13 Types of Bad Booth Staffers

Posted by Cat Virca in Planning, Tips, Trends

Poor staff etiquette is one of the biggest trade show faux pas. Bad etiquette includes sitting down in the booth, not interacting with leads, backs turned to the aisle (in conversation), and eating in the booth. Inconsistent staff etiquette can negatively affect the overall success of your trade show booth.

In Mike Thimmesch’s article, “13 Bad Booth Staffers” he discusses the various types of poor etiquette by trade show booth staff members. Role playing and communicating friendly reminders with your staff is a great way to prepare them for your next event and keep bad etiquette to a minimum.

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Tim’s list of types of unprofessional booth staffers.

1. The Networker:  The Networker spends most of his booth staff shift talking, but instead of having concise conversations with clients and prospects, he whiles away the expensive show hours talking with other sales people, corporate management, and anyone else who will listen — as long as he doesn’t have to actually take a lead.
2.  The Fire Hose:  Instead of asking attendees good questions, listening for specific pains, needs, and goals, and responding with an appropriate presentation, the Fire Hose lets loose the same unending stream of corporate speak, drowning the attendee with irrelevant messages.  They offend your booth visitors and wash away your return on investment at the same time.
3.  The Wall Flower:  While being an introvert is no barrier to great booth staffing, a Wall Flower lacks the courage and initiative to start a conversation with passing attendees.  Booth staffers that wait on the sidelines for attendees to walk in the booth will get a small fraction of the leads of a staffer willing to engage visitors in the aisle.
4.  The Debbie Downer:  While constructive criticism is essential for growth, Debbie Downers are permanently parked in a dark place. These perpetually pessimistic people are a danger to your company’s brand, as they drag down their fellow booth staffers by their continuous complaining about each and everything possible. They don’t exactly light up the world with prospects, either!
5.  The Invisible Man:  While not activity destroying your brand equity through poor performance, The Invisible Man (or Woman) doesn’t show up for their booth shift, leaving your remaining staff to pick up the load, and lowering your lead count potential.  Even worse is if your Invisible Man has essential, unique expertise, such as demonstrating a new product.
6.  The Ghost:  Unlike the Invisible Man, the Ghost is physically there, but … not really.  They are actually on their phone, or on their computer, busy taking care of other business instead of staffing the booth.  So attendees can see the Ghosts, but not really touch them.  Which wastes the rest of your trade show investment.
7.  The Scanner:  The Scanner is focused on only getting lots of leads for leads sake, so they relentlessly pursue attendees just to scan their badge – and then fail to engage the attendee any further.  They just want to scan the next person, and the next, and the next – so you have plenty of leads, but none that are qualified.

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Read the full article for Mike’s complete list of booth staffer don’ts.