Whether your company exhibits at one show one hundred, you’ll need to get yourself organized if you want to be a successful trade show coordinator.
When I first started working trade shows I was mainly just the onsite setup guy. As our program grew and we honed our skills, I took on all the paperwork as well. Shipping, utilities, I&D and all the other fun stuff required for each show. I wasn’t long before I figured out that I better get things organized or I’d be in over my head.
I started with MS Word figuring a simple To Do list would be enough. When that proved wrong I looked to Excel and quickly found that my Excel skills were lacking. I decided to look for a software package designed for trade shows and found ShowGo from Seattle Software. I purchased it and used it for about six months before I outgrew it. The software was just fine but I’d started tracking so many aspects of our shows that the software just wasn’t built for. I decided to go back to Excel and use it today.
When you start organizing your shows you’ll quickly find the number of things you can track is almost limitless. Obvious things like booth space, utilities, shipping and material handling are a given and simple. Next you think “Hey, I normally pay my booth space in a deposit and a balance. I should track both of those and put the date paid and check number. “ Next you decide to add the show dates and times including the I&D hours to help the sales guys. No big deal until you realize that now you can use Excel to figure out how much you’re spending per day; per hour, per minute. Then you realize that you want to track how many man hours it takes for your I&D so you can compare them for each show. And you’re just getting started. Before you know it your simple Excel file has mutated into a real live spreadsheet.
Stepping back though you have to first decide what you want/need to track and how you want to organize everything. Expect this to change as you move forward and learn what does and doesn’t work, is and isn’t needed etc. The more shows you have and the more things you need to track, the more complicated your system will be obviously. The flip side though is you’ll have a better picture of what your shows are really costing you.
When I started in shows the company I was with went to about ten big shows (20×20 spaces and larger) each year and about five smaller ones. Because I was the first person in this position for the company I started the program from scratch and made it up as I went. I made my mistakes but I worked for a great boss and we quickly became a well oiled machine. The Excel system I used included everything from space and utilities ordering to staff travel and tracking the length of the demonstrations we did. I tracked everything I could think of to get a clear picture of what our shows looked like statistically and gave my supervisor a “Bottom Line Report” based on the information I collected.
When I started with my current company I found a program that had been in place for several years under several different people. Each show was organized into its own folder in the file cabinet but there was no online tracking. This turned out to be a good thing as I didn’t have to justify changing from what someone else was using to what I wanted.
The first thing I did was to find my old template from the other company and started changing it up to fit the new one. It wasn’t long before I found it easier to just start over from scratch. With over fifty shows to track and already two months into the year, I had to go through every file and determine what was done and what wasn’t. In many cases there wasn’t even a date or location set for the show. One of the big differences I’ve found between large shows and small ones is that the smaller ones tend to take longer to get their information out. Some won’t give you a booth number until the day of the show. Most of the large shows I’ve done will do booth selection nine months or more out. The really good shows will have you sign up for next year’s space while you’re at this year’s show. I think this is by far the best way to go. All the same work is required but you get at least two major benefits this way. First, the show organizers don’t waste time contacting exhibitors back and forth when the space they wanted is already taken. Second, as an exhibitor, I know my space number, size, location within the hall and those of my competitors a full year in advance. But I digress.
Over the next few weeks I sifted through every piece of paper from every show folder and entered it into my Excel file. I created a separate file for each show with multiple sheets for different aspects of each show. This is a case for overbuilding your file. What I mean is that you want to add your fields keeping in mind what you might want/need. One of the many truths about trade shows is that no two are exactly alike. A 10×10 is a 10×10 but where one may include carpet, others will not. Where most may be actual 10×10, some may be 8×10 or whatever. I did a show in Seattle one year where they ran out of space on the floor and decided to chop four feet off every booth to make more spaces. Thus a 20×20 became a 16×16 and upset many exhibitors.
It’s always easier to not use a field than to have to go back and add it in later. Remember that you want to use the same template for each show. If you change your template you have to go back and change all the shows that use it. Trust me. I’ve spent more time than I care to admit fixing my Excel files.
As you create your files, try to keep things grouped together. Your utilities should all be together as should your travel items. Here’s how I organize the sheets of each file.
• Main – This sheet has all the basic information about the show including booth number, size, dates, times, location, staff members, show budget including current status etc. It’s my quick reference for the stuff I need most often.
• Expenses – I track everything that requires money on this page. The travel page has the travel expenses broken down but they all read into this page. More on linking info later.
• Travel – Each person going to a show has a page with their travel itinerary and expenses on it. This took some time to work out but I found I need one for each person. People travel from different locations at different times and may not even stay in the same hotel. If you’re like me you want to track all of that because it will come in handy.
• To Do – This is where I list all the items I need to do to complete the show. Again, some of these things tie in with other pages like Travel and Expenses.
• Packing –I created a packing list of all the things I might want to send to a show so I wouldn’t forget them. I set a column for number needed and another for number packed.
I have other pages for things like check requests, fax covers, folder page cover etc. As much as possible I make Excel work for me. My check request pages are completely filled out except for the date. I have one for the deposit, one for the balance and one as a blank. I simply type in the date and print the page for my boss to sign and send it to accounting.
The more information you can organize and track the more knowledgeable you will be about your shows. I’ve been working for most of the past year on purchasing a lead scanner so we can have electronic leads captured at every show. We’ll save the cost of renting at the shows that have them and we can scan business cards at the shows that don’t. www.leadwizard.com if you’re interested. This will do several things but the one I’m most interested in is an ROI as determined by cost per lead. My next step is to find out which of these leads turned into sales and what that sale was. If I can show that we spent $5,000 to attend a show each of 5 years and leads from that show produced $500,000 in sales, I can justify our continued participation. On the flip side I can use the same information to help get us out of a bad show.
Finally, I designed each sheet to fit on one or more printed pages. When it’s all said and done I print out the relevant pages and put them into the paper file as needed. After a show is closed and all the expenses have come in, I official close the file. The paper file is most likely what someone will want to see if there’s a question.
Once you have your information organized the way you want it in Excel it’s time to make Excel work for you. As mentioned earlier, I have my Travel on one sheet but those numbers read into the Expenses sheet. It’s a simple formula to setup but you have to remember to set it up. Add your numbers as needed and link them to your Expenses page. See Excel Help if you don’t know how to do this. Separate your travel expenses out for each person and keep a trip total for each traveler as well as totals for each item like hotel, flight, meals etc. Our sales people use their corporate credit card for everything so I pull their record when it’s time to close the show and enter in each expense separately. I then compare my total with the accounting total and find anything missing. I don’t always hit exact dollars but if I’m close I’m good. I trust my numbers more than accounting because I can show where they came from. When you link these back to the Expenses tab be sure to check your formula using numbers you can add in your head. If you enter $100 into each of four fields and you end up with $300 on your Expenses tab you now you did something wrong. Believe me. Better to learn now than to duplicate your error fifty times.
Use this same basic idea when you create the To Do tab. You’ll want to have a line for Deposit and Balance. If you make these fields read into the Expenses tab you won’t have to remember to enter them in twice.
Excel is a great tool. It can save you a lot of time and make you look really smart if you think about what you want it to do ahead of time and do the work up front.
So let’s skip forward and assume you’ve created your template and now you’re ready to start adding your shows. The first thing you want to do is decide how you’re going to name your shows and where you want to put them. This will become extremely important as you’ll see later on. My company has several servers where most of our work is saved to. We have a Marketing drive with photos of every project we’ve ever done as well as logos, flyers etc. We also have a VIP Access drive which is restricted to for certain things. This is where I have placed my show files for several reasons. First, being that access is restricted I don’t have to worry about someone randomly deleting my files or making changes without me knowing about it. The second reason is that our IT department makes regular backups of these drives. I don’t have to worry about my computer wigging out when I spill a soda on it and losing all my hard work. That would just make me want to cry. I also back up my entire show file system to a thumb drive every Friday and take it home with me just in case.
We use a job number for each trade show so accounting can assign expenses accordingly. Each show starts with TS (Trade Show) the year and then 001, 002 etc. I decided to name my files 001, 002 etc to match the job number. We also use the short name of the show such as National Society of Trade Shows would be NSTS. I chose not to include this in the file name because the same show does not always have the same number from year to year. By just using 001 etc. I can create a full template of my entire system with blank files already linked. When I start adding shows I simply pull up the next empty show and give it a name.
I placed the individual show files under the Show Status folders so the 2010 root folder isn’t cluttered with so many files. There are some other files that go in that root and this keeps it clean as well as keeping all the show files in the Show Status folder. I also created a folder for each show with the show number as the folder number. This is where I save any files related to the show.
One last thing on file organization. Any file I save or email I send has the show’s job number on it. Thus an email from me concerning the National Society of Trade Shows would have in the subject line TS 001 NSTS (and then the actual subject). A floor plan .pdf would be TS 001 NSTS Floor Plan.pdf. With over fifty shows I have to do all I can to keep from using the wrong file.
Now, when you collect as much data as I do you want to make the most of it. You also don’t want to have to open every single file, electronic or physical, to figure out where you are on one or more shows. This is where all the hard work of creating a template and having every show use the same template pays off.
Excel not only reads information from cells and sheets in the file you’re working in, it also reads from other files in other folders. It will actually read from files on other drives but I do not recommend this. When IT decides it’s time to upgrade the server with your show files you’re reading on drive D and they make the new drive E, all your links are now toast. It also allows me to copy everything to my thumb drive and work on things at home without messing up my links.This is why my Show Status file is just one folder away.
Open a new Excel File and designate it as your status file whatever that may look like. Now create your header with the information need to keep track of for each show. Here’s what I use.
• Open date
• Close date
• Job number (I link this to the show file so I can click on it to open. Works great)
• Show Name (or Short name)
• City
• State
• Lead Staff
• Support Staff
• Contract Received
• Deposit Paid
• Balance Paid
• Travel Set
• Ready to Ship
• Budgeted
• Spent to date
• Balance
• % Spent
• Last updated (This comes from a field in each file that Excel updates automatically every time I open it. Formula is this. =NOW() Then just format the cell as you want. I don’t refer to this field often but when I’m in a meeting and I’m asked a question I use this to know how recent the information I’m giving is.)
I set these and then open the first file. In the cell on the status sheet I click in the cell and then click on the cell in the show file and hit enter. Do this for each cell for the first show. Once first show is complete the rest are easy. Close the first show file. Now copy and paste the row you just created into the rows below until you have one for each show. Next, highlight the entire row of the second show and hit Control F to bring up the find and Replace dialog. In the Find field type the name of the first file. 001.xls. In the Replace with field type the next file name. 002.xls. Then click Replace All. Excel finds 001.xls and replaces it with 002.xls which then reads the information from the 002.xls file. Do this for each file changing the Replace With number for each row. Before you know it you’ll have all your needed data on one page. Here’s the best part. Every time you make a change to one of your show files, Excel automatically updates your status page. When you open the status page you’ll get a note asking you if you want to update from the other sources. Click yes. The more files and info you’re requesting the long this will take but it’s worth the wait.
Personally, I live in this file. I have a shortcut icon in my quick launch bar and I open it each day when I come into the office. I have it color coded to help point out what needs to be done etc and I print it on 12×18 paper for easy reading. I hyperlinked each job number in the sheet to the corresponding file so there is no searching Windows Explorer for each file. Just click and poof; it’s there. I use the same link option to link from the file to the folder for each show. It works like a champ.
I’ve used this same concept to create other status files for other related information. We require our sales reps to complete a trade show evaluation form after each show. One of the sheets for each file includes this form which then links into one giant trade show status sheet. The same is true for the breakdown of show expenses by category. I’ve recently taken this information and created a Trade Show Overview for the year which shows the total expenses, leads collected and other data for each of the four brands we market and, of course, the totals of all four. And don’t forget percentages. Management seems to be impressed when you include percentages.
When you get into it you find that there is endless information that can be gleaned from your shows. It’s just out there for the taking if you choose to record it. I used to check the traffic around each of our competitors once an hour and gave them a grade of 1 to 5. I still call show management for attendance numbers after the show closes and compare them year over year.
You may not choose to be as detailed as me or you may find yourself tracking show traffic compared with barometric pressure and relative humidity. It’s up to you. One thing I think you’ll find though is the more information you collect on your shows the more you’ll realize just how little everyone else in your company understands the shows you attend.
