Trade Shows Still Work — If You Do Them Right
- Harvest Growth
- 6 days ago
- 20 min read
In this episode of the Harvest Growth Podcast, Jon LaClare sits down with trade show industry veteran Mike Van Valey, who has spent more than 35 years in the business and over two decades running his own trade show contracting company.
From selling books door-to-door in college to managing trade shows for major consumer brands, Mike shares firsthand insights into how the trade show landscape has evolved — and why so many companies are doing it wrong.
You’ll learn how technology, rising costs, and changing buyer behavior have reshaped the industry. Attendees no longer arrive ready to write orders on the show floor — they come to evaluate, compare, and research. That shift means your strategy needs to change, too.
Mike breaks down the biggest mistakes exhibitors make, including overspending on flashy booths while neglecting staffing and follow-up — and explains why the “software” (your people and process) matters more than the “hardware.”
If you’ve ever wondered whether trade shows are still worth the investment, this episode gives you a clear, strategic answer.
In today’s episode of the Harvest Growth Podcast, we’ll cover:
How trade shows have changed in the digital era
Why lighting and booth design can dramatically increase traffic
The right way to staff your booth (and how many people is too many)
Why pre-show marketing can make or break your results
The most common post-show follow-up mistakes
How to know if a trade show is right for your business
And so much more.
You can listen to the full interview on your desktop or wherever you listen to your podcasts.
Or, click to watch the full video interview here!
Want to connect with Mike? Visit tradeshowsolutions.net to learn more or reach out directly for guidance on improving your trade show strategy.
To be a guest on our next podcast, contact us today!
Do you have a brand that you’d like to launch or grow? Do you want help from a partner that has successfully launched hundreds of brands that now total over $2 billion in revenue? Set up a free consultation with us today!
Prefer reading instead of listening? Read the full transcript here!
[Jon LaClare]
Welcome to the Harvest Growth Podcast. I'm Jon LaClare, founder of Harvest Growth and author of The Perfect Launch System. Over the past 20 years, our team has helped launch and grow hundreds of consumer products, generating more than $2 billion in revenue for our clients.
On this show, we break down what actually works in product marketing, real stories, real strategies, and the lessons you can put to work in your business right away. Whether you're getting ready to launch or looking to scale what's already working, you're in the right place. Let's jump into today's episode.
[Announcer]
Are you looking for new ways to make your sales grow? You've tried other podcasts, but they don't seem to know. Harvest the growth potential of your product or service as we share stories and strategies that'll make your competitors nervous.
Now, here's the host of the Harvest Growth Podcast, Jon LaClare.
[Jon LaClare]
My guest today has spent more than 35 years in the trade show industry and has run his own trade show contracting business for over two decades. Early in his career, he sold books and Bibles door-to-door while in college, then spent about 20 years in the corporate world. During that time, he served as the trade show manager for a large consumer products company where he learned firsthand how trade shows really work and how often they're done wrong.
In 2005, he took everything he had learned over that time and started trade show marketing solutions, helping companies outsource trade show strategy and execution at a time where very few had dedicated trade show managers. Leaving the security of a corporate job wasn't easy, but looking back, he'll tell you it was one of the best decisions he ever made. Well, Mike, welcome to the show.
First of all, I'm really excited to have you on with me. Thanks for taking the time today.
[Mike Van Valey]
Yeah, well, thanks for having me, Jon. I look forward to talking with you today.
[Jon LaClare]
I can't go on without mentioning how long we've known each other. So you've been good friends with my parents back when we both used to live in Ohio many years ago. I don't wanna date us too much, but it's been many decades.
[Announcer]
The good old days, yes.
[Jon LaClare]
Since that time, you know, that's right, right. So I was a teenager. You know, you were an adult around my parents' age, a little younger than them, but older than me for sure.
And it's been fun to reconnect with you and see what you've done over the past many decades, as I mentioned in your intro. So first I wanna start off, let's talk about trade shows in general. So I mentioned your business you're running.
You know, you really are an expert in this field and there's fewer and fewer people that have that expertise just because the trade show world is changing. So you really are a diamond out there in terms of value for companies. Over the years, what changes in the trade show industry have really surprised you the most?
[Mike Van Valey]
Well, you know, the trade shows have changed. I mean, you know, technology has changed. Technology has changed the way we do business.
And in the old days, and this is even really before I got into trade shows, you know, sales were done, you know, with phone calls and, you know, calling on people directly. And you didn't have the internet, you didn't have all these tools that we have today. And so when people came to a trade show, they came ready to make a decision.
And so, you know, the mindset was, I'm gonna bring my order book and we're gonna write orders and write orders after orders after orders, because that was, you know, again, you didn't have all the technology that you have today. So today, what's happening is when, people still attend trade shows, but they're attending it for kind of a different reason. They're really evaluating all the exhibitors on the trade show floor.
And they're really, and what they do is they go home and they do their research and then they decide, you know, who they're gonna buy from. So you don't do as much, quote, selling on the show floor that you did in the old days. So that's been a big shift.
And then as far as logistics goes, you've seen a lot of downsizing of trade shows, because, you know, let's face it, the cost of doing trade shows keeps going up and up and up. And as shows have kind of shrunk, the overhead still exists. So these general contractors out there still have the huge overhead.
So they put more of the cost onto the poor exhibitor. A lot of times, as in terms of material handling charges, like when you ship something into the show, instead of being, you know, $500, now it's $1,000. Instead of being $50,000, it's $100,000.
Depending on the size of your booth. So people are downsizing their booth. They're going to lighter weight material.
So you've seen a shift, you know, from that aspect of it as well. The actual, you know, what does the exhibit look like? In the old days, everything was made out of heavy wood and laminates, and now it's all fabric and pillowcase, zipper fabrics, and just everything is, you wanna take as much weight out of your exhibit as you possibly can.
So that's been a big shift.
[Jon LaClare]
Yeah, absolutely. And I wanna ask the question, is it still worth it to do trade shows? And obviously so.
You have a lot of success with your clients. But help us understand, you know, you mentioned it's different, but how does it work? Like, when does it make sense to fit trade shows into your overall marketing strategy?
[Mike Van Valey]
That's a great question. Sometimes it doesn't. You know, trade shows aren't for everybody, and it depends on your industry.
We were talking earlier before we started at how I've seen a shift. And a lot of the clients I have do a lot of retail-based type shows. And I think, you know, the impact of Amazon has had a big impact on how retail items are sold.
And, you know, around nowadays, your biggest, I think, goal is to, how do I get onto Amazon? But you didn't have that years ago. So yeah, that's the big change.
[Jon LaClare]
Okay. What are some of the types of clients that you have, categories of businesses that you see have the most success or get the most value out of trade shows?
[Mike Van Valey]
Yeah, that's a, I would say, we just did a show just last week in Las Vegas, the World of Concrete. It's a big mammoth show. And Concrete has not sold retail, okay?
It's a business-to-business transaction. In that industry, you have a lot of smaller operators, mom-and-pop contractors in the Concrete business. So the way they find out about what's going on is they almost have to go to the show.
And so that show is really well-attended. And the people that exhibit there, we had several exhibitors, and they all had very good success. You know, they saw a lot of important people and were able to make a lot of good contacts.
So that, you know, those kind of shows are really thriving. Medical shows, I do a few medical shows. That used to be, you know, we all thought that that was like the biggest gravy train out there.
But even in medical shows, you know, there's been some downsizing. But still, having said all that, yeah, shows still offer, can offer a tremendous return on your investment if they're done right. And, you know, you just have to do your research.
So depending on your industry, and you're not sure if you want to do a show, attend the show, walk the show, that's often what the first step of, if you're deciding, should I do this show or should I do that show, consider walking it. And then maybe the next year, if you feel like, okay, it was well-attended, I saw a lot of people that we'd like to be talking to, go in there, you can kind of dip your toe in the water and just exhibit. Maybe it's a 10 by 10 or a 10 by 20 size booth and see what happens.
And then you can kind of build off that. So sometimes it's just kind of a trial and error. Sometimes you just don't know whether a show is gonna be the right fit for you or not until you actually do it.
[Jon LaClare]
Yeah, that's good advice. And I always teach when I talk to product marketers that live in-person selling is truly invaluable. And sometimes it's not a high percentage of your overall sales, depending on what your business is, but it can be extremely valuable because you get insights in unique ways.
And I think that's one area where trade shows are really effective, but it also, I think, goes over to like home shows and things like that, that I know you operate a lot of that space, but some of these principles like booth design, that I'll ask you about in a second, really would apply to both sides. But if you can, whatever your environment is, whether it's a small local home show or even a flea market or whether it's a big trade show you're taking your business to, getting that in-person conversation with potential leads or potential customers, you get questions answered. You can solve problems more quickly or make changes if you're selling a product or a service or whatever it might be by having these direct conversations in-person as opposed to purely online, over the phone, et cetera.
So I wanna talk about booths for a second because I think that really, those learnings apply across no matter how you do your live in-person selling. So what are some, I guess, what do you see out there that works? Just generalities.
Obviously, there's very specific things in booths, but what types of strategies with booths or spaces really work and draw in attention?
[Mike Van Valey]
Light attracts. So I always cringe when I see an exhibit that has a nice graphic, a nice layout, but they didn't wanna spend the extra amount of money, maybe an extra couple hundred dollars to light their booth up. So you walk up to it and if you even notice it, because I mean, remember, you're competing with thousands of other exhibits sometimes.
And if you don't have lighting in your booth, you're already, to me, at a disadvantage. So one thing that I've seen in the last, I would say the last 10 years has been the advent of LED lighting in terms of like light box lighting. So you'll often see in many of the booths today, they'll have a light box.
It might be a 10 by, eight by 10 or an eight by 20. If you're an island booth, which you can go much higher up in the air, I've seen light boxes that go 20 feet in the air. And so those have been really prevalent in the last five years or so.
And so it's almost like if you're not doing, if you don't have light in your booth, and whether it be an LED light box or down lighting or some kind of lighting, you're just not gonna stand out. So to me, that's just a real big, important point.
[Jon LaClare]
Yeah, no, I think it's a great point. We learned that over time. I should have called you and got your specific advice because we didn't do it on the first couple of shows we went to, but we've been to some business to business trade shows to sell our services, that kind of thing.
And we, on top of our booth, we put a big sign that says video marketing, and we learned by seeing somebody else of just putting LED lights inside of the flash, just grabbing your attention from across the room. Frankly, it made such a difference, a small change like that, and those are not expensive. The other thing that's worked well for us, of course, we're in the video world.
So we do a lot of video marketing on TV and online, et cetera, so showcasing our videos. It's important for our business, but even if you don't do video, having a video screen draws people over and keeps them there. If you're busy talking to somebody, people stare.
They wanna see what's coming next on your demo reel, your whatever it might be, but that is very powerful.
[Mike Van Valey]
Well, I think it's the old adage, you have about seven seconds to gain someone's attention. And so, again, you gotta maximize that, those seven seconds, the best way you can. I always counsel people, too, that if they are gonna do a booth, try to do something bigger than a 10 by 10.
Normally, that's the smallest size you can get on a given show. But I always say, if you can afford to go 10 by 20, do that at the very minimum, because all of a sudden, you've doubled your amount of stopping space where someone can, as they're walking by, can you get that much more time to catch their attention? And hopefully, they'll pause and stop and look, and then that's your opportunity to engage.
And so, yeah, size does matter. It doesn't, some people think you've gotta have a big monster booth to have a successful show. You do not.
You can have a very successful show in a 10 by 10, even, but a 10 by 20 or a 20 by 20 type of booth, that's plenty of space to demonstrate what you're doing, what your message is, and what you can do for your customer.
[Jon LaClare]
That's good advice. And I was gonna ask you where people should spend their money. So that's one answer where, hey, I wanna upgrade a little bit, get a bigger space.
That's worth it. Lighting is cheap, but it's an expense that's worth it, relatively cheap, right, compared to some of the other costs of booths. So where do you think people sometimes overspend?
What do they spend money on that they shouldn't?
[Mike Van Valey]
Sometimes they do spend it more on space. Space is funny, because sometimes you want that nice location within that show floor, and sometimes to get that nice location, you have to get that bigger booth space. And so you say, okay, I don't really need a, say a 40 by 40, but it's right in front of the hall, and it'd be the best location in the booth, in the show.
So sometimes you'll pay more for that nice location. But again, you don't, I do see a lot of people getting more booth space than they really need. Yeah, I always kind of looked at shows, the exhibits in terms of, it's almost like computers.
In a computer, you have the hardware portion, you have the software portion of a computer. And a lot of people spend it on the hardware, and the hardware, they spend it on the fancy graphics and the flashy booths. You know, and the double deckers, you see that occasionally.
Those are all very expensive. But really, to me, what's important, most important when you're, any kind of booth you have is the software side. It's like, it's like the sales staff.
I can't tell you how many times I walk by a booth and I see people sitting in the corner on their phones, looking down, and not looking up and engaging with people. You've got to be engaged with the people that walk by your booth. And, you know, you shouldn't be sitting down, you shouldn't be reading the newspaper.
Well, in the old days, you read newspapers. Nowadays, you're reading your phone. But the idea is, be engaged with your customers.
Know how to work a show. I see people, another pet peeve of mine, someone will engage with someone and they'll talk to him for like 10, 15 minutes on the show floor. And that's all fine and dandy.
You can kind of get into a deep discussion. But really, to do it right, you really want to start the relationship. You're not trying to sell them on a total program on the show floor.
Now, there are exceptions, of course. But normally, you want to engage people quickly and then disengage quickly so you can go and talk to the next person stopping by. So it's getting contacts.
You know, it's more important to get a lot of contacts and then follow up with them after the show than to have a few deep discussions and you miss all these other people that are walking by your booth. Because they won't stop. They won't wait for you to finish that discussion.
You know, they might wait two minutes. Otherwise, they're gonna move on and they'll probably never come back. So I see that a lot.
So to me, staffing and learning how to sell at a show is very important. And a lot of people don't know how to do it.
[Jon LaClare]
That's good advice. And getting the right people there that are going to engage, right? That aren't gonna sit in the corner.
[Mike Van Valey]
Not everyone is meant to work a trade show.
[Jon LaClare]
Yeah, yeah. Because you've got to be outgoing. You've got to not necessarily stop people.
Hopefully the booth helps with that, right? But as soon as they stop, you've got to engage and really talk to people through it.
[Mike Van Valey]
And I guess another thing I would stress.
[Jon LaClare]
I want to talk about before the, oh, go ahead.
[Mike Van Valey]
Well, I was gonna say one other thing about staffing. Don't send too many people into your booth. I see companies that, you know, they have a sales team of 20 people and they say, oh, we got to send all 20 people to the show.
And you literally cannot walk into the booth because you've got 20 salespeople sitting around and it really intimidates someone wanting to go into that booth. So be smart about, you know, how you staff. You know, generally the rule of thumb is for every 10 by 10 booth, you should have two staffers.
And if you have more than that, you're, it's too many.
[Jon LaClare]
Yeah, I mean, you think about it. You've got 10, 20 people standing around and you have two people walk up and talk to them. It seems like no one's there talking to them.
You have two people in the booth and two people talking to them like, okay, there's demand here. And demand, you know, it's, you don't want to make them wait too long, right? But when people see others stopping at the booth, it creates demand, right?
[Announcer]
Like anything else. Yeah, like what's going on here.
[Jon LaClare]
Attention, I think is helpful. Yeah, exactly. So beyond the booth itself, and we talked about some like the size of the space, what else should you be thinking about or strategically thinking about before the trade show?
So how do you prepare best for it before the show begins?
[Mike Van Valey]
I've always been a big believer in doing some pre-show marketing. If you can buy a list, and generally most show management companies will sell you the list of attendees that are going to be attending the show. And sometimes it's given, will be given free.
And you know your own client base. You know, you know who, you should try to find out who's coming to the show that, you know, that's part of your client base. And you should reach out to them.
You should send them an email. It doesn't have to be a formal thing. Although with my old company, we would do invitations and we would send out, you know, thousands of invitations off this buying, off this list and saying, you know, come see us at, you know, such and such a show.
And, you know, we would try to give them a compelling reason to stop by. And so that kind of thing can help. But it could be as simple as an email or a text saying, hey, Joe, I see you're going to be attending the show next week, you know, please stop by and let's chat.
So that kind of thing, it can kind of help people. Because again, when you're, if you think from the aspect of the attendee, they walk on the show floor, there's a thousand booths. Where do they go?
You know, they've only got, you know, they might spend eight hours on the show floor, if that. And, you know, you've got to make sure that you're on their list of people to stop by and see. So yeah, doing that kind of a pre-show invite I think is very helpful.
[Jon LaClare]
And we've seen value with some of our clients on top of that by posting on social media platforms. I think it's less direct, right? So it's unlikely that all of your followers or friends are going to be at the same trade show.
But it's another way to really grow your presence at a trade show with a lot of people that might not be there, right? So it gets people thinking like, I wish I could be there, I can't, but I want to reach out to you and talk. So that's, it starts the digital conversations for those that don't attend.
I see a lot of people post those and it's very effective.
[Mike Van Valey]
Yeah, you can do a lot more of that than, you know, 20 years ago, for sure.
[Jon LaClare]
Yeah, absolutely. So a lot of people at the end of a trade show, they finish up and they feel like it didn't work. And I think part of that is the follow-up strategy.
What do you recommend strategically for after the show? So we've gone to the show and got some leads captured. What do we do next?
[Mike Van Valey]
You really have to formalize that process and you really need to have someone internally, whether it be the sales vice president, could be the president of the company, depending on the size of the company, but you need someone that's going to shepherd that process and make sure that it happens. Otherwise it, you know, we're all busy, you know, we come back from the show and, you know, and all of a sudden you've got, you know, a hundred voicemails replied to, or a thousand emails that have gone through. And that all gets, that's all kind of urgent, but, and you let these leads kind of say, well, I'll get to the leads, you know, next week.
And then a week later, they're still haven't been touched. So you need a way to close that loop, you know, and you need a formal strategy to do that. If you don't have something, you know, in written down, you know, it could be verbal, but ideally it should be a written down policy.
Here's what, here's the steps we need to do the day after the show. You know, some companies I know say they have a policy that every lead that has stopped by their booth, they will issue an email or a phone call within two days of the show. And that's just, that's just their policy and it gets the ball rolling.
But yeah, a lot of times, you know, I see it all the time and I've been guilty of it where, you know, I'll go to walk a show and I get some good contacts and then I get home and I got to get ready for my next show. And, you know, a month later, I haven't followed up on some of the people that I talked to at the show. So it's just, yeah, it's just, it's the best intentions that you're going to follow up on them.
And it just doesn't happen sometimes.
[Jon LaClare]
I would add to that to follow up more than once, right? So fast and frequent is what we've seen work at a lot of these shows. You know, you know better than I, you've done a lot more of these over the years, but it's, you know, getting that initial response quickly is good and important before they forget about you and it goes cold.
But there'll be some people that are getting a lot of those emails, right? For everybody who is responding and like, and they might be thinking the same thing, like, oh yeah, I do remember that, I'll get back to them. It falls off their plate.
So getting into frequent follow-up or a few times, at least after the fact to remind them, whether that's automatically through a email CRM system or whether it's manually, depending on how many leads and what your role it might be with the company, but I would combine that in there too.
[Mike Van Valey]
Yeah, this day and age with good tech. If there's somebody listening out. Yeah, I would just say with technology the way it is with the CRM programs, there's really no excuse not to be able to do this.
[Jon LaClare]
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, and a lot of those are pretty inexpensive now and fairly easy to set up, even for non-techies. So if there's somebody listening to this right now and has given up on trade shows, and as you said, it's not for everybody, right?
That it's not every business can work, but when they do, when it makes sense for your business, they can be extremely effective and the ROI can be phenomenal, can be fantastic for trade shows when done correctly. So if you've got a listener that might be thinking, I've tried that, I'm done, I don't need to try trade shows again. What advice do you have to make sure that they're doing the right stuff, or maybe something that might be missing that could turn an unsuccessful trade show policy or strategy around to one that's very successful?
[Mike Van Valey]
Yeah, I think you gotta know your why. You know, why are you going to the show? And have goals, you gotta have some goals, so that here's what we wanna accomplish at the show.
Now, they gotta be realistic, but if they're realistic and you kind of think, you start there and then you develop the message, you make the booth inviting, you develop a simple backdrop. Again, you're not trying, I always tell people, think in terms of a billboard. I mean, basically that is what your booth is, it's a billboard, and you've got, you know, again, going back, you've got seven seconds to catch their attention.
Make sure the message is clear, make sure that the booth design is open, make sure you've got good people staffing the booth, and if you do those things, you'll have some success. And if you're at the right show, again, you might not be at the right show. And your product, you might be in an industry where shows aren't the be-all, end-all, but if you know your competition is doing these shows, then maybe you should be there.
There should be a reason if they're going, now maybe they're just going because everyone else goes and they know, again, you've got to go for the right reasons. You don't go to shows just because your competitor goes. But it is an indication that there might be some value to that show.
So again, yeah, just some of the basics, keep it simple. Don't overcomplicate the process, engage properly, and do your follow-up.
[Jon LaClare]
That's great advice. What's the best way to get in touch with you? If there's somebody listening that would like to get either into trade shows or improve their efforts in trade shows and have questions, how do they get ahold of you?
[Mike Van Valey]
You can go to my website. It's tradeshowsolutions.net. And I've got my contact info there.
And you can shoot me an email or give me a call. And yeah, if you wanted to get some advice and some direction, we'll do that complimentary. I make my money on providing the services that we provide.
We are a full-service contractor. We can do everything from carpet to set up and dismantle, new booths, new graphics. I've done in the past sales training.
That's not something I do a lot of anymore. But if someone would say, hey, could you come talk to our group about how to work a trade show, how to sell a trade show, we could set something up like that for you too.
[Jon LaClare]
That's great. And as I mentioned, when we started this interview, we've known each other for a very long time. And I can speak to Mike's capabilities, but also what a great man he is and a good partner.
If you have any questions in this space, there's really nobody better to reach out to. So I do encourage you. We'll put your website in the show notes as well.
So anybody who's driving, listening to the show, just check out whatever platform you're on, whether it's on your podcast platform on YouTube, or of course, you can always go to harvestgrowthpodcast.com to find the details and get a hold of Mike. And to our audience, I do wanna say, if you wanna take the next step of growing your business, visit harvestgrowth.com. You can connect with our team and book a one-on-one conversation focused on your business.
Thanks for listening, and we'll see you in the next episode.
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