Here Is My Horror Story

It was my first trade show. I was a young businessman who had landed a huge account. Now, the year before we had purchased about $250,000 worth of promotional T-shirts from our primary supplier (which was respectable) and $50,000 from our secondary supplier. (If you haven’t figured it out yet, I started in this industry as a T-shirt printer!)

I decided to take a walk over to my primary T-Shirt supplier’s booth. (Who we had bought about $250,000 worth from during the course of the year) What happened? I stood for about 10 minutes and was completely ignored. (Keep in mind, the average attendee will wait only 3 to 5 minutes without being attended to.)

Ok, so I left and came back a few hours later. Sure enough, there I was in the booth again for about another 10 minutes - completely ignored. Man, I thought I was a big fish to these guys, but they didn’t know or even care who I was.

So here’s what happened next. I went two isles over to my secondary supplier (who I ordered a small amount from during the year). They came up to me immediately and spoke with me as if I was the biggest customer they ever had!

To this day, I remember our conversation. They gave me a nice pen, thanked me a million times and asked what they could do better.

The result? The following year I bought $1,000,000 worth of promotional T-shirts from them and only $50,000 from the other guys.

But it didn’t stop there either. 12 months later the rep from my old supplier showed up at my plant. He was completely blown away by the expansion. He was eager to know why our sales with them had dropped so dramatically. My response? “We got a better deal from the other guys.” He still thinks he lost the business because of pricing.

I learned a valuable lesson that day. I decided that when I started exhibiting at shows I would do everything I could to avoid this ever happening to me. Like many other businesses, I have many customers who I’ve never met face to face. Keep this in mind… trade shows are a great opportunity to either build on our relationship, or destroy it.