Training programs, product demonstrations attract trade show traffic

Establishing a successful presence at industry conventions and conferences often calls for mobilizing a significant number of employees and expertise to assist in preparing for the event.

In addition to performing their duties of sales, service, training, product development, administrative support and related day-to-day tasks, those tapped to staff the booth may require enhanced education to adequately answer attendee questions – especially when demonstrating new product releases – along with properly imparting the marketing messaging that your company aspires to present.

Advance-engineering the exhibit’s design and construction characteristics while meeting the logistics of erecting the display and ensuring that the booth’s content arrives onsite in a timely manner are other challenges that need to be addressed.

Shop equipment supplier Hunter Engineering dispatched more than 100 employees to Las Vegas to staff its 7,000-square-foot exhibit at the Specialty Equipment Market Association’s SEMA Show.

In keeping with the stated mission that it “leads the under-vehicle service equipment industry and accepts the responsibility to train tomorrow’s technicians,” the company’s presence also included management educational offerings that augmented an ambitious array of product demonstrations and sales consultations. A financing company was onsite to help customers finance their equipment purchases.

“Hunter’s booth design is an intense, year-long process and is truly a team effort,” she says. Executive management, product management, engineering, advertising and the entire sales and service departments are enlisted to help construct the most useful and productive exhibit.“Each year, our goal is to provide more benefits and value to booth visitors than we did the year before. By maintaining strong relationships with our customers, we are able to design a booth that fits their needs and highlights how our latest innovations can help grow their business,” said advertising manager Madeline Triplett.

“Booth design is done in-house along with most of the signage and marketing materials used at the show. Select large pieces are designed in-house and then outsourced for actual production,” says Triplett.

On-average nine trucks filled with equipment, booth components and marketing materials are sent by the company to SEMA each year. Upon arrival at the Las Vegas Convention Center it takes a week to assemble the display.

“Hunter staff handles the setup of all Hunter products, and a trade show company handles the setup of booth properties such as kiosks and buildings,” she notes, referring to the effectiveness of these “booths within a booth” elements.

“Hunter’s SEMA booth also helped connect our customers with a full range of shop solutions outside the realm of equipment.” EC Design, a three-dimensional facility design software firm based in Örebro, Sweden was on hand to “demonstrate how their technology can be implemented for intelligent facility design that maximizes profit."

Pit Stop Consulting also was present “to discuss successful process implementation with booth visitors,” Triplett says. “Hunter is committed to connecting customers with viable solutions that improve the productivity and profitability of their shop.”

Doug Felt, Hunter’s technical training manager, was stationed at the exhibit to outline all of the company’s customer training programs – answering training-related questions posed by attendees and creating customer-centric individual educational options.

The company has 36 regional training facilities across the U.S. that offer a variety of courses in alignment and balancing taught by ASE-certified instructors. It also has an online training program and a training-specific YouTube channel that features instructional videos.

A “live social media wall” displaying attendee posts proved to be a popular addition to the exhibit, and one of the participants was randomly selected to win a free SmartWeight Touch wheel balancer at the show.