While I was working on one of my first jobs and trying to keep a young family afloat, a dentist I met at a meeting asked how long it had been since my last checkup.
“I can’t afford to go to the dentist,” I replied.
“You can’t afford not to go to the dentist,” he said, a look of utter shock on his face. He was right, of course. And what he said is true of many things we all claim at some point that we “can’t afford.”
Allow me to suggest here that you can’t afford not to go to your industry’s leading trade shows. Of course it’s true your business won’t dry up and blow away in the wind just because you fail to attend the 2009 Pumper & Cleaner Environmental Expo International in Louisville, Ky. But if you don’t go, you could be leaving an awful lot of money on the table.
Adding it up
I know it’s easy for me to say that because I work for the company that puts the Expo on each year. But I say it because I’ve seen the benefits of attending trade shows in general. Case in point: In a past life I published books as a sideline business. Before putting out my first book, I went to a publishing trade show.
There, the first seminar I attended was an introduction to book printing. The things I learned there ultimately saved me, conservatively, $2,000 on my first press run. Attendance at the show cost me – including all travel expenses – some $600. So after my first hour, I was $1,400 ahead.
And that was just the beginning. I learned techniques about book design and marketing that not only saved me money but helped me sell more books, once I had them printed, than I would have otherwise. I would estimate that what I learned at that one show paid back my investment ten times over – at least.
Of course, at the time I was a raw recruit, so almost everything I saw and studied was brand new. And of course I might have been able to learn just as much, by other means, if I had skipped the show and saved the $600. But somehow I doubt it.
It’s the venue
There’s something about a trade show that makes it more conducive to learning than any other kind of venue. You have a full slate of seminars, some undoubtedly on topics that affect you very directly. You have multiple vendors all in one place. For example, I was able to meet several book printers and find out in short order which ones might serve me best.
More than that, you have rooms full of people with the same interests as yours, many of them more experienced and smarter than you are, and many of those willing to answer questions and give advice. You won’t find that anywhere but at a show, and especially not if you decide instead to stay home and keep the nose to the grindstone.
As with any other expenditure, you have to look at the price of a trade show – in registration fees, travel, lodging, food, incidentals – from both sides of the ledger. There is how much you pay out, and there is how much you get back. To look only at the outgo is, to put it bluntly, cheating yourself.
Lasting annuity
Remember also: Things you learn that improve your business stay with you for years. Suppose you learn a tip on pricing that’s worth $1,000 a year in added profit. You don’t get that dividend just once – you get it every year thereafter. And then the next year you learn something else, and that stays with you. And so it goes.
If you haven’t been to a major trade show yet, then going for the first time is, as they say, a no-brainer. If you’ve attended before, the temptation might be to say: Been there, done that. But have you really?
Things change rapidly. The year you skip the show could be the year that some exciting new technology arrives. And now your competitor, who did attend the show, has it. Wouldn’t it be better if you were the one who came home with that new tool and started putting your competitor, who stayed home, on the defensive?
It’s not too late to revisit your trade show plans for the year. Consider a visit to the Expo and to one or more other trade shows that directly relate to your business.
