The Campbell Academy team went to the Scottish dentistry show last weekend for the second year in a row.
It's a fascinating exercise.
We've never really done that type of stuff too much before (we've done little bits and bobs at different shows in England), but we decided to commit to the Scottish dentistry show because we were launching the academy in Scotland, with Wrights in Dundee and clinically in Glasgow, and we wanted to get some attention and to let people know we were there.
The dentistry shows, and all trade shows, are a fascinating concept.
They're probably the closest you will ever get to working in the market.
The point of being there is to meet people and to be noticed and to connect with people who are interested in the thing that you are selling.
Different people have different approaches to this, ways of getting attention.
One guy close by to us who also provides implant courses had some sort of vacuum cabinet thing, which fired air upwards; you would stand inside, and the door would be closed (plexiglass), the fans would start, and you had to pick up as much tin foil that was floating around as you could within a designated time.
There was a Top Gear-style leaderboard where you could win a prize at the end, I assume.
That's all well and good. I’m just not exactly sure how that relates to trying to get someone to trust you to provide them with dental education.
What happens at the shows is that there are lots of people that come around looking for free stuff, and really, you have to have something free to give away. We had some Tony's chocolate and some pens and some brochures. If you don't have anything to give away, the only people that are gonna come to see you are the ones who already know you, and they're likely already to be your customers.
What you're trying to do is to say ‘ here I am, and you may be interested in what I have and what I have is’.
It's the original form of marketing, the original form of trying to gather customers for the top end of your funnel.
We had a fantastic show all round, because we had lots and lots of people coming to talk to us about what we offer and the fact that they may be interested.
In the modern world now, you have a barcode on your name badge that you have to wear while you're at the show; if one of the exhibitors (us) scans that barcode, we get your details and you've already provided permission for that.
We collected a lot of barcodes for lots of people that said they were keen to see the stuff that we were doing in Scotland and may be interested to come along.
Some people stand outside their stands, some people make eye contact with as many people as they can, some people say hi and hello, some people don't, some people sit behind in a seat and wait for people to come to them. It’s like a personality test; it's fascinating.
What we subscribe to is the Why of our business.
‘We exist to positively influence as many people as possible through the work that we do and the example that we set’.
And so, anyone who came to talk to us, we tried to help, not just by selling them our courses, but by pointing them in the direction of what they actually needed.
It's interesting to step back to this level, exciting. You're gonna hit about 1 in 10 people when you do that, and so it's a totally different way to sell than that which we do in a 1 to 1 with a consultation in the practice.
It's actually what your TCOs are doing all the time, though and stepping back to do it and to understand Dan Pink's A, B, C of selling (attunement, buoyancy and clarity) is fundamental to make it work.
The B in Dan Pink's selling is buoyancy; that's where you're able to cast off the 9 people who are not actually interested to find the one.
We signed up for 2 more years while we were at the show; it's that effective for us, perhaps because we understand exactly why we're there and what we're for.
Blog Post Number - 4573