I have visited five Home Shows in three states this year and
I can spot a loser booth as soon as I walk up. There are so many different
things that comprise winning booths but I’ve got it down to ten reasons others
fail.
 |
| Decide if you think this Home Show booth is a winner or a loser after reading the Ten Reasons below |
- Presentation. This is one of my biggest pet peeves. You walk
up to a 10’ x 10’ booth and bump right into that 8’ ‘free’ table the show
sponsor gives them. It has a purple drape around it and two folding chairs.
Parked behind it are usually two people just sitting there like bumps on a log hoping that
someone will stop and talk to them and at the same time looking at their watch
to see how much longer they have to endure this torture. They have half eaten
sandwiches, Big Gulps and potato chips at the end of the table and if you do stop
and want to talk, you feel you are an interruption to their dining. - Talking to each other. The people manning the booth see each
other just about every working day but when they get behind the protection of
that table, they talk about everything that has happened since the last time
they talked which was probably yesterday. I become an unwanted visitor. To get
rid of me, they give me a refrigerator magnet with their business card attached
and a copied fact sheet in black and white. There’s probably a candy bowl on
the table so it wasn’t a total loss. These people are usually lenders or
Realtors. - Too much detail. I just wanted to know how much insulation
was standard in your home. I didn’t want to know what brand you use, how you
install it and a history of how insulation has evolved since the beginning of
time. I don’t need to know the name of the person in your company that installs
it or the name of the foreman that inspects it. I just wanted to know the
R-value. - Being the expert sucks. I walked up to a booth of a man
selling geothermal and ran right into the world’s leading expert on energy.
Even though there were other people that came into booth, he continued to tell
me how famous he was in the heating industry and after five minutes of this
dolt droning on and on without taking a breathe, I simply turned and walked
away. He immediately went over to the next unfortunate soul simply looking at
the literature on his table. - Taking up the challenge. I visited the booth of a site
builder from PA and asked if he ever used modular construction. You would have
thought I was asking him to denounce God. I listened to him go off on why
modular was the devil and how it is forcing small site builders out of work and
other things too nasty to list. When he took a break, I asked him if he had
ever visited a modular factory and he had not. Even if I had wanted a site
built home, he would not be the one to build it. Any suggestion I would make
during the building process would probably have been met with the same
challenge. - Dressed for work. In WV, I came up to a booth where two
young men were stationed in front of their table. That was Ok because there wasn’t
much on it anyway. There was a sign at the back of the booth with the company
name and logo which looked just like what you would find on those inexpensive
business checks…block letters and a guy holding a hammer. The reason they didn’t
have anyone at their booth was obvious. They were both dressed in the winter
Carharts handing out business cards. They did have their company name on the
front of their winter outfits. I forgot to mention that it was about 70 degrees
in the building. It looked like “anything for a buck construction company.” - No one manning the booth.
had a booth at three of these Home Shows and nobody was there. The professional
booth was there. The table where the business cards, literature and books was
there, minus all the stuff. All I could find was a pile of information request
cards and a drop box and no pen or pencil. It would have been better for them
to skip the Show. - Selling anything but new homes. A booth in a MD show stopped
me in my tracks. The homebuilder had a good looking booth that you couldn’t get
to because the table in front was loaded with girls selling Girl Scout cookies,
two kittens in a cage from the local Humane Society and a young man handing out
pamphlets about the upcoming sporting events at the local college. What was the
builder thinking? No sales for him but lots of cookie sales and adoptions. I
almost forgot, he was giving away a new cordless power tool set and all I had
to do was enter my name, phone # and email. I did, I lost. - Not asking qualifying questions. If you are paying big buckeroos
for a space in the Home Show, why would you not ask some quick questions to
determine just who could buy your home? It takes less than 60 seconds to ask the
visitor when they want to build, if they have located land and if they’ve been
qualified for a mortgage. If a Home Show gets 15,000 people through the door,
how many of them do you think are looking to build a new home? Best guess…about
1/10 of 1 percent. That’s 15 people. 15 new homes and without asking some quick
qualifying questions, you may have missed all 15 of them. Hope you were successful
in handing out all that free candy. - Not asking for a commitment. Serious home buyers will not be
offended by you asking them for their name, number and email when you tell them
you would like to follow up. Remember, you should have already asked the
qualifying questions above and gotten positive answers. They are ready to buy
and you want to build them a new home. Sounds like a good plan but first you’ve
got to get them to commit to something. Set an appointment in your office,
get them to agree to meet at their lot, get them to meet you at a house under
construction but get them to commit. Then it is your sale to lose.
