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Your trade show is a success: now what?

So you have a successful trade show. Great. Celebrate. But don't sit back and relax. Successful trade shows have gone out of business because their originators didn't constantly monitor what the market and their competitors were doing, says Don Pazour, president and CEO, Miller Freeman Inc. "Two things can happen to an aging show," he says. "One is that the market basically matures. The other one is that the market turns left and you keep going straight. One is natural and you just have to deal with it; the other is self-inflicted." To avoid missing that left turn you should always ask, "What's next?" says Pazour. He recommends looking for the next step in four different areas: (1) Cloning: "Cloning works in the early stages where there are no competitors and the pace of development is not as rapid," he says. "It doesn't work when what you have from the start is a truly national industry event. In this case, if you go regional or go to another time of year, it doesn't fly." (2) Spin-offs: "We had a software d evelopment show," says Pazour. "Web development is a subset of that. The show was successfully spun off because Internet development is different in that it extends further into the user community." (3) Follow the market: COMDEX started as a dealer show, he explains. Then the purchasing influence changed. More high-end resellers and IT people were coming in. But, he says, COMDEX did a good job of following the market: "The show went from a dealer show to the world's greatest technology show." (4) Co-locate. This is when you agree to have your show and a competitor's at the same place at the same time. It works if your markets are different enough, but you have similar buyers. Both parties gain traffic and visibility.

Good negotiating is counterintuitive