The Changing Face of Trade Shows

My last post got a lot of responses from people, and Jeff from sales decided to share his own experience from a recent trade show. In Jeff's own words and a picture of Jeff, so you can visualize him actually telling you about his experience.

"While attending a trade show in Las Vegas, I had a few observations on how America and thus the world is doing business. This show was traditionally among the top five attended trade shows annually in Las Vegas. This year attendance was down 35% from last year. Sad to say, last week the Las Vegas Convention Bureau announced that hotel occupancy for the first week of February was down 40%. Not good news for Vegas for now, but in the long run, maybe.

AHH, but not all is lost. When I was walking the show, talking with exhibitors I heard good news. The “Looky Lous” or in the construction industry, the “two fisted beer drinkers” were, for the most part, gone. So who was attending? Simple answer, the Decision Makers! As many exhibitors informed me, the number of leads may be down, but the quality of the lead is very high. Instead of construction companies sending a job foreman to the trade show for a week of vacation, the Presidents, Senior Vice Presidents or the Head of Purchasing were walking the floors and looking for deals.

More good news. Like the attendee’s, the exhibiting manufacturers did not have their Regional Sales Manager or National Account Manager working the exhibit booth. They were out working their territories and hopefully selling in this economy, or at the very least letting their customers know that they are still alive. The CEO’s, Presidents, Senior Vice Presidents, Directors of Corporation Communications, Directors of International Marketing and in some cases Senior Engineer’s were working the booths.

Bottom line, the decision makers from both sides of the isle were there, the equipment was carefully looked over, and pending projects were discussed and even the future was talked about. Maybe the attendance was down, maybe the exhibitors learned it doesn’t take key chains and drink insulators to sell equipment worth $2K to $2M. What it takes is getting back to the basics of doing business. Putting the correct parties together at one time. My comment as I walked away from talking with a VP of this or that company was, “Now lets sell, put America back to work and the World will follow.” To which I would see a smile and two thumbs up!"


Thanks Jeff.

Keeping Up

We live in the instant popcorn society where everything we want is at our fingertips. At least we think that is how life is right now, but the downside to this is the ever-changing technology, and developments in software and translation technologies. Recently, our production and sales teams sat down for a presentation on a new software that claims it will revolutionize the translation industry. The translation industry is heading towards a more vendor-client interaction system. Clients want to review their translations before it is desktop published, and they want access to their translation memories.

There are several programs that are hosted on the web, and with license keys, both translators and clients have access to the translation memory. One problem that arises with this new technology is the unauthorized editing and updating of the translation memory without a notification system. Now, the client's reviewer changes some part of the translation, updates the memory and forgets to notify the translation vendor. What happens, it becomes inconsistent the next time the translator uses the memory for future projects. A setup that allows access without notifications or a status ticker that indicates the last time the memory was accessed will alleviate the inconsistencies and the future use of unapproved translations.