Five Reasons to Diversify Your Booth Uniform
The Unified Front: Is this Industry Standard at Counterproductive Strategy?
The unified front is a standard of the trade show environment. The booth staff are members of the company team, and as the company team we communicate that united corporate image by wearing the same logo and the same color clothing. Customers can easily identify the booth staff because they’re all wearing the same thing. Please Obey The Memo: Everyone wears the blue shirt on Thursday, the red on Friday, and the neon yellow on Saturday.
While it makes sense, it also creates some serious problems:
If everyone in the booth is wearing a white shirt with red sleeves, everyone in the aisle knows your booth is empty. Nobody wants to be the first customer to come into your booth. Sure it’s early in the show, but maybe there’s a reason nobody else is in there. If your representatives are wearing different shirts and colors, it won’t be obvious that your booth is empty.
Nobody wants to confront an army of sales representatives. Attendees don’t want to stand before a question-answering panel of employees. It’s intimidating. By wearing different colors, your staff will look more approachable.
Your team is comprised of individuals; they all have different expertise. Particularly if your team has sales, service, and solutions representatives from different product groups, it will be easier to say “talk to the people in the green shirts about waste water applications.” To hold their attention and confidence, attendees need to know they’re talking to the right person at your company.
Your sales team is huddled in the back of the booth discussing their dinner plans. If an attendee has a question or wants to engage your company, they’ll feel uncomfortable breaking up a conversation among your representatives. A less unified look will make your reps more approachable.
The Bull Pen. When an attendee does enter your booth, your uniform staff sends out a member from their huddle in the corner. This immediately cues the confrontational sales process we’re trying the avoid, and it completely derails the networking and relationship building process.
Avoiding these problems is easy. While your booth staff should definitely wear your company logo on their clothing, matching colors and shirts isn’t necessary at all. A diverse approach - long sleeved button down shirts and polo shirts in different colors and materials - will keep your booth professional and maintain your corporate branding.
Ready for more ideas? Click the link below for a copy of The Little Booklet that Transforms Your Trade Show Booth into a Lead Generating Machine. A short, simple read packed with practical strategies for generating more booth traffic, connecting better prospects to your sales team, and going home with a huge stack of qualified prospects who are looking forward to your follow up calls.