Reid is responsible for brand and marketing strategies for YRC Worldwide subsidiaries such as Yellow Transportation, Roadway, Reimer Express, USF, New Penn and YRC Logistics. He also oversees the company’s trade show exhibiting strategy. A frequent conference speaker, Reid is also a guest lecturer at Arizona State University, Ohio State University and the University of Finance and Economics in Shanghai. Here, he discusses his point of view as an exhibitor.
EXPO: What creative solutions should show organizers consider to help improve ROI for exhibitors? Reid: Things have to change. I’m a big believer in that. This industry seems entrenched in doing things the way they’ve always been done. Show organizers will have to let go of certain constructs before they can create the sort of changes we need. They have to get away from looking at my business as a certain size booth. They have to get away from defining an event by the number of booths that were sold. I’m not an exhibit. I’m a business. Show organizers need to understand that they aren’t really in the trade show business. They’re in my business, whatever that business happens to be.
I’d ask show organizers to think about how I can get my business accomplished without even being at the event. That’s a really scary idea for show organizers. I was recently at a meeting of show organizers and a man from a company that produces virtual shows stood up. He introduced himself by saying, “Please don’t hate me.” Show organizers shouldn’t hate him. They should embrace him. He’s providing a way to continue to do more business in an era of sky-high gas prices and expensive hotel rates and airline tickets. Too many show organizers seem to be afraid that by embracing technology no one would ever want to come to an event in person. That’s probably not true. In fact, I think it would improve attendance. It would show more people it’s worth their time to go to an event. Many attendees understand the value of being there — they just can’t send as many people. Make it possible for those who stayed behind to have an experience, too.
Lastly, it’s more important to educate than to entertain. Some shows are putting too much emphasis on entertainment. No one will go home to their boss and talk about the great party in Orlando; they need to be able to share what they learned.
EXPO: What’s your biggest pet peeve about the trade show process? Reid: I hate being sold booth space. Too often we hear from salespeople who want to talk about how much space we had in last year’s show and how much they think we should have in this year’s show. Who cares? They should come ready to talk about my business and my business development. They should be asking about my goals and partnering with me to find ways to meet those goals. And it shouldn’t be all about leads either. Leads don’t mean anything if you don’t have an effective way to convert them into sales. How big the booth is and how many leads you get is the old paradigm. I want to know what your show will do to help me develop and grow my business strategically and what you can do to help me convert the experience into long-term business relationships.
EXPO: What factors cause you to not participate in an event? Reid: It isn’t so much that we don’t want to be at an event, but that we have to do more with less. Thus, we have to look for ways to be more efficient. We have multiple brands and more often we’re consolidating our show participation efforts. Instead of having a booth for each brand, we might have one corporate booth that would feature all our brands. That usually means our overall footprint at a show may be smaller, but it saves us money. Another issue that comes up for us is membership associations where you have to be a member in order to participate. In the past we might have had several memberships for each of our brands, but now I want one corporate membership.
We might look at who among our competition will be there. Sometimes it comes down to not wanting to be absent because you were the only company in your space that wasn’t there. But we’ll look for ways to downsize our presence, or to have a presence at an event in other ways besides buying a booth. Most of all, we’re just looking for ways to increase efficiency with maximum ROI.
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