Construct Canada 2009 Day 1

Daniel Smith with one of our special booth guests handing out papers and calendars.

I flew home yesterday evening, leaving Chase, Daniel Smith, and a group of Hooter Girls from the Niagara region to hand out calendars (with highly gender-specific images) and sample publications, as they met other exhibitors, attended seminars and programs, and generally "connected" on the Construct Canada show floor in Toronto.

This show, at least theoretically, represents a Home Run marketing opportunity. Most of our clients, after all, are businesses seeking to market their products and services to the construction industry in Ontario, the demographic profile of the greatest part of our business. As well, because we can help attract visitors to the show, the co-ordinators are happy to accept trade-outs of booth space for advertising, reducing our costs significantly.

But here is a sobering number. Last year, I asked the sales representatives attending the show to keep close tabs on the leads they acquired and the results they attained. We'll start with the really bad news. Two of the three representatives attending didn't bring in one piece of measurable business in the year following the show (they are no longer employed with us).

The third representative, our most successful salesperson, achieved $4,000 in sales.

If you add up the costs of hotels, food, travel, and time, we easily consumed that much in show costs. In other words, we paid 100 cents on the dollar -- hardly a route to profitability.

In planning this year's show presence, I considered these numbers in assessing our plans, and we devised some changes that should reduce our show-related expenses by about 50 per cent.

Of course, events like Construct Canada have other advantages. They allow us to reconnect with existing clients, scope out the competition, and observe larger trends and issues. So it is still worthwhile attending.

Time and place

We're at Construct Canada, booth 3027.

Today is the first day of Construct Canada, the largest Canadian construction trade show. After a five hour drive to Toronto yesterday, we completed the booth setup and will be ready to go when the show opens at 10 a.m. this morning. Our booth number is 3027.

This is approaching our first decade at the show, and there is some symbolism about the booth location, a spot near where one of our former competitors had a regular space.

In the earlier years of our business, I didn't think of participating in the show, but received a phone call out of the blue from the show organizers asking us if we could generate some positive advance publicity for the event. With no association with the event (and no advertising commitments from the show organizers), my initial thought was "Why should we do this?" but a sixth-sense instinct took hold and I treated the show organizer's request with respect, producing a really positive story for them.

Then I learned that one of our then-new competitors had a booth at the show, and decided that I would see if we could match the competitor's presence.

The show organizers had red faces. They had unwittingly entered into an exclusivity contract with the competitor, barring us from the show. (They thought the restrictions would apply to another publisher, not us -- they didn't know about us until shortly before their request for publicity.)

In other words, we had provided the show a favour without expectation of return, and the show, bound by a conflicting contract, had to favour only our immediate direct competitor.

One rule of business is that any situation which is obviously unfair and unreasonable will "correct" even if legal contracts suggest it shouldn't be possible. This is the art of interpretation and is how judges work around messy situations in the court room, and how honorable business people work around messes in practice.

The show organizers quickly worked with us on some special co-operation, including granting me a special "unofficial" presence on the show floor as an exhibitor without a booth! Next year, they discovered a work-around; the show had another section where we could participate. The location wasn't quite as good as our competitor, but they threw in free carpeting, electrical and other goodies, reducing our costs and making the whole experience worthwhile.

This year, our competitor is not at the show. And we now have the competitor's former space.