Zoe Grant, me and Katie Levett

On Monday I did something I’ve been meaning to do for *years*. I headed up to Top Drawer for a spot of inspiration, research and to catch up with some old and new friends. To be honest I didn’t really know what to expect, but having enviously listened to various people talking about the sheer range of companies there I decided to bite the bullet and go.

I spent most of the day reminding myself that I was resolutely NOT opening a shop and that I must not get carried away but the lovely goods on offer. But it was hard! There were some really inspirational, creative companies there and I know that if I ever find that eighth day in my week I am so going to open a lovely online gift shop… But I digress.

It was lovely to see some of our clients doing so well, including the fabulous What Katie Did Next who looked just on fire after an incredibly successful first day! It was also lovely to meet Gabrielle Treanor of the Green Gables in the flesh and meet people I’d spoken to on twitter like the lovely Snapdragon Jane, Dots and Spots and Cutture. All of whom had fabulous stands and were so nice!

I was also really excited to finally meet the lovely Zoe Grant, who I’ve been chatting to on twitter for years, but never actually met. Zoe is a freelance writer as well as a mum to five (!!!) so it was great to finally put a name to a face.

I’m a firm believer that inspiration is everywhere, and it certainly wasn’t in short supply at Top Drawer. The colours were beautiful, everything was exquisitely designed and I came away with a head full of ideas.

And most excitingly… I met a publishing company who liked the sound of my new book and invited me to contact the editor directly! How exciting is that?!

ps. As requested, the image of the beauty lab selection was designed by and for Trend Bible. You can find out more about them here.

We’re well and truly into exhibition season again and many businesses are recognising the benefits of getting out and exhibiting. I’m evangelical about the power exhibitions can have on your business – so much so that I’ve written a book about how small businesses can make a success of exhibitions. Exhibitions can help you build your database, raise your profile and generate paying clients – but only if they’re planned and executed carefully.

I work a lot with exhibition organisers – running “How to exhibit” seminars for their exhibitors and last week I had the pleasure of talking to exhibitors at the Best of Richmond’s Richmond Business Expo to help them understand some of the steps they can take to make sure of success. Here are some of the things I got them thinking about.

1. Know why you’re going and what you want to achieve. What’s your goal? Your key message? How can you tailor your message to the show? How can you tap into what’s motivating the visitors to attend the show?

2. Think creatively about how you can bring your business to life. And don’t settle for boring when it comes to design of your posters or your giveaways. Be creative, imaginative and bold.

3. Run a giveaway to capture data but make sure what you’re giving away is both relevant and enticing to the visitors. Bottle of champagne giveaways won’t build you a targeted list – just a list of people who want to win a bottle of champagne. Useless!

4. Follow up on your leads promptly - before your competitors do! Write emails and follow up letters beforehand and clear your diary for a couple of days following the show so that you can deal with the follow up properly.

5. Have a robust and targeted marketing plan that helps you build relationships with your leads, position yourself as an expert and keep yourself front of mind over the year that follows the event. Exhibition success doesn’t happen overnight so be prepared to work hard and it will pay dividends.

The Best of Richmond group were a wonderful bunch of exhibitors to speak to and I just know that along with all of the hands on support the Best of Richmond give their exhibitors that this is going to be another cracking show. You are a pleasure to work with as always and I look forward to seeing you all on the 12th April (do come along lovely readers too, won’t you? 3pm onwards at Twickenham Stadium, it’s a great event!).

Jacqui very kindly emailed me some feedback from the event which was just too lovely not to share with you!

Very inspirational– she gave me lots of ideas – Victoria, Colour and Craft
Brilliant, going to see her next week, see Fiona a lot on the circuit and her stands always make you want to go up to them, Lovely – Gary, Milestone Experts
Very inspiring – you just know her work would be brilliant
Brilliant presenter – knows her stuff, will definitely visit her if I exhibit anywhere next year – Helen Oakwater
Really helpful, definitely thinking about what I could now do, Alex, Artisan Accounts
Brilliant – really helpful, Michelle Luscombe

Oh, and if you’re really stuck, come and talk to me! I run a very limited number of one to one strategy sessions and I’ll help you take care of all of this with bells on… Email me if you’d like to know more.

Gareth Palmer has literally just set up Playscene, a company that specialises in creating fun and imaginative playspaces for children. We met Gareth at this May’s Grow Your Business exhibition and he loved the Flourish stand, so when he booked the EcoSchools show in Peterborough he approached Flourish to help him create an engaging and memorable stand.

Gareth and I worked through an exhibition planning session together and helped him establish what his key angle was going to be for the show. We focused very much on the fact that there was a mix of teachers and pupils in attendance, and Gareth’s focus needed to be on engaging both, but it was the teachers who were likely to become potential customers.

We explored how we might create an impact, and Gareth had some fantastic ideas and together we whittled them down into a cohesive idea that would make sense to visitors. Gareth created his own graphics for the back wall and he and his girlfriend worked incredibly hard painting furniture, baking cakes and creating goody bags.

Gareth had also commissioned a fabulous Storyteller’s Chair which proved to be a real talking point and had also obtained hundreds of seeds to give away to the children which reinforced his ecological commitments.

You can also see plenty of his products on show – and we made sure that we kept them all rustic and natural to make sure that the impact was cohesive. I love the grass green floor and the vibrant backdrop. And how fabulous is the garden planter with all it’s fresh vegetables growing?

Gareth picked up well over 90 entries into his compeition and he’ll be announcing the winner shortly. Then he has the hard job of following up. But a jubliant Gareth was delighted with how the day went. The show organisers were so impressed with his stand they told him it was the best at the show and even used the stand as the backdrop to MP Lord Henley’s press shoot. Not a bad accolade! And proof that you don’t have to be a big company to have the best stand at a show – it’s all about your imagination.

Have just received this glowing review from a local publication, Guildford Means Business from Ezie Publishing and as it’s so lovely I thought I’d share it with you. Over to you John Hines and John Ashcroft… (and thank you. My mum is delighted

The exclamation mark is the most overused – and misused – pieces of grammatical notation. In emails it is abundant. The result is that everything screams for attention and nothing gets it. When they are used correctly they make their subject stand out from the rest. They give it an enduring life of its own. When the Theatre Guild in New York launched a show called Away We Go, no one gave it a chance. It bombed on tour and it was only just before it was due to premier on Broadway that advice was sought. Impresario Lawrence Marshall’s suggestion was not only to rename it after the US state his wife came from, but to add an explanation mark.

Oklahoma! is still running 60 years later. In fact, a west-end production is playing at the New Victoria Theatre this week (May 10th – 15th). All this came to mind as I started to read Fiona Humberstone’s book exhibit!. It’s a book which gets your attention. More importantly, it’s contents comprise truly easy ways to get customers’ attention. It is the ‘Lawrence-Marshall-advice’ that will change the way your company exhibits forever..

Getting the right kind of attention

The book contains one of the most powerful, successful business practice sentences I’ve ever seen: everyone in business should read it. It’s lines two and three on page 61. “If you can just switch your focus from what you want to sell to what’s motivating your VISITORS, you’ll be on the road to success.” For VISITORS, substitute ‘clients’ or ‘prospects’ or ‘customers’ or anyone else who can help make you successful.

The sentiment of the rule is universal. It works for our magazine editorial too, when we tell contributors that we do not do advertorial. “If you can just switch your focus from what you want to sell to what’s motivating your READERS, you’ll be on the road to success.” exhibit! is the road map to success

We’re trying it out

It’s easy to write two dozen column inches of review about a book. With exhibit!, though, we are going to do something entirely different, Because the GROW exhibition is almost upon us, eZie-publishing is taking this book to task to see if it works. Our ad on page 23 and our stand display atGROW (stand XX) is right out of page 127 of Fiona’s book. It’s a simple exercise in collecting data which the book goes into great depth about.

The other side of exhibiting is speaking. It’s easy to say, as I have seen in other “how to” books, “Speak at seminars: it will boost your company’s exposure.” It’s nowhere near as easy as that. Look at the seminar list for GROW YOUR BUSINESS on page 17. Many of those names keep popping up all over the place. Getting onto those lists takes perseverance. exhibit! comes up with a superb way of starting. Look at the scan of Fiona’s “Creating a speaker sheet” page above.

This book has page after page of such working guides. Not words about what you should do, but checklists to ensure that you do it. And these are not incomplete lists, where the way to complete a project is to employ the writer as a consultant. exhibit! has everything: it’s Fiona’s entire exhibiting knowledge.

It’s like having a professional exhibition consultant by your side, 24 hours a day.

You can see if it all works for yourself

Go to the seminars at GROW and see how others put their stands and their presentations together. Especially, go to Fiona’s own stand (she is speaking at 10.00am and her stand number is 35) and you will see everything she writes of in practice.

Normally when a book is launched the author will sit at a desk for 60 minutes to sign copies, spending perhaps more than seven seconds with each customer. Fiona is going to be there all day. There’s no escape for her. She will be all yours at the Guldford Spectrum on 12th May. She’ll tell you how this book will help you grow your business at GROW YOUR BUSINESS. And I guarantee that you’ll get considerably more than seven seconds.

I think that deserves an exclamation mark!

And you can see the GMB4 – Fiona Review here.

There aren’t many things that really make me cross, but people who attend an exhibition with the express and sole purpose of selling to the exhibitors is something that really winds me up. I suspect they see it as a big opportunity: “All those businesses in one place? I know! Let’s go and tell them about our business!”

Take last week’s Grow Your Business as an example. Our stand was busy but out of the corner of my eye I could see two guys waiting patiently for us to become free. How nice, I thought, they must be keen to chat. And keen they were. “How can I help you?”, I asked, with a smile on my face “We were wondering if we could talk to you about our business. We make corporate videos for websites. Is that something your customers might be interested in?” they said.

“Well I would be delighted to” (Cheshire cat grin now developing and voice raising an octave to the sing-songy style you often hear when speaking to a group of toddlers) “But not here and not now. Give me a call in a couple of weeks”

I was very polite and hopefully inoffensive. I suspect, from the feedback we’ve had from the exhibition, that other exhibitors may not have demonstrated such patience.

Tell me; is it unreasonable of me to think that if an exhibitor has invested several hundred, or even several thousands of pounds at an exhibition; they’re there to generate more business? They want to spend their time and energy on building relationships with potential clients. As exhibitors, they’re probably not looking for new suppliers.

Now that approach does seem slightly skewed. After all; exhibitions are also about networking, building relationships and putting names to faces too. And I always make a point of meeting other exhibitors at these shows – and no, not to sell to them, but simply to forge a connection. But it’s those visitors (and there are always a handful at any show) that come with the sole intention of visiting every exhibitor and expecting them to spend 10 minutes talking about their business. That’s what gets me. A complete lack of respect for the fact that these exhibitors have spent a lot of time and money on their stand; and here’s Joe Bloggs trying to take the cheapskates route by selling his product/ service on their doorstep.

So there it is. Slightly uncharacteristic rant over. How can you productively, politely and firmly stop people trying to sell to you when you’re at an exhibition? After all; it’s your time and money you’re on; you need to be sure that you get the most out of the opportunity.

I think the only thing to do is to be polite but firm. Employ a huge grin and tell them that you will be delighted to speak to them in a couple of weeks once the activity from the show has died down.

Resist the temptation (and I speak from experience <hangs head in shame>) to say in an exasperated tone “Look, I’ve spent a lot of time and money on this stand. I’m here to win business. I don’t want to sponsor your expensive yacht and I certainly don’t want to talk about it now”. It may feel satisfying at the time, but your visitors on your stand may well be less than impressed at your approach!

I honestly think that if every exhibitor politely but firmly rebuffs these salespeople, by the fourth or fifth stand they will give up. And that’s got to be better for all of us. What tips do you have? I’d love to hear what has (or hasn’t) worked for you

Just thought I’d give you a bit of a rundown of the Flourish stand from yesterday’s Grow Your Business. We put a lot of time and effort into creating a stand with instant wow factor and that, importantly, would evoke an emotive reaction. I think that this sense of emotion is something that we put into all of our designs, and so it was important that this came across on the stand.

As you can see, we didn’t hold back when it came to the styling! Plenty of English garden flowers, potted plants and gardenalia helped create a mood that was an antidote to the grey stands and grey suits that typify most business to business exhibitions. I was well aware that in creating this stand, we were probably going to divide people. And that was fine by me. We had plenty of people coming up to us saying that they loved the stand, and I’m sure there were plenty of people there thinking “What on earth are they doing? This isn’t Chelsea Flower Show…”. But I would rather be memorable and evoke a reaction than be bland.

The orange geums are the perfect Flourish orange and look great against the paisley green stand. The crate came from a previous trip to Kempton Antiques market and I bought the wellies especially for the show.

We handed out Swiss Chard seeds on the day (more than 150 packets that I hand stuffed and hand-finished!), spreading a little Flourish love. The idea behind the Chard was the obvious growth metaphor (that’s what we help companies do) and also the fact that they’re beautiful and productive. And I think that sums up what we try to do at Flourish. We’re about making things look gorgeous of course, but they have to add to your bottom line too.

The desk was off to the right of the stand and covered in more Flourishness. The rabbit appeared on my original Flourish mood board and I think it’s artisan, handmade qualities as well as it’s bright colours perfectly fit in with the Flourish setting. The books are from the studio, original Penguin classics of course, and were a bit of a talking point on the day. The gilt frame was repurposed from the launch party and filled with a new poster and the desk is my own from home.

We all had a phenomenal day, meeting some great people, chatting to some lovely clients and forging new relationships. It was also great to catch up with business people and other exhibitors, some of which we hadn’t seen for a year or two. We’ll be announcing the winner of our competitions very soon so keep your eyes peeled for that. In the meantime… thank you so much for visiting the show, I hope you found it useful. And do let me know what you think of the stand!

(above: the fabulous Gallery Rooms at the show)

Mr H and I visited Grand Designs Live at London’s Excel at the weekend. It’s a really well run, well put together show (I especially liked walking down the tunnel to the sound of the Grand Designs music!) and the standard of exhibition stands was very high. In fact, I was pleasantly surprised at just how much effort the exhibitors had put into their stands.

What I was surprised by, was the fact that not a single exhibitor asked me for any details. They were willing to give me their expensively produced brochures, but they had no means of following up! I find this immensely frustrating because as someone with a stake in an exhibition company, I find it tiresome when people say “we put thousands into that exhibition and it just didn’t work” because half the time it’s not the fact that the exhibition didn’t work, or that it was badly organised, but more that the exhibitor didn’t approach the exercise correctly.

My experience of exhibitions tells me that if they’re planned and executed correctly they can add serious money to your bottom line. For me, exhibitions are about building relationships, brand awareness, and most importantly, a targeted list of prospects that I can build a sales relationship in the months following the exhibition.

At my first exhibition I picked up 100 leads and converted 70 of them into paying clients. But I didn’t do that by failing to engage with visitors or handing them brochures with no means of follow up. I spent the day generating leads, and then I consistently and persistently followed up in the months following the exhibition.

So if you’re at Grand Designs Live (or any exhibition come to that) this week, what can you do to maximise your return on investment? First up, congratulations. If you’re at Grand Designs Live then you probably have a great-looking stand that will do your business proud. But unless you’re a big organisation like Miele or Mark Wilkinson, you probably need this event to be a bit more than a branding exercise. Here’s how to get more out of the event.

Engage with the visitors. Everyone visiting Grand Designs Live is there because they are looking to make some home improvements. They’re a captive audience. I went (dragging my husband and two small children) because we’re about to extend our home and I was looking for ideas and inspiration. Just one stand engaged me in conversation, on most stands we were smiled at and then ignored.

I’ll be honest, I went there hoping to discover expert tips and advice from the manufacturers and distributors of things like bifold doors. And yes, I could have asked the exhibitors questions, but I didn’t know what to ask. Open questions would have got me thinking about what we needed and how your company could have solved my problem. And I would have walked away with a memory of your business.

Not a single person asked me why we’d visited Grand Designs, what our project was. That would have started a conversation (everyone loves to talk about themselves) and you’d have been able to work out very quickly whether we fitted into your target market or not.

Ask for visitors details. One of the most valuable things about a show like Grand Designs Live is the fact that they are bringing a targeted group of visitors to you. Everyone walking through that door is interested in home improvement, and unlike advertising, which is passive, these visitors have made a concerted effort to visit the show. That means that they’re keen! So why not take their details and follow up with them (more than once) after the show.

Think about an email immediately after the show. You’ll also need to consider a postal follow up and ideally a telephone call. Once each of these things have happened, consider keeping in touch on a regular basis. Once a month is ideal via email or mail. Yes, all of this is costly and time consuming, but essential if you want to maximise your return on investment.

If you’re serious about getting more out of your next exhibition then you’ll find my book, Exhibit! The SME’s guide to using exhibitions to grow your business invaluable. And good luck! Let me know how you get on…

Excuse me a little moment of self indulgence here… My book, Exhibit!: The SME’s Guide to Using Exhibitions to Grow Your Business is now available via Amazon. It does exactly what it says on the tin: shows you how you can plan your next exhibition much more effectively to significantly improve the result you get from your next exhibition. Just thought I’d let you know!

Just a quick one to let you know that the Flourish and Guildford printing.com sponsored Grow Your Business event is back. It’ll be a veritable extravaganza of expert speakers, inspiring seminars, free one to one clinics and more than 70 exhibitors. Held at the Guildford Spectrum the event is now in it’s third year and is set to attract up to 1000 visitors. And best of all… it’s absolutely free.

Flourish will be giving away a free premium logo design worth £1360! There are usually some pretty good giveaways from the other exhibitors too, in previous years generous exhibitors have given away laptops, mobile phones and £2000 worth of internet marketing services.

The day is really focused around giving you practical and inspiring tips, ideas and tools for ways that you can grow your business, and so you’ll find that there’s a lot of focus on growth: from the free seminars to the exhibitors that choose to attend. Everything is focused on how you can plan and implement growth in your business. The Chartered Institute of Marketing will be there to answer your queries, and you’ll be able to turn up and book one of their ten minute drop in clinics.

We also have an excellent lineup of speakers for the 12 seminars including Karen Skidmore, Nick Tadd, Sarah Orchard, Bernay Laity and Tom Evans amongst others. I’ll also be running a seminar on creating effective marketing for your startup business.

Entrance is completely free, and you’re welcome to drop in for the whole day or just an hour or two – whatever suits. The parking is usually a bit of a nightmare so I recommend getting there much earlier than you need to, or better still, walking/ getting the park and ride out of Guildford. It’s always a great day and I hope to see you there.

Registering (and booking your place on the seminars of your choice) is recommended – simply visit the website and complete your details.

If you’ve met Flourish at an exhibition recently or you attended our launch party then you’ll most likely have a packet of chard seeds. Why? Well more on that later… The point is that it’s time to plant them. I threw mine in last weekend in a rare moment of sunshine and I’m waiting expectantly to see some shoots. I feel a “chard-watch” post coming on soon.

If you haven’t sown them then it’s pretty easy. Rake your ground, clear it of any weeds and I scrape back a bit of soil a couple of cm deep and a few inches wide. Can you tell I’m not a gardener? If it’s proper gardening advice you want I highly recommend you take a skip and a jump over to my good friend Claire’s site: she will tell you how to do it the right way. Plant Passion’s Blog Me? I go for the “scrape back the soil, chuck ‘em in and hope for the best” approach.

So why on earth did a design & marketing company give away seeds?

We’ve given away more than 400 packets of rainbow chard, Bright Lights at various exhibitions and our launch party over the last couple of months. Giving away seeds has become a bit of a “thing” for us. It fits with our name, flourish, and it’s a nice metaphor for how we grow people’s businesses. The thing that I particularly like about rainbow chard is that it’s both beautiful and productive. And we make things look beautiful, but we’re also very commercial, we make sure it’ll get you a result. So there you have it!

If you’d like a packet of chard seeds then visit us at the Grow Your Business event in Guildford on 12th May where we’ll be giving away plenty more for free!