It is a fact that hiring trade show exhibits makes better sense, especially for small to medium business houses. The initial cost is small; neither do you need to spend your resources in storage and maintenance and on top of that, you can get a new look each time you participate in a trade show. However, relying too much on rental agencies has pitfalls as well. If you are not careful and the agency is unscrupulous, you may have to pay for services you never received. Let us now talk about them.
• Inefficiency In Planning – The booths at the trade show needs careful planning. Since space is in prime, you cannot really afford to waste one inch of it, yet you must leave enough free space for people to move about freely within the booth. Moreover, the get up of the booth should also be able to generate enough interest among the attendees at the fair; only then, your sales team will have some scope for delivering their sales talk. However, not all rental agencies are good in booth designing. If you find that there is some error at the last minute, there may not be much scope for rectification. That is why you must first make sure that the rental agency has skilled personnel to undertake such a job.
• Is Your Portfolio Receiving Enough Importance – Sometimes it may happen that the trade show booth rental agency you have contacted has too many orders at their hand. In such a case, they may delegate your portfolio to some inexperienced person. If that happens, the output may not be as good as you had expected it to be. That is why along with making sure that the company has experienced workforce to handle such job you should also see that your portfolio has been allocated to one such person. Also keep an eye on the work in progress; making changes at last minute may not really be feasible.
• Understanding Of Requirements – It is not enough to have a finely designed booth; it has to be compatible as much to your products as to your target customer. Indeed, the size, shape and the get up of the booth should be just right for that. If the booth is too fine or too large, your target customer may actually hesitate to walk in and if they are too insignificant, they may just ignore it. Are you sure that the rental agency you have contacted understand this? Talk to the person in charge of your portfolio in details about such things and provide all the specifications correctly. Also, follow up regularly to make sure every thing is on the right track. Remember, making too many changes at the last hour will be difficult.
• Cost Cutting – As a businessperson, you will naturally want to cut cost where it is feasible. However, often it happens that such exercise become counterproductive and one actually becomes ‘penny wise, pound foolish’. Do not let that happen to you. Do not compromise on quality of the booth just to save a few hundred dollars. Make sure it is fine enough to attract the visitors and garner their interest in your products; if it cannot do that, your participation at the fair will have no meaning at all. Remember you are here to sell and to make impression.
• Not reading the contract thoroughly –once you sign the dotted line, you will be in a binding agreement with the rental company. Before locking yourself up in it, you should first read and totally and understand every word that was written in the terms and conditions. You should be particular on the specifications concerning the breakage of the booth during the transport and other equally important things. Will the money be refunded in such case? There may be occurrences that a fiasco would occur unexpectedly. Most likely, you would point fingers on each other. You ought to know your rights and your responsibilities.
• Make Sure You Are Doing Business With A Licensed Entity – Indeed, it is important to see that the trade show booth rental you are doing business with has the license to do that. Such entities are generally are aware of all the laws relating to booth erecting and stick to that. By offering the job to them, you can save yourself from a brush with the law.
As I said, offering the job to competent exhibit rentals has quite a few advantages and if you follow the above tips, you can do so without any qualms.
Article by Mark Delacruz of PopAndExhibits, who is a specialist in exhibit displays. For more information on trade show booth rentals and trade show rental, visit his site today.
