We must treat our exhibitors better!

Blogger: Stephanie Selesnick, President of International Trade Information, Inc.

At last month’s European Conference (formerly the European Open Seminar) in Cologne, Germany, Mark Brewster, Founder and CEO of Explori, shared the results of a joint UFI-Explori study of European Net Promoter Scores (NPS) for venues, exhibitors and visitors.

One of the more interesting findings, besides the fact visitors rate toilets as the most favorable aspect in a venue – even above WiFi – were satisfaction scores when asked if they would recommend the exhibition to a colleague. We rated a +4 from visitors and a -17 from exhibitors.

That’s out of a possible score of +100 to -100. Fifty percent of shows have an exhibitor NPS of less than -17 and 25% percent have less than -37. Only 26% have scores above zero. This is not good news.

Some other study findings released at the UFI Global Congress last November in Shanghai show scores aren’t that much better in the US, and a bit worse in Asia. Unhappy, angry clients are bad, regardless of whatever your business may be.

What does that mean for the exhibition business? It means we have to begin rethinking the exhibitor experience, or our customers will find another way to market and sell products than our version of face-to-face.

Here are some questions all of us involved in the exhibitor journey should start asking – and quickly addressing:

What can we do to make the exhibitor journey easier and more successful, besides bring in quality buyers?

1. Do we need all of those pesky rules and regulations?
2. Are the ways we presently things more about making our jobs easier, rather than making the exhibiting experience better?
3. Is it about the bottom line versus serving an industry? Can it be both?
What can we do to save exhibitors money – or show them how to their investment in our exhibitions more wisely? We all know it is far less expensive to retain current exhibitors than to find and recruit new ones.

Query exhibitors about what they think. (Make sure you tell them the price of exhibit space is not negotiable!) Even if it something sounds minor or very picky, it’s enough that they remember it and shared it.

Lastly, remember how great it feels to be genuinely thanked for your business? It’s a good place to start.

About the Author: Stephanie Selesnick

Stephanie Selesnick, President of Las Vegas-based International Trade Information, Inc. works with exhibition organizers to internationalize their shows, one expo at a time. They recently introduced the International Exhibitor Representation Program are the long time North American representatives for SNIEC, the Shanghai New International Expo Centre in China. A second-generation former show organizer, Stephanie blogs for UFI, the Global Association for the Exhibition Industry and Exhibition World, and enjoys sharing knowledge online and in person. She is a founding member of the Exhibitions Think Tank, Women in Exhibitions Network North America, serves on the faculty of UFI’s Exhibition Management School and is a Virtual Events Institute Subject Matter Expert.

One Comment

Akshay Patil June 21, 2017 at 11:36 am - Reply

Some scary facts for the Exhibition industry. I think the industry insiders need to engage more with the Exhibitors/Attendees and look at them as equal stakeholders in the industry rather than seeing them as outsiders.

We must treat our exhibitors better!