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Tips on hiring trade show hostesses & exhibition staff

Event Protocol, exhibition staff, trade show hostessesIf your company is participating at exhibitions or trade shows, ensure you haven’t left hiring your exhibition staff to the 13th hour. We want you to get the most from your exhibition or tradeshow participation so we’ve put together a few tips on what to consider when hiring trade show hostesses / exhibition staff. After all, having invested time, money and effort in planning and promoting your exhibition stand, the last thing you need is for your stand staff to be being ill prepared.

Consider the tips below before committing to hiring exhibition staff:

  • You should identify how busy the stand will be to ascertain the right level of staffing. Identify in advance what roles will be required by the exhibition staff, in other words what function will your exhibition staff provide at the show?
  • Have you thought about distribution of company literature, freebie gifts or goodie bags. As these items are distributed think about how your exhibition staff can use that opportunity to start interaction with clients / guests.
  • Are you planning on collecting data from your guests? For example, will you encourage guests to give their business cards, will guests be required to leave their details on a postcard or a “lead” card, will you encourage subscriptions to company newsletters or magazines? Encourage your exhibition staff to capture as much information as possible.
  • Think about how you would like your exhibition staff to be dressed. We’ve found branded t-shirts to compliment your marketing campaign or stand design work well.
  • Have you prepared a briefing document in advance for your exhibition staff? The briefing document should explain why you are exhibiting, your exhibiting objectives, what you expect of them and how you expect them to do it and sending this to your event staffing agency in advance will give staff enough time to read through before the event.
  • When onsite, conducting a pre-show briefing with your exhibition staff will keep them well informed and it will remind them of their roles and responsibilities outlined in the briefing document.
  • Also take time to prepare a staff rota and have allocated times for breaks and lunches to avoid any confusion on site.
  • If your trade show or exhibition participation is on the large side and you have an extremely large booth have you ever thought of having a small stage whereby your exhibition staff can present a product or service from the stand. This will create theatre and increase your volume on a competitive exhibition floor. Having a live promotional presenter or demonstrator on a trade show floor is the smartest investment a company can make. This will deliver big crowds to your stand. We have exhibition staff who are experienced presenters and demonstrators, many of them are actors and actresses so they are not shy about presenting to mass audiences. Read our blog – hiring live presenters at exhibitions and trade shows.
  • If the attendance at an exhibition is largely foreign visitors you absolutely must hire bilingual staff. This can help cement a deal with an exhibition visitor whose first language is not English.
  • When selecting exhibition staff from event staffing agencies ensure they have a team located close to the exhibition venue to save you paying the agency travel costs for their staff. Event Protocol have local exhibition staff and trade show hostesses based around the major exhibition centres in the UK below, so we won’t charge the client expenses for our staff travelling to your show.

London: Earls Court, Olympia, Excel London, Business Design Centre
Midlands: NEC Birmingham, Telford International Centre, ICC Manchester: G-Mex

We hope the above tips help and when hiring any event staff, ask your event staffing agency for a portfolio of staff and their experience.

If you found this blog useful, you may want read the following:
Exhibition staff motivation!
Engage exhibition staff in lead generation

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This entry was posted on Monday, February 18th, 2013 at 1:36 pm and is filed under Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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