Call Warwick Now: 
Are You Wasting Your Time?
I spent a few hours at the Melbourne Motor Show on the weekend. So many of the booth holders are wasting their time, which is effectively hemorrhaging money!
So many of the stands had two types of people.
1) Booth Babes
2) Car Dealers
Booth Babes
After talking with some of the booth babes it was quite obvious that their training was minimal. Most of them confessed to not knowing much about cars. They could point out the different ones and possibly had a bit of an idea of idea about features and benefits but not much. I can put up with a lack of knowledge on product, particularly if they admit they don’t know the detail. Let’s face it, if you are an enthusiast you probably know more than the sales team does let alone a Booth Babe. What annoys me with Booth Babes is when they don’t know how to engage with prospects. Simple conversation – what models do you like, what colours have you considered, are you interested in buying a car, what are looking for at the show, are you having a good day. These are all really basic questions that can be used to engage and qualify potential prospects. A qualified prospect can then be introduced to a sales person.
I would love to have a car company understand that the “engagement” with the prospect (or future prospect as heaps of kids were there) is more important than knowing about the car.
Car Dealers
Car Dealers seem to ooze an aura of “I am more important than you”. Maybe they are assessing the prospect for financial value or maybe they see the Motor Show as a personal inconvenience, whatever it is, their attitude sucks. If I ran the booth I would keep the Car Dealer out the back. They tend to have a negative impact on people.
What I’d Like To See
What I would like to see is members of the associated car club on the stand. How cool would that be!! A group of people who are clearly passionate about the car and willing to engage with others to talk about them. Give them free uniform, free entry and free lunch and I suspect they would do the job willingly. Enough basic sales training to identify a qualified prospect and be able to pass them on to a sales person and then just let their passion for that car or that brand flow.
The person you select to operate the stand is as important as what you put on or in the stand. If the person is just sitting there, not engaging or not interested, you are wasting your time and wasting your money.
Who would you like to see on a stand at the Motor Show?
Enjoy!
Warwick Merry
The Get More Guy
www.warwickmerry.com
www.GetMoreBlog.com
www.GetMoreShowSuccess.com
Emma
I particularly like your idea of letting car clubs into these types of shows–my husband belongs to a vintage Volvo club, and the passion contained therein is fairly incredible. That would certainly inject new life into the shows. But I have to wonder (as someone who until recently worked in the automotive industry) how much real value these shows add? How much ROI is there? Can’t imagine it is too much. Why not spend that money on innovative ad campaigns, something grassroots, something other than the status quo? There’s no time to keep hoping that the same old action will provide new results, you know?
Anonymous
LOL. Another company burned by the sexist assumption that ‘booth babes’ are the way to sell anything and everything. I love seeing that marketing technique fail.