We were delighted to attend CHS 2019 at the First Direct Arena in Leeds on Tuesday. Now that the exhaustion from such a long day is starting to wear off, we thought we would type up five things we learned from this excellent show.
Find Your Niche
By finding your niche, we simply mean finding a show that works for you. In our case, we were delighted to find (unless we missed someone!) that we were the only entertainment provider in attendance. Some might think ‘oops, they went to the wrong place’ but no, we were merely the only ones to book a spot. The result? Anybody looking for entertainment in the future would naturally gravitate to us and we would get more valuable contacts for the future.
Gimmicks Are Great
There are a number of stalls at a conference and it’s hard to stand out. Although you might not want to have a gimmick, they really are excellent for convincing people to stop by your stand. Sweets and cupcakes are always popular, we opted for a magician which worked wonderfully (see video below) and having an opportunity to sit with the Iron Throne was too good an opportunity for most of us to pass up. Less popular? Well, our tote bags didn’t exactly fly off the shelf…
A Central Meeting Point Is A Must
It’s often difficult to arrange to meet familiar faces at conferences. Phone reception goes, WiFi drops and when you can agree to meet, how do you explain where? “By the…stand,” is a tad vague. Thankfully CHS 19 have solved this problem for the last few years by putting a Meeting Tipi in the centre of the room! With a chance to grab a coffee and sit down, this is undoubtedly an innovation that we would love to see at other conferences.
Putting Names to Face is Fab
Part of modern work life is sending a lot of emails and talking on the phone. We might chat daily to people and never actually meet them until a conference comes along. It’s just the best feeling ever to finally put a name to a face and find out that you are both so much more than what you write in an email. Of course we should know all this considering there has been one mega successful sitcom about this phenomenon but we thought we’d highlight it anyway.
Having Too Many is Better Than Not Enough
By the end of CHS 19 we will admit that we had some leftovers on our table. At first we were disappointed that we hadn’t been able to hand out all of our brochures and tote bags (we were happy to keep the remaining Love Hearts to ourselves mind you) but when you think about it, having leftovers at a show is a great result! It means that you printed enough brochures, bags and business cards for everybody who came to your stand and can use the others throughout the rest of the year. This is far better than having to apologetically shrug as guests walk away from your stand without a price list.
This blog could go on and on about the wonders of CHS 19 and how much we enjoyed it but we thought we’d leave it here. If you popped by our stand, we do hope you enjoyed meeting Rich the magician alongside Beckie, Adam and Antonio and we cannot wait to do it all again next year!