New Year? New fiscal? New opportunities? And what better opportunities could there be for new sales growth than attending an industry exhibition in 2018.

But there are rumblings amongst professional attendees that the ‘hosted-buyer model’ may be creaking a little. At a recent industry gathering actual buyers…not exhibitors…were asked if they were happy with the exhibition format where they have to commit to 8-10 ‘meetings’ per day in return for free travel and accommodation. Over 80% of customers were not at all happy.

This comes as no surprise to me. In times gone by I would regularly attend national, international and global exhibitions with the express intention to meet with 5-10 suppliers to discuss specific projects, all in one place. As soon as the big exhibition companies began to force me to attend 8-10 meetings a day, often with people I had no interest in at all, it all started to pall a little. I stopped going.

I was being treated like an idiot, led along like a donkey, to put my head into any destination bucket the organisers wanted to dangle in front of me. Often the exhibitor would not even be there at the appointed time as someone more important had come along and I was ‘cancelled’.

At one event I was told that the destination representative could not see me because his boss had just arrived and wanted to hold an internal management meeting. Could I possibly drop by later? You can probably guess that I didn’t.

So what’s the problem?

The problem is that the hosted-buyer model is back-to-front. In sensible marketing, you would start with the customer, ask them what they want and then try and deliver it.

With the hosted-buyer model they start with what the suppliers want…lots of guaranteed meetings… and then bully, cajole and threaten the customers to comply, otherwise they would charge them money (they ask for your credit card when you register), boss them about to attend ever more meetings or even ban them from future events for being ‘time-wasters’.

But, you may say, it’s free. Buyers do not have to pay and therefore they will see it as a benefit. I don’t know how many event buyers you talk to on a regular basis but I have never met one yet who is time rich and is desperately eager to get on another plane. Professional buyers will pay for their own seat. It’s only amateurs, blaggers and students who go to exhibitions because they are free.

Of course I can see the commercial logic. Exhibitors won’t pay the fees if they are not guaranteed any customer visits. Advertisers won’t sponsor unless the organisers can claim that there will be thousands of eager buyers. Speakers won’t commit unless they can have bums on seats before they deign to present their services.

But what’s wrong with good, old-fashioned marketing? Suppliers have to have a story to tell, a proposition to make and a deal in their briefcase to get an order. For this reason I would rather have one customer who seeks me out than ten punters who have been forced to tick the box for a meeting she doesn’t want on the final afternoon of the show she finds exhausting.

Arise ye exhibition delegates, refuse to attend meetings with suppliers you will never use, pay for your own travel and do the deals you want to do.

It would be no surprise to me if in future there were less exhibition delegates but of a much higher quality than before. Because exhibition organisers would be giving delegates what they want and not treating them with commercial contempt.

ITCM blog January, 2018 John Fisher