My First Live Trade Show in Two Years - What It’s Like
Trades shows are slowly coming back on line. What can you expect? In this episode Pat Kothe describes his experience with making the decision to attend the largest trade show in his market segment, including decision criteria, costs, attendance of clinicians and exhibitors, COVID safety protocols, and attendee attitudes.
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Episode Transcript
This transcript was generated using an automated transcription service and is minimally edited. Please forgive the mistakes contained within it.
Patrick Kothe 00:31
Welcome. Last week, I attended my first trade show in almost two years. As some of you may know, my company has launched a product primarily into emergency rooms at this point. And the largest trade show for emergency room physicians is called ACEP, the American College of Emergency Physicians. And they hold an annual meeting, typically at the end of October. And so this is a trade show the end of October 2021. And it's the first time that they've gotten together in a couple of years due to the pandemic. So I wanted to kind of give you a little bit of understanding of what happened at the trade show and also kind of the decisions that I made as we're going into this trade show. So as I said, we've just launched our product and trade shows are one of the primary activities that you do when you're launching a product really an opportunity to get some focused activity around a lunch. So I had to make a make a decision about do we attend this trade show? And at what level? Are we a trade attending this trade show amidst this, this pandemic that we're living with? So I think a lot of us have have to make these decisions right now. So I wanted to give you my experience. So the decision, when you're doing this is you're gonna you have to look at trade shows in general and why companies attend trade shows to begin with. So when I think about it, I think about trade shows, depending on where you are as a company, you may have slightly different objectives. But when I think about the objectives I look at at Are you there primarily for sales, and getting new leads are you there primarily to fly the flag and it's more of a branding activity. And that kind of depends on where you are in product rollout. And how long you've been in the marketplace, in terms of what your market share is what type of products that you have. So when I think about all of the objectives are there a lot of different objectives that you've got with with attending a trade show, first of all, is, you know, if you're there for, for selling the product, you want to get good quality leads and qualify the leads that are coming in. So this is really a sales activity, and you're trying to capture people that are interested in your product. The other thing is reinforcing or building the brand image. And this is you already have customers, and you want to make sure that you're reinforcing the brand that you've got out there and letting them know that that you're there to support them. And that's kind of the third one is you're supporting the physicians, you're also supporting the society. So if you if you're a large company within a certain market segments, the societies always like to know that they're being supported by the larger companies as well. Because such societies are made up of clinicians and the members. So they're looking at who's supporting them. And the other thing is, you know what type of product you've got, if you've got a disposable product, you're going to be talking to people individually. But sometimes if you have a higher price product, a capital equipment type of product, trade shows are used to bring a lot of people together, where they can look at the most expensive equipment because this equipment doesn't travel well into facilities. So a lot of decisions on capital equipment are made at these trade shows, we're going to bring a lot of people together. And they can shop for this is expensive equipment, right on the trade show floor. So it kind of coordinates what that buying decision is, is going to be. So one of the other objectives is relationship building. So you already have customers, they're there and you want to further the relationship and not only the relationship with the sales rep and the clinician, but it could be the company relationship. So meeting with the r&d people meeting with key management people and extending that relationship beyond the sales rep into different critical people within the company, so that there's a better long term relationship that's that's built with with those with those key clinicians and One other thing that occurs at trade shows is you're able to assess the competition. So your competitors are going to be there, you're gonna be able to see how busy their booths are, you can see if they're launching a product, what kind of emphasis they've got, because your competitors may have may have several different products, and you're competing against them with one product. But you may see that they're emphasizing or launching a different product within a different market segment that you don't compete in. So now you know that this emphasis of their sales may be a little bit different, maybe an opportunity for you to do that. So really gives you an opportunity to to assess how active they are at the booth, and if they've got other new products that are coming in. And also kind of along that same lines, as you're able to do some market research at the trade shows, it's not only assessing the competition, but also any adjacent adjacent technologies that are coming out there really to be able to see what's what's coming. And you may do some primary market research where you're asking specific questions of clinicians, or you may just do a competitive sweep of different technologies that are out there, and how that may affect you in the future. And then kind of the last thing is, the trade shows are really a great, great time to introduce a new product, because it really gives you great focus into into that market. And it also allows you to have some excitement around around your product and build a real market launch strategy around a trade show. You can bring your sales reps in, you can do an educational program, so so so they're educated all at the same time. And then do the product launch and get some excitement from clinicians right there on on the show floor. So really, as you're going into this trade show, you have to understand what your objectives are. And I'll tell you, from my standpoint, this year, this trade show was a product launch. It wasn't, you know, product branding or anything. It's product launch and obtaining sales leads. So when I looked at it, I said yeah, yes, I would love to have this. If it's an active trade show. This would be the time for us to launch. And that's what we looked at prior to this whole COVID. Thing is ACEP was going to be our our launch show, as we looked, looked several years down the road and kind of looked at when that when that would occur. But the other thing is, I didn't know whether this tradeshow was going to occur or not. So I really had to I had to look at is this going to happen? And I started making phone calls to the organizers of ASAP, several months back and saying, you know, what is it on? Is it going to continue to be on what is the decision criteria that you're going to have. And the message that I kept getting back is we're planning to have the trade show, we're planning to have it live this year. However, if there are some decisions that are made either locally by the local state or city authorities or by CDC, they would they would feed that in and that would go into their decision whether they're going to have this have this live or not. Keep in mind that last year, it was a virtual, a virtual trade show a SEP was. And the experience that many people had, within our industry on virtual trade shows was the same thing that happened at ASAP, it just is not a good a good opportunity for companies to get their product in front virtual trade shows, although people had a lot of good thoughts about them when they first were, you know, starting out the experience that people had with virtual trade shows just was not very good, not not well attended. And it's kind of like getting somebody to sign up to get a commercial. People don't generally do that. Additionally, if you're a large company, you ended up at the top of a list of companies if you're a smaller company, they would never go down to Page Page five or six of the smaller company. So large companies got some activities, small companies got zip. So these virtual trade shows really didn't didn't pan out very well for for most people. So as we started to, you know, get this conversation going with the trade show people I was you know, the other question I was asking was, when's the last date that I can sign up? Because I didn't want to get out, you know, put money out there and then, you know, they pull the plug. So I actually made the decision to attend this trade show two weeks before the trade show started. Because at that point, it was still on, I felt that a Delta variant had come down a little bit in terms of the activity. So I felt that the the society had made the decision, it was going to be live, and I was going to take that take that plunge, to, to go in. So that's kind of, you know, some of the decisions that you make. The other thing that I was monitoring is I was monitoring attendance. And you're never going to know, you know, how attendance is going to turn out until you get there. However, I was asking the question continually through the, through the process. And a couple of months before the meeting occurred, they had said, Well, we anticipate it's going to be 50 to 60%, of normal attendance. And I'll say that ASAP is is generally around 10 to 12,000. Attendees. So look at you know, half of that, say okay, well, it's still a good opportunity to to launch a product, well as time went on the 50 to 60%, went down to, you know, 45, to 55%, to 40, to 50%, to where it ended up 35 to 40%. So, as I'm making this decision, you keep looking at this and saying, Okay, I'm going to put money into this, I'm going to make an investment. Is that investment really going to pan out? I decided that yes, it was, it was going to pan out for me, because this was a launch activity for us. And even though you didn't have 10,000 people, if you had 20 503,000 people, and it was the right 3000 People, and you're able to get the leads, that was worth it worth it for me. Now, I'll tell you, as we get into this, that wasn't a decision for several other companies. And we'll we'll talk about that in a couple minutes. But the other thing that you look at is, you know, what is the what are the expenses that you're looking at for a trade show, and some some of you may be aware of it and others of you may not have a clue what goes into the into the cost of a trade show. So I'm going to just kind of tick through a couple of these expenses, and give you an opportunity to understand a little bit more about tradeshow costs. First thing is the travel costs, you mean that's going to be kind of common. And one thing that I found to be pretty interesting is air airfare costs right now. So this particular meeting was in Boston, and Boston is typically a an expensive tradeshow city, but not as expensive as, as some of some of the cities, but airfare even with full flights. So the flights were full. I got airfare for 150 bucks, round trip from Austin to Boston. And I just find it interesting right now that competition is, is high. But air fares are still low, I don't quite understand what's going on there. The other thing when you're talking about travel is hotels, and on downtown Boston venue, historically, is a pretty high ticket. With this one, it was even higher than what I expected. So the the convention center, many of you have been to downtown Boston, there's a Western that's attached to it. The hotel rate at that Westin was $500 a night $500 A night for the Westin I found that to be quite high for that. And that's that's doesn't include the fees and the taxes associated with that. But those are those are kind of common things that you look at, okay, where you got travel you got you've got hotels, incidentally, I did not stay at at that hotel. But as you're getting into a decision like to just say, Okay, I'm not going to pay the 500 bucks, I'm going to stay you know, out aways from that, then you start thinking about COVID How am I going to get there? Is it gonna be an Uber or Lyft taxi rental car? Where am I gonna, you know, what's parking look like? So you got all these logistic things that are going Fortunately, one of my partners had a cousin that lived downtown and we bumped with them for for a few days turned out really well for us and had a chance to, to, you know, meet the meet some family too. So, as we look at a little bit further, and now we're going to get into the exhibit decision itself. So let's talk about exhibit space, because many people don't understand what goes into that decision. So exhibits typically are priced based on how many square feet that you have. And if you think about an exhibit floor, you you see the smaller booths. And those are in lines, and they're generally 10 foot wide by 10 foot deep. So it's a 10 by 10 in line. And there's a there's a rate for a standard, there's a rate for a corner, there's a rate for a premium location. And those at this particular show, ranged anywhere from 3000 to 3500. For those 10 by 10, booths. Now, if you go into an island and start getting into some larger booth sizes, a 20 by 20 is 13,020 by 30, was 19,020 by 40 was 25,030 by 50 Island is 50,000. That's just for the booth location itself for the three day trade show. And this one went from 930 in the morning till 330 in the afternoon. So large companies that have large tradeshow presence, just that rental is about 50 grand for that, that 30 by 50. And your own company, you may have larger size booths for different trade shows that you go to, that's Dental, just give you a little bit about what that what that is. Now one of the curious things about attending a trade show is you get to choose where you're going to have your booth, but you don't you know, you don't get first choice, that choice is dependent on a couple of things. And generally, societies will go on a point system. And that point system system will depend on how much space that you are renting, and how many years in a row, you've rented that type of space. So the longer you've committed to that society, and the the amount of money that you spent with that society will give you a higher spot in the line to choose where your tradeshow booth is going to be. So that's one of the curious things at at a trade show like this is it's not just how many years that you've attended, but it's how many consecutive years. So for example, if you've attended this trade show for 20 years in a row and decide, you know, COVID kind of hit us hit us pretty good, we're not going to go to this trade show this year, you lose all of those accumulated points that you had. So now when COVID comes out, now you don't have those points, you don't get that print that that prime spot at that trade show. So that's one of the decisions that that companies have have to make there. So now let's let's talk a little bit about filling up that booth. So with a with a 10 foot in line type of situation. Typically what companies are going to do is they're going to you know, buy a tradeshow booth and a lot of them are those accordion type of type of setups that have some printed graphics on a on a piece of fabric and that and that goes up and then you may have a table out in front of it. So what does that cost so we just did one this year 10 foot accordion, printed our own graphics. And it was it was around $1,000 to do that. And then you buy the carrying case and the carrying case is also can be converted into a table. A smaller table but it's a high table so great for trade shows. And that's about 250 bucks. So for about 13 $1,500 You can have graphics, you can have a tradeshow booth so you can have a table that you can use for these these 1010 10 foot in lines that weighs less than 50 pounds. So you and typically these come with with wheels on them. So you can check it as as luggage and you can wheel it into the the exhibit hall and you can set it up and typically, you know, setups on these things is going to be you know, 30 minutes or so to get them up and you're up and running. However, that's not for everyone. Venues also have things that you can rent. So when you get this trade show it's typically bare floor and it is no electricity and You get a little bit of draping along there, and you get a sign that has your name on it. So if you want to fill that booth out, it's going to cost you and you can bring all that stuff with you. And if you do, then you've got costs associated with, you know, shipping it in, and then the tradeshow venue is going to use it use a forklift to take things off at trucks and, you know, those, those rates are going to be charged for you as well to bring it in, store it and then move it to your to your location. So you've got some costs associated with there, if you want to have different things in your booth, they will rent those rent those to you as well. And typically, these are not inexpensive, when you start starting getting into that. So just give you a you know, a couple of things, if you're looking at your seating, if you want to have a chair a love seat or a sofa, that may cost you $300 to $1,000 or more to have that have have a chair, if you want to have an ottoman that Ottoman may cost you $200 If you want to have a table, a table may cost you a couple, couple $100. So each one of these things, if you think about, you know, adding that into your into your trade show expense starts to really, really add up, all of us have attended trade shows, and if you're standing there for a long period of time, you know, the value of carpeting and padded carpeting. But that's not cheap, either. If you look at just that little 10 by 10 area, and you want to have, you know, carpeting that carpeting at this particular show went anywhere from $360. To, you know, $1,000 for that, and that padding is is gonna be you know, single layer was $200 and double layer of, of this padding for $400. So you could just see how these, these expenses start start to, to add up, the other thing is just a little bit of, of electricity, you know, you think jeez electricity is, is going to be something that is that's included? Well, it isn't. Depending on what you're looking for, and how much electricity you need to need to get down there. It could be anywhere from $400 to you know, 1000 $3,000 to bring electricity and have have your booth outfitted. So those in lines, it's going to be a smaller expense. But if you get into some of these islands, and you've got a lot of needs for electricity, it may cost you several $1,000 Just for the electricity to to come in. So as I said, you know, these are all expenses that you're that you're going to occur. So when I look at a I'm gonna have you know, 35% of normal attendance, say Okay, so what is it going to cost me? And how much am I going to going to put into this for that attendance? And is it worth it? So yes, I decided yes, it was going to be going to be worth it for us to attend attendance trade show at this particular level. So other companies, I noticed, not only was attendance down for clinicians, but attendance was down for other companies as well. So some companies obviously had made the decision that they weren't going to be investing in this particular this particular show at this time. And as I said, you know, the the downside of that is, you know, you're not meeting with your customers, but they may not have, you know, their objectives may be slightly different. They may not care that that you know, their booth location for for future shows, is not going to be that great. They just made the decision for whatever reason that this wasn't going to be a trade show that they were going to attend at this time. So let's talk about the meeting in general. So I said that attendance of this was was down but the people that were there were very happy. It's almost like the that they had been let out of let out of captivity and really happy that they were able to to get together again. So that was a really positive for most people. They were happy. They were they were pleased that they were able to interact with with real life you Humans at this point. And I also say that this is an emergency medicine conference. And we all know that our emergency medicine physicians, and APS PDAs. And RNs have done a fantastic job during this pandemic, and have really been on the frontlines in dealing with this. So they're also very cognizant of safety. So we had safety measures in place for the meeting, everyone had to have proof of vaccination. And we use the clear app every day, to assure that, you know, people were not sick, that they were safe going in going into the venue. So every day you had to take a small survey, and have your clear app out. So that, that you're able to get into the meeting, everyone was masked, throughout throughout the meeting, as well. So it was very safety conscious meeting. But the attitude overall was was really great. And notice that, like most trade shows, some some people make it into the exhibit hall, some people don't, this was a typical trade show. And also, as typical, as is typical and trade shows the first day is really busy. The second day, is less so and the third day, especially the third afternoon, it's a ghost town. And same thing happened at at this trade show, we were able to, to gather quite a bit of interest and quite a bit of leads, we had several 100 leads coming out of this meeting, we talked with rally for 500 clinicians, and when you think about that four or 500, of the 3500 or so clinicians that were there, that was a pretty good hit ratio of people that made it in and that we were able able to talk to and we really came out of it with some some good quality, good quality leads through there. So overall, you know, we were we were pleased with the with the experience of the trade show. Now, as we also know, leads at a trade show are great, but it's kind of useless, unless you have a follow up system to be able to capitalize on those. And that's one of the key things and that we didn't talk about with some of the one of the costs for the trade show is your lead capture mechanism. So with trade shows, typically, there's a company that will be selling an electronic device, either a separate device, or you can use it with with your cell phone. And these will capture a QR code that's on the on the badge of the attendee. And that will have all of their information on it. That particular thing ranges from four to $500, depending on you know, when you buy it and what you're going to do with it. But if you've got a large group of people that are coming in, it could be $1,000, to outfit everybody with these with these devices. But they're very useful because with a simple click, you capture all the information, all the contact information, and you're not sitting there writing it down, it's like it like it was was in the old days. So you come come home. And you've got a database, an Excel spreadsheet that you could download that you can put into your CRM and do your follow ups with with the people that attended the show very quickly. So that's the activity that will help you to translate those leads into sales and give you the information that you can pass on to your salespeople of who attended and what they talked about and what interest level they showed at the show. So that is a little bit about what a trade show is like in October of 2021. As I said this was a good trade show for us. We got out of it what we thought that we were going to get out of it and that was great customer interactions and leads that we hope to turn into sales. It was great to be out there live again. The the trade show was very similar to other trade shows. The only thing that I brought home that I wasn't anticipated bringing home was a cold even though I'm vaccinated are wearing masks on the plane at the airport on the trade show floor. Sometimes these things just Get through I can tell you it's the first cold I've had in a couple of years, and wasn't anticipating that but hey, that's one of the one of the costs that we've got for traveling. But like I said, trade shows. Even though the activity level is down or the attendance was down, it it hit the objectives that we had for this trade show. And now we hope to turn that into sales and into continued excitement for our product launch. Thank you for listening. Make sure you get episodes downloaded your device automatically by liking or subscribing to the mastering medical device podcasts and Apple podcast, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Also, please spread the word and tell a friend or two to listen to the mastering medical device podcast, as interviews like today's can help you become a more effective medical device leader. Work hard. Be kind
