No Sales at Our Booth: Tips to Increase Success?

[vanscootin]

and it was pretty bad....

There were over 600 women there and we got 2 bookings and not even $100 in orders. Women actually avoided our table. We did a drawing and people filled out the drawing slips and ALL were checked no to hosting a show. I'm upset because the booth was expensive and there were other costs too. We have in no way made back what we put in.

I'm a little fustrated and a little worried about my business not growing as I've hoped it would.

Anyone have any tips on what makes a booth successful?

 

[Sheila]

Do away with a free drawing & offer a sale. Free drawings gave me dead leads. Sales (advertised on a tri-fold board to draw them in) is where I get my best deals. Once they are at my table looking, I ask if they would like to be added to my monthly e-mail newsletter. Even if I walk away with just 12 lead forms, they are all GOOD leads. I just gave up my booths to my recruits, but the smaller monthly one would pull in $200-$250 in sales & 2-3 bookings. I just did a larger one sponsored by the USO, about 40 or so vendors. I let my recruits work it with me. We did $581.65 in sales. I booked one show before any of the recruits arrived and got a recruit lead, the 3 of them together only booked 1 show, but 2 of the 3 are still REALLY new, so they are still learning what to say. What I do is just make it a suggestion when they mention how much they love the product ... "you should think about hosting a show so that you can earn (use "earn", not "get" - semantics, but it works!) lots of stuff for free and at a discount!" That usually gets them intrigued enough to want more info.

 

[Sheila]

Added note ... the bookings are gold! They are worth a lot more than the sales. You go do those 2 shows, book 1-3 off each of those, you now have commissionable sales on 2-6 more shows, then the bookings off each of those, etc., etc., etc.!!! It's a huge snowball. Don't consider 2 bookings a loss ... tackle them, stay on top of the host coaching & make them very successful shows!

 

[mountainmama74]

I don't ever do booths expecting sales! I'm looking for leads - both booking and recruiting! I don't think two solid bookings is bad at all (especially if you look at it like Sheila said above!).

 

[wadesgirl]

I don't ever do booths expecting sales! I'm looking for leads - both booking and recruiting! I don't think two solid bookings is bad at all (especially if you look at it like Sheila said above!).

Totally agree! You never know what to expect from booths. Call all those no's and tell them they one a free kitchen show. Who knows, maybe that day just wasn't the day for them!

 

[cookingwithlove]

I agree bookings are gold. I would much rather have 2 bookings on the books than a ton of leads saying "call me later for a show". I am not sure what you did for a drawing, but call everyone that came into your booth and tell them that although they did not win the drawing you are offering them your runner up prize of a free cooking show. If you leave a message tell them to call you back by XX date, otherwise you will offer it to the next person on your list. They do not need to know that you are offering to everyone.

You make your money in the future on the bookings that come from this fair. Keep track of these 2 shows and see where they go. I bet you will be surprised. My entire business is built on fairs. I have no family and only a handful of friends in my area so I needed to find business elsewhere when I first started.

I only expect to sell a lot of product at Christmas fairs. I bring small things to other fairs just to draw people into the booth. I never sell enough to cover the cost of the booth. You recoop the cost by the shows that you book.

The drawing and the products for sale are what lures them into the booth, but you need to be talking to each person as they come in. Show them the specials coming up and ask them for the business, ie, joining or to host. Do not expect people to just walk up and sign up to host. Also, if I am getting bad traffic into the booth, I stand just on the outside of the booth and hand out recipe cards to start a conversation. Lastly, your tables should not be set up like a bar. The tables should be pushed to the back and sides of the booth, it is more inviting for people to "walk" into your booth than for you to be standing behind a table.

I have attached my drawing slip. It is different than to on in our kit and geared more towards fairs.

Stick with it. 2 bookings is a success!

 

[AmyDare]

Do away with a free drawing & offer a sale. Free drawings gave me dead leads. Sales (advertised on a tri-fold board to draw them in) is where I get my best deals.

Do you have picture of the tri-fold board, or is there somewhere I can look to get ideas as to what you put on the board?

 

[Sheila]

I just looked, and apparently I haven't been taking photos of the boards. I'm not doing very many booths anymore, I've given them all away to my downline since I'm about to move to a new military duty station. But here's the jest of what I've been doing ... I put a big Pampered Chef logo at the top of the middle section and then put the florescent smaller sized poster board sticking up off the top of the two corner bends of the tri-fold board with "SALE" written on it in big black letters. The bright color of the poster board pops out at them from peripheral vision even from across the room & pulls them in!

Then advertise your sale on the tri-fold board. On stoneware & simple additions months, I offer PC's 20% and an additional 10%, so 30% off. People can't pass up a deal like that!

For March, I'd advertise the "buy $60 and get the bamboo spoons free" deal, but add an extra incentive on top. Like maybe "buy $100 and get free shipping" (which is a huge deal out here because we have to pay direct shipping rates). And "buy $150 and get 10% off" (very worth it to me, since I usually make 27%-29% each month).

For April, I'd push the Trifle Bowl! You could do extras on top of that too ... like maybe buy 2 & get the 3rd one for $20 (or $19), etc. If you sold 3, the minimum commission for 29X3@20%=$17.40 so if you give away $9 or $10 of that, you still make a little bit of a profit, but you also have a new lead to add to your newsletter! And those leads remember how happy they were with the deal they got from you and tend to come back as repeat customers!

For me, I'd make $23.49 - $25.23 on 3 of the $29 Trifle Bowls depending on my commission for the month ... so it's pretty cost effective for me to do that for a one day event. I still make regular commission off my other monthly sales, so getting a lower commission for that one day doesn't hurt my bank account, it usually helps! If I add at least 12-15 GOOD leads to my P3 after a 5 hour event and walk away with $200-$250 in sales AND 2-3 bookings, I see it as a WIN situation. I'll end up making waaaaay more than the $9 or $10 that I gave away.