Imagine you’re at a cocktail party, the standard, “What do you do” question gets asked and you reply. “I apply coatings to down-hole tools for the oil and gas industry,” the follow-up is often “Nice weather, eh?”
It’s not that you’re not proud of the business you work for or the industry that you’re in, but for the person on the street it can be a little hard to understand. You know where you will find people who understand? Trade shows.
Trade shows provide the opportunity to be reinforced by fellow industry professionals whose work life revolves around the same things yours does. If they haven’t heard of your company and product they probably want to know more.
Not only do you get professional reinforcement but you get industry news, possible leads and you get to keep an eye on the competition. Inside the walls of your business it’s easy to become insular and focused on the bottom line, at a trade show you get to reconnect with the job, the industry and the people who are in it. We all need to sell and produce more but don’t underestimate the value of a trade show in creating real connections with partners, suppliers and clients.
That’s where Monica Ospina comes in. Ospina is the director of O Trade and Market Access and her company specializes in helping companies access new markets
Ospina has a whole suite of tips and tricks to maximize your trade show time. One of the biggest traps that she finds that trade show attendees fall into is getting caught up in the event and not prioritizing who you need to meet.
“You’ve walked around the entire day and you haven’t met the company or the contact that you really wanted and you’re exhausted,” says Ospina. By the time you do meet that contact your energy is ebbing and you’re not fresh.
Ospina advises trade show attendees to create a must-visit list, a nice-to-visit list and a might-be-nice-to-visit list.
“It’s like when you go to a party and you’re looking for the perfect guy or the perfect lady,” says Ospina. “You want to be fresh and good looking and handsome and beautiful when you meet your ‘must visit’ person. After that of course you’re free to dance with everybody else at the party but you know for sure to secure a dance nice and early with the company you want.”
See Monica’s video tips on getting the most out of your tradeshow attendance
We’ve all had experiences with slick salesmen with memorized elevator pitches, but there’s a reason why the elevator pitch exists. You need to be able to quickly and effectively communicate what it is you do and the services you provide.
While you don’t want it to sound too practiced you do need to be able to quickly explain the benefits of what you do and why should someone trust you. Do you have a long history of success? Do you have an adept management team? Have you made massive investments in research and development? Be sure to bring them up.
Often forgotten in the perpetual dance between business and customer is the power that businesses have in choosing their customers. You have the power, as Ospina says, to decide whom you call and who to accept.
See Monica Ospina’s video tips on choosing your customers
Ospina emphasizes the importance of being selective and choosing companies that you are serious about doing business with. ‘Hiring’ customers should often be seen as important as hiring your employees.
You want customers who are able to adapt to new technologies, who are open to new ideas and with whom you can find ways to bring down costs, coordinate or share information. These are the kinds of customers that businesses need in order to thrive and secure their position in the marketplace.
And why is all of this important? If you’re a small business in Alberta the next boom is coming and it’s called in-situ. In-situ development is a type of oil sands development that uses steam and other technologies to access deep deposits of bitumen. We typically associate the oil sands with mining operations in Fort McMurray but we’re going to see in-situ projects from Cold Lake to Peace River and throughout the southern Athabasca region.
With the distributed nature of in-situ development and the many different companies getting involved in in-situ development small businesses can reach many different levels of the supply chain. Instead of dealing with massive oil companies and their cousins the engineering, procurement and construction companies, small businesses can deal directly with any number of companies that are active in the supply chain. This creates opportunities not just in a small, localized instances but provides the chance to be an active player in a whole new technology that is going to change the way Alberta is taking advantage of its natural resources
See Monica Ospina’s video tips on the oil sands opportunities for small business
So, check out the videos, polish up your trade show skills and be a part of the wave of opportunities that are popping up across Alberta.
