Archive - Originally posted on "The Horse's Mouth" - 2007-07-30 00:49:55 - Graham Ellis
As you know, I attended the West Wilts show on behalf of Well House Consultants - very much with the view of getting us more out there and more known in the community - i.e. more of a marketing than a sales exercise. And as such, I intended to have a "train panel" or two there - so that I could pull in both booth-manning support, and general interest, to our display. An arrangement to the mutual benefit of all concerned ;-)
Very much a "low cost show" as far as we're concerned - we had (or should have had) a medium sized table on the Federation of Small Businesses stand, but it turned out that on the Thursday that the FSB booth was smaller than intended and our table was tiny. A little negotiation with the show organisers, and we moved across to a stand of our own for the Friday and Saturday.
How was the show?
For the hotel - the business to business relationships - the people walking up and down the aisles were not of the typical profile I would have chosen. Business people have businesses to attend to, and the demographics of the people passing by had a big bias to the retired and to the very young - the "Lifeline" people on the booth opposite us were doing a roaring trade in handing out leaflets to the potentially vulnerable, and the roof of the tent was filling up with balloons that had been accidentally released by kids collecting them from all the various stands.
And yet ... good contacts were made. I'm not shouting / listing them all here, but I know you'll see comment on the Horse's Mouth in the future concerning some of the seeds sown.
For the train - we had a good chin wag with a lot of people who remembered how the train used to be. And a good few who said they won't use it these days due to price / overcrowding / inappropriate services / filthy conditions. And we also spoke to a lot of discerning and thoughtful people - got the message out and asked them to pass the message on to the decision makers and major influencers. Talking of whom ... we also got two of those major influencers on the stand.
Graham in discussion with Andrew Murrison, MP for Westbury and Shadow Defence Secretary.
For the hotel - the business to business relationships - the people walking up and down the aisles were not of the typical profile I would have chosen. Business people have businesses to attend to, and the demographics of the people passing by had a big bias to the retired and to the very young - the "Lifeline" people on the booth opposite us were doing a roaring trade in handing out leaflets to the potentially vulnerable, and the roof of the tent was filling up with balloons that had been accidentally released by kids collecting them from all the various stands.