Lotusphere 2011 as an exhibitor (part 4 of 7) #ls11

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Lotusphere 2011 as an exhibitor (part 4 of 7) #ls11

One of the hardest things at any event is to be an exhibitor. I went for the business approach at first and soon figured there was a story to tell.

Lotus is opening it's arms to social business this year, so as an exhibitor we are eager to get down there and show what we can do. We entered into the Lotus Awards, but were not lucky enough to make finalist this year. I know we are new to the game of Lotus software.

we arrive early Sunday to get our floor credentials and find out where our boxes are. Strangely with a major event, some of the shipping desks are not open today at the Swan and they send us to the Dolphin. The Dolphin then tells us they can have a guy go to the Swan shipping area to pull the boxes we need and send them to our room or we can meet him. I suggest we just get them ourselves, but I am informed either way I have to pay some handling fee for the weight of the box. Even if I handle them myself. Ah well we will chalk it up to another cost.

Ok, the the vendor floor is in the basement of the Dolphin, our boxes are in the Swan. So as the new guy I make four trips to carry, drag and curse the warm weather for the 48 pound boxes of shirts, papers and little squeezy balls. Ok, so they weren't 48 pounds so I saved them for last.

we get cleared by security after getting our exhibitor hanging tags and find out pedestal. It is an interesting floor layout and we weave back and forth a few times finding the right swirly set. I am used to floors with nice rows, but this is cool. It does look a little light for 5,000 people but I bet they aren't done setting up. We take a quick peek at our neighbors, seems like they kind of do what we do. I wonder if they grouped us?

Everything is set up, papers tucked away. I dropped the squeezy balls and they went everywhere, but we got them. I think. So off to a quick lunch and then the evening party! We show up at the evening parry and our guy arrived late due to weather. What, he can't get in? The badge? The place closed already? Well crap. We leave him. I am not proud of this but we do leave him.

Monday we attend the opening session along with everyone else. I was hoping to see some mention to send everyone down to the floor or highlight some vendors. Seems the only highlighted customers and a couple winners. There was a lack of demos. I look at that as good so we can show our stuff. Off we go to set up and expect the rush!

Monday afternoon hits and the crowd comes in. Strangely most walk up and say scan me and talk a squeezy ball. Not a lot of talk yet. I know, these are the goodie people. Stuff for the kids. I get it.

Monday night arrives! the big launch. All three of us are there are ready to go. We talk to hundreds of people. We get some decent leads I think. We feel good that this will be a great week, even though there is tons of free beer and food tonight. There seems to be some genuine interest. I hope to close a sale or two this week.

Tuesday hits and there are huge gaps of slowness. Lunch and some breaks were great. But this floor being all cement is tough. I wish we had those little pads the Wal Mart greeters stand on. With only one stool we take turns. Phone signal sucks, big time. We have one Internet connection and brought a tiny router so we can share that. I head to the couches for the tomes there is no one.

Tuesday night we are closed. I am confused. Not another event pushing people down?

Wednesday back to the grind. We have hundreds of squeezy balls left. I give them to everyone, scanned or not. A few more leads, but no sales. Where are the checkbooks and purchase orders? We have good stuff.

By later afternoon some vendors are coming around wanting to trade giveaways. We gladly oblige. Wow, bucky balls? Cool! Some t-shirts and tons of pens. But something did throw us off. Some want to trade copies of scanned badges. To make mega lists. I am not sure what the protocol is there. We normally don't but they make it seem like it is common here. We opt out of that but I see more doing it.

So we pack up. I am staying tonight, but they are flying out to get home and start prepping to follow up leads. The Wednesday night party is a blast and I wish we had spent more time just meeting people to see what they needed.

We downloaded all of our scanned badges and split them up to start calling. Lotus didn't give us much else to go on beside some guidelines of what we can and cannot do while on the floor. Strangely some of the vendors seemed to have broken some of the rules, but they had huge booths compared to us.

So here we sit the week after. Some good leads came back with us for sure. We didn't have a purchase order in hand or even a credit card when we left Orlando but the future looks promising. Lotus laid out a clear vision and we know how we fit in. We just hope to get our solution in front of more people in the long term. I am not sure how the sales team works and we have no input to reach them direct. It seemed as if there was a billion of them running around. I am not even sure who handles our area as a business partner and exhibitor.

We were also approached about some user groups. I had no idea the community was so strong. We will be investigating those as well. Lotus is vibrant and we are glad we took the step to exhibit. I hope they leads turn out and get some sales or we have to evaluate another path due to costs.

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