Purpose of visiting the exhibition

　It seems that Director M is visiting the exhibition for the following reasons.

■ Market trend research
■ Finding partners
■ Finding customers

I see, that's exactly what I'd say. I'm sure that many of our readers have this as their main purpose for attending an exhibition. Being able to quickly catch the latest information at local booths and making unexpected encounters is a major benefit of attending an exhibition.

Walking around the exhibition hall

Manager M says that at exhibitions, he "starts from the entrance and visits all the booths that catch his eye." This is because, "there are so many exhibitors at exhibitions these days that it's difficult to narrow down the companies you want to get information about. You only ever feel like you're right on the money with one or two companies."

Of course, it's only natural that the more exhibitors there are, the more booths he wants to visit. However, as he visited every booth he could think of, many tragedies awaited him...

Four common issues

When I asked him, "What are the problems you face when visiting exhibitions?", he replied, "There are so many!" with a look of joy on his face. He candidly revealed a variety of "common problems."

① I don't want people to think I'm slacking off or playing around.
As mentioned at the beginning, the number of exhibitions is increasing year by year, but Director M fears more than anything that people will think, "How many exhibitions has he been to?" In particular, overseas business trips require a lot of money, so he feels even more pressured.

 2. There is no time to organize the information obtained, making it difficult to share information.
When visiting an exhibition, it is an essential mission to bring back useful information or other "gifts" for the team. However, busy Director M does not have the time to carefully organize the information about the dozens of booths he visited.
On the other hand, if you share only the points that you think are important with your team, the volume of information you share will probably not be enough. As a result, if your team thinks, "I spent so much time on this, and that's all the information I got?", it will lead to ①. 

3. “Important points” vary from person to person
For example, suppose that 100 pieces of information are obtained during an exhibition visit, and Manager M decides that number 50 is "particularly important" and shares it with his team. However, there may be a team member for whom number 97, or even more information, is important. It is extremely troublesome and wasteful that the information that is truly necessary cannot be delivered to the people who need it because of the limited amount of information that can be communicated to those around you. 

④ Forget
Human memory is truly unreliable. Moreover, how many people can remember everything they saw and heard at the many booths they visited in a day? If you were to "verbally share only fragmented information you remember with those around you," it could end up wasting not only your own time, but also the precious time of the other person.

Gaining qualitative intelligence

It is difficult to "obtain results that directly lead to sales" by visiting an exhibition alone, but it is true that "obtaining information that will lead to future payouts" directly affects ROI and is very important. And such information often comes from casual conversations at the venue.

For example, every company usually posts information that is neatly summarized on their website. In a sense, this can be described as "quantitative information." However, the interactions at the exhibition are between people. Depending on how you ask questions, you may be able to find out valuable information from your competitors that is not posted on their websites.

If you can collect the "qualitative information (intelligence)" that you have obtained in this way and share it with your own team, you will at least be unlikely to be accused of "slacking off or playing around."

Eliminate subjective bias

Everyone who works in a company has their own mission, and each person needs different information. Therefore, it would be best for everyone to go to the exhibition together, but unfortunately, this is often not realistic due to issues such as man-hours. In other words, someone like Director M is the "representative."

The important thing here is that the representative should not judge whether the information is necessary or not based on his/her own subjective opinion in the process of collecting and organizing it. If the representative can take home as much information as possible in its raw form and create a cycle in which all the relevant parties can view it, the action of visiting the exhibition will be highly valuable.

Using the tools

　Manager M had fatal problems that were beyond the reach of humans: "I don't have time to organize information" and "I forget." In this case, we would like to focus on the use of tools.

In reality, if you visit dozens of booths in a day, it is unrealistic to carefully document and share what you see and hear there. Writing by hand, or even typing into the memo function of a PC or smartphone, is not an easy task. However, the harsh reality is that in order to "not forget," you "must record immediately."

To solve these problems, there is no choice but to utilize today's excellent technologies. When Manager M realized this, he had a dramatic encounter with a certain tool.