Posted by

Barry Siskind

Community Manager

In his book, Straight From The Gut, former CEO of GE, Jack Welsh wrote that each year he would fire the bottom ten percent of his managers. While this sounds brutal, during his tenure he moved GE from a billion dollar company to a multi billion dollar international powerhouse.

Here’s my thought. Successful exhibitors are the backbone of any trade fair and therefore create profit for the organizer. What is the cost to these same organizers of those exhibitors whose performance is lackluster at best? Are these under performing exhibitors having an affect on the outcome of the entire trade fair?  And if this premise is true then wouldn’t organizers be prudent to weed out the exhibitors who affect their fairs negatively and replace them with newer exhibitors who can add pizzazz to their overall exhibition?

While the premise makes sense, can we be brutally honest with these exhibitors and say, “This exhibition is not for you?” In essence fire them.

Consider the repercussions of such an action. Your exhibitors would add more to value to the exhibition, you would create an incentive for exhibitors to improve their participation, and you may even reduce your overall costs…the list goes on and on.

Can we fire the bottom ten percent of our exhibitors every year? The real question is why not?