ASIS 2017 is far from the first trade show rodeo for Jim Henry, executive Vice President of Kratos Public Safety and Security Solutions (www.kratospss.com). With vast experience as both a trade show exhibitor and attendee, Henry sat down with SD&I to share his trade show best practices for integrators:
SD&I: Beyond name recognition, from the security integrator’s perspective, what have you found to be the advantages of having a booth at a trade show?
Henry: I believe the main benefit to an established integrator exhibiting at a national show like ASIS is having a “home base” on the floor to connect and meet with (pre scheduled) existing and prospective customers. Unscheduled “drop-ins” on the show floor by end-users with substantive opportunities are rare. That, I believe, is due to the fact that large end-users prefer to perform their due diligence vetting prospective integrators through end-user peers (in their specific vertical market) and industry organizations to engage privately first. That is a more conducive setting for initial, qualifying meetings than at a large, national trade show.
At a show like ASIS, with so many end-users and vendors in the same place, what are your top priorities?
Massive national trade shows risk becoming “speed dating on steroids” if you do not plan ahead and schedule meetings and goals for those meetings. Customers are always priority No. 1, followed by meetings with strategic supplier partners and security consultants. However, even the most focused and disciplined preparation cannot fully insulate against dynamic schedule changes and the domino effect on other meeting plans. Generally speaking, that is forgiven by most exhibiting suppliers, as they too are trying to condense a week into three chaotic days. Even those that do not get (or are pushed out of) “prime time meeting slots” appreciate the effort in taking pre-breakfast and late-night meetings.
When you are able to walk the trade show floor with an existing or potential client, how do you prepare? What sort of things should you be on the lookout for?
When I tour the floor with my clients, I repeatedly state that they will see countless “nice shiny objects” and hear a lot of “claims and promises” from manufacturers. That is understandable given the hundreds of competing manufacturers in one place at one time. Some claims are 100-percent true, some are outright false – the majority are in the middle. Any claims not 100-percent accurate and proven create “expectation creep.” The value an experienced integrator brings is the ability to vet solutions (both in the lab and in the real world environment) and set realistic expectations of results for the end-user. When all stakeholders in a project – manufacturers, integrators, consultants and end-users – agree on a project scope where “minimum guaranteed functionality is acceptable,” all are successful when that is achieved, and all are praised when expectations are exceeded. That is worth repeating over and over to curtail the “expectation creep” so often seeded at trade shows.
How many people should a typical integrator bring to a show like this? Does each person get a chance at taking in a little bit of everything, or are there defined roles for each?
Integrators range from small family-owned businesses to large multi-national corporations, so there really is not a “typical” size or attendee number. I do believe it is advisable to have multiple people with different roles and missions. Executive management, sales and business development can divide up to overcome inevitable scheduling conflicts with end-users, strategic partners and consultant meetings. There is a lot of benefit for applications engineers to attend the national shows with the enormous number of manufacturers displaying new technology and products. Applications engineers are more immune from being hypnotized by “shiny objects” than less technical account managers and end-users – they can help the integrator’s sales team be more effective “trusted advisors” to their clients by being up on what is new in the market that they are vetting.
Do you or any of your employees plan to take part in any of the educational offerings? If so, what issues/sessions have piqued your interest this year?
We have all we can do to accommodate meeting schedules and walking the floor so prefer to schedule educational certification classes more local to our offices and settings with fewer distractions than what surround major shows.
Paul Rothman is Editor in Chief of Security Dealer & Integrator (SD&I) magazine. Access SD&I's current issue, archives and subscribe at www.secdealer.com. Pick up a free copy of SD&I at ASIS booth #2125 or in the publication bins outside the show floor.
