them.

Quote: Originally Posted by MotoskinGraphix We had a 10x10 space which is half of what we are used to and need for display. 1. A 10x10 booth gives you only a brief window to consumers as they walk past. You have to have impact in your display to grab attention. We did it with lighting and our shirt set up. Would much rather have at least 20 feet of visual and thirty would be awesome because at an auto event there is much eye candy to draw attention.

10x10 is pretty standard from everywhere we've gone so far. You can sometimes buy 2 booths next to each other for an effective 20x10, though. One event we were given a corner which was nice, because then we could have everything right out front instead of making customers decide of they wanted to come "into" the booth to look.

Quote: Originally Posted by MotoskinGraphix Very many comments about you guys have all the really cool stuff...makes me smile when I hear those words...instant sell!!!!

Oi, How I wish that were true for us; we'd be a TON more successful of everyone who specifically said they really liked a shirt or laughed at one of them actually BOUGHT one. People seem to like the product, but they don't want to buy it for some reason - which is so hard to deduce sometimes

Quote: Originally Posted by MotoskinGraphix 4. Produce shirts in front of folks...its a free show and people are fascinated by the steam, heat and results. People will gather like flys to honey when you are putting on a show.

We were thinking about trying this out when we got our cutter and laptop. A lot of extra stuff to haul along and requires an event with electricity (usually have to pay more), but certainly could be a big attraction.

Quote: Originally Posted by Jasonda I'm happy you wrote this. I think it's so important to be original with your greeting. People are always expecting "Can I help you" or "Hi, how are you", so they screen it out instantly. You might as well say "Go away without spending any money here" because that's what happens. Some greetings that have worked for me are "Have you seen this before?" or "Do you have one of these" for an original/unusual product, or "Come try it out", "Come on over, I'll show you how it works", or "Have you been looking for one of these?". Of course some of these won't work for tees, but the reason these work in general is because they invite an action or a response that the person has to think about (as opposed to something they can say on autopilot, like "fine thanks").

Quote: Originally Posted by hammered Yeah, working retail for the short time I did I found out one thing. Never open a potentional sale with a close ended question. Ive found, instead of using "Can I help you?" to "What can I show you today?" Or "What can I help you find today?" Things like these coupled with a friendily wisecrack can really make a buyer out of a browser. Also I found that most do NOT find it rude to ask for the sale if you do it right. My favorite way, depending on the customer is to say something a little off level like, "YA know the boss beats us with a big stick if we dont sale stuff? Youre not gonna let the boss beat me are you?" HomeDepot put me in a 2 week sales class for this kinda thing. And I thought Id never learn anything from those guys.

Quote: Originally Posted by gmille39 My wife and I went to Mexico and the one guy in the market we bought had this line. "Come here and let me sell you my junk" We cracked up and spent $50 on his "junk". Same blankets, maroca's, etc. everyone else had, but he had the line.

We were having a very hard time trying to come up with a decent greeting that didn't just blatently sound like "BUY THIS! BUY IT NOW!" to the customer (besides the generic worthless junk). So we unfortunately ended up with a bit more simple "Hello"s than we'd of liked. We did try a few things, mostly saying how t-shirts make a nice and original gift idea, but people just weren't interested.

Some of the ideas listed here are pretty good though, we'll have to try out some of those concepts.


So far the only events we've done well at are big workshop deals with limited numbers of people over a few days. In other words, events were selling/buying stuff isn't the main focus of being there in the first place; various workshops or seminars throughout the event, etc. (One event my mom would have been going to anyway, but was lucky enough to get permission to make shirts that were specific to the event; that's how we started this whole business, in fact!)

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Jasonda

Quote: Originally Posted by Twinge We did an event Thanksgiving weekend as well, and tried to put some of Jasonda's ideas into play from her post about shows a while back. (I had been thinking about responding to that thread, but this one is recent and related so here we go.)

In case anyone is wondering, here's the link to that thread:

Tips for Trade Shows

Quote: Originally Posted by Twinge Sadly, they didn't seem to help much, hehe. We got decent traffic at this event (some in the past have had very few people coming through), but people weren't biting.

Sorry to hear that! Sometimes the problem can be the products being compatible with the type of show. Even if you are a really awesome salesman and you have a great product, if the product doesn't match the audience you won't have much luck.

Quote: Originally Posted by Twinge I do think the height equivilence is nice though -- that's why we're going to get a couple of tall director chairs, so we can be eye-to-eye but not break our backs. Being active and standing may matter more at trade shows as opposed to bazaars/events/fairs, I can't say there.

Those chairs are nice, we used them quite a bit. They are definitely a good option!

Quote: Originally Posted by Twinge Another comment I remember seeing in her list was that customers that touched the items were more likely to buy. This also didn't seem to apply (to this event anyway); people that sifted through the rack or the shirts in the tables did not seem any more likely to end up purchasing than those than just looked at the designs rather than touch them.

I wasn't selling t-shirts, so that might be why having your customers touch the shirts didn't make any difference. The product I was selling was something that really needed a hands-on demonstration.

I'm sorry to hear my tips didn't help much. I think a big part of being successful at these shows is experience. If you keep trying you are bound to be able to find a way of doing things that works for you. I hope you are more successful next time.