In this issue...

Tradeshow Fast Fact

Tradeshow Fast Fact

Nine out of ten attendees at trade shows have not been contacted by an exhibitor's sales person in the past twelve months.

- CEIR Research Report

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Hurricane Update
‘Worst Natural Disaster in U.S History’ Bringing Out the Best in Funeral Service
NFDA is Ready and Standing by

The Latest Update

As reported in recent messages to members, NFDA is working diligently to assist funeral directors in the Gulf Coast region who have been affected by Hurricane Katrina. Many people in the area are describing the affected areas as a “war-zone.” We are calling upon you to aid your fellow colleagues who so desperately need your help. Their need and situation is urgent. Since the Special Bulletin that went out last Friday, here are the most recent updates.

President Whitaker Visits Affected Region
On Friday, NFDA President Doggett Whitaker and his wife, Christie, traveled to Mississippi. They stayed over the weekend to help funeral directors and assess just where volunteer funeral directors would be needed the most. On Monday, the Whitakers went to New Orleans where they continued to assist members, and are now headed to Baton Rouge. NFDA President-elect Bob Biggins will also be traveling to the area and will be providing support needed. NFDA’s immediate goal is to be available where needed, get funeral directors back on their feet, and provide a nationally coordinated effort on behalf of NFDA members and funeral directors nationwide.

Many funeral homes have been destroyed throughout the Gulf Coast region. We have been in continuous communication with FEMA (www.fema.org) and DMORT (www.dmort.org). At the same time, NFDA is proactively working at the direction of the Mississippi and Louisiana state funeral directors associations to help in their processes and need for assistance.

We Need Your Help
It is anticipated that more supplies and volunteers will be needed in the near future, as soon as this weekend. If you can make a monetary donation to help your fellow funeral directors in need it would be greatly appreciated. We would like to thank the hundreds of funeral directors who have already volunteered and offered contributions and supplies. Thanks to your quick response, progress has already been made and much needed resources have been delivered to the Gulfport region. “This is just what funeral directors needed and could not get. They broke down and cried when they saw the supplies,” said Randy Norred, a funeral director from Georgia who is coordinating supplies.

If you have already volunteered, we will contact you when we know exactly when the Mississippi and Louisiana funeral directors associations need your help. We are in the process of coordinating a group of volunteers who will be the first group to provide the needed relief to funeral directors in the area as early as this weekend.

NFDA Ready to Assist
NFDA staff will be available over the upcoming weekend again to help assist members and funeral directors with questions or help coordinate any needed response. If you are contacted by the media and are uncomfortable with the questions being asked we can help, please call NFDA. We will soon have specific media information available online since state associations have already been receiving calls and questions. A key point that you can communicate to reporters is a quote from NFDA President, Doggett Whitaker:

“Funeral directors are doing everything they can to assure families that their loved ones are taken care of with dignity in the midst of chaos.” - NFDA President R. Doggett Whitaker Jr, CFSP.

NFDA continues to stand by and we’re ready to assist you. If we can help in any way, please call us at 800-228-6332.

Stories from the South

NFDA is offering updates and a method of communication for funeral directors.
Visit NFDA’s message board at http://nfda.blogspot.com to read and share compelling stories and updates, especially if you have been personally affected. The urgency of this tragic event truly shows in the following postings:

Chad Riemann of Riemann Funeral Homes, and president of MFDA says:

Monday night at dusk, a lady drove up to the funeral home in her truck. When she got out she said, ‘I have my father.’ When I looked, she and the volunteer fire chief had him on a ladder strapped down with an extension cord. The water flooded her brother's house and her father was unable to escape … I am sure that there will be many stories like this when this nightmare is over, and I hope that we are able to provide the kind of care and celebration of life that her father deserves, regardless of circumstances.

A Louisiana State University student states:

... My friends and I volunteered last night at the special needs shelter on LSU's campus and will continue to do so throughout the week … I met Olivia and her mom Ms. Jennifer. Ms. Jennifer and her family had evacuated to the Superdome on Sunday because they did not have a car or another way out of New Orleans. Ms. Jennifer's elderly mother was with them and she had many health problems. Early Tuesday morning Olivia, Ms. Jennifer and her mother were evacuated out of the Superdome … She told me that she had lost her four other children somewhere along the way. She was frantic to find them and desperately trying to console 6-year-old Olivia and her sick mother. We tried to find them clothes to change into but there were none left. We found Olivia’s toys to try to take her mind off the horrible circumstances. When I told them I was going home but that I would be back in the morning Olivia latched on to me and told me she wanted to come home with me.

What You Can Do

Looking for a way to help your funeral service colleagues? Here’s a great place to start!

• Volunteer and temporary employment opportunities. On Wednesday, Sept. 7, NFDA received a call from relief and recovery authorities working with FEMA. We are glad to finally be able to report some specific news from federal officials related to the recovery efforts. The company that FEMA has chosen to outsource the recovery work in Louisiana to is Kenyon, a worldwide disaster management company, a wholly owned subsidiary of Service Corporation International. Kenyon asked us for names and phone numbers of NFDA members and funeral directors who are interested in a paid three-week employment situation. We will only forward your name to Kenyon if you give us permission by completing the form that was sent to you in an earlier communication or by calling us. In the meantime, NFDA will continue to collect names of volunteers to help provide the necessary and anticipated support to the LA and MS Funeral Directors Associations. To volunteer or make your name available to Kenyon call NFDA at 800-228-6332 or visit www.nfda.org.
  
  

• Donate funds or supplies. Monetary donations to NFDA’s Disaster Relief Fund are still needed and appreciated. NFDA is also seeking funeral service supplies and general supplies to assist victims. The Georgia Funeral Directors Association has volunteered to act as a staging point. If you are interested in donating funds or supplies, please download the form online and fax it back to NFDA. The form can be found at http://www.nfda.org/page.php?pID=770. Items of immediate need are: water, toiletries and nonperishable food items, which can be sent directly to:
  
  
  Katrina Relief
  c/o Northside Chapel Funeral Directors
  12050 Crabapple Road
  Roswell, GA 30075-2422
  
  

• If you have any local connections to someone in your community that could help with large quantities of water, toiletries, moving trucks and other necessities that may be needed, please let us know—immediately.
  
  

• DO NOT contact New Orleans funeral directors about shipping bodies. Funeral directors in the affected areas have their own struggles now, and cannot accept bodies at this time, (per the Louisiana funeral director’s executive director.)
  
  

• Reflect and pray. We ask that all members and friends of funeral service continue to offer their prayers for those who have lost their lives, their families and friends, the injured, the rescue and recovery workers, and the entire nation during this time of need.

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The 2005 NFDA Expo Brings Customers to You

Trade shows are an investment in your company's bottom line. It is a more cost effective way to gather your leads in one place rather than you going all over the country to meet these same potential customers. Although the costs related to your trade show experience represent a significant investment for your company, the fact is you would have to spend money to reach your target market anyway. The question is how do you spend your money? The NFDA Expo is the most cost effective, savvy way in which to reach your target market. No other event brings as many funeral home owners together as the NFDA Convention and Expo. The decision makers are the attendees.

Join us this year in Chicago, October 2-5, for an unforgettable experience that makes good business sense. Call 800-228-6332 TODAY about exhibiting because in a couple weeks there will be no booths available. To view the available booths online, visit http://www.nfda.org/expocad2/shows/expo2005/

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Work Your Leads Six to 12 Months After the Show

Electronic lead retrieval will help ensure a complete follow-up to all prospects that stop by your booth. Your trade show investment should be measured from the beginning of the show to one full year after the show. Lead retrieval will accurately tell you your prospects will be in the “buying” mood. Invest the few hundred dollars in lead retrieval to ensure maximize return on your trade show investment. Click below to download the order form:

http://www.nfda.org/files/2005expo/exhibitors/2005leadretrieval.pdf

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Let Attendees Know You Are Exhibiting

Make your booth stand out amongst the masses by ordering the registration list TODAY. Click below to download the order form:

http://www.nfda.org/files/2005expo/exhibitors/2005RegOrderForm.pdf

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Trade Show Dos and Don'ts
By Jim Schakenbach, Managing Partner, SCT Group Inc.

Every year the trade-show debate rages within just about every company that has the potential to include show participation in its marketing budget. At the heart of the matter is the question "just how effective are trade shows, REALLY?" The answer is a definitive "it depends..."

It depends in large part upon what a company puts into it. Attendees who come to shows these days are there because they really want (and need) to be. What does that mean for the exhibitor? Fewer "tire-kickers" and more qualified, interested, potential customers.

How do you capitalize on this opportunity? Let's start with the most common mistakes exhibitors make:

Creating unintentional barriers. Ever notice that the booths with the most traffic are also the ones that are easiest to get into? They have wide, inviting spaces that seem to blend into the aisles so that attendees can pass easily from a common traffic area into a company's selling zone, often without even knowing it. That means removing those ubiquitous eight-foot folding tables that people erect across the front of their booth space, with carefully fanned out product literature and stony-faced sales reps sitting impassively behind this protective barrier, waiting for someone to stop and talk to them. Waiting and waiting and waiting...

Put the cell phone down. Let me say it again. PUT THE CELL PHONE DOWN. How many times have you walked past a booth, only to see a representative talking earnestly into a cell phone, staring off at some invisible horizon, usually with a finger pressed into his or her open ear in a desperate attempt to hear the other person. Totally oblivious to the hundreds of potential sales walking right past them just a few feet away, these clueless individuals instead are concentrating all their efforts on a single person they can't even see. Does that make any sense? Of course not.

"I'm not sure..." Some companies, desperate for personnel to staff a booth, will tap employees with little or no product knowledge or, worse, because they have a pretty face. Then, when confronted with a question of perhaps even modest technical difficulty, they respond sheepishly, "gee, I'm not sure...I don't really handle that product....the sales manager will be here this afternoon, can you come back then?". If someone is staffing the booth, they ought to have at least a passing knowledge of what's on display so that they can provide potential customers with more information than what they came in with. There's no substitute for knowledge, even if it's just a little.

Does all this sound depressingly familiar? That's because hundreds of companies commit these violations on an all-too-frequent basis. But that means opportunity for you, if you choose instead to maximize your trade show participation and create an effective, interesting lead-gathering sales machine.

Here are ways to do just that:

Create open spaces. Remember those eight-foot tables? If you must use them, stick them on a back wall or along the side drapes. Open up the front of your booth and you open yourself up to sales opportunities. Keep product displays to the side or back of your booth so that you can draw people in to view them. Use pedestals wherever possible to create islands of interest. Removing physical barriers also removes psychological ones.

Create excitement. Opt for a single, large color image in your booth that graphically depicts what your company offers or does. Ideally, a person walking past should be able to glance at your display and immediately determine "oh, they're involved in (blank)". The added benefit is ease of set-up and transportation, lack of clutter, and often less expense - sometimes it's cheaper to create a single, larger graphic than it is several smaller ones.

Leave sales literature in the box. Or even better, back at the office. Companies waste an enormous amount of money printing up beautiful four-color sales materials and stacking them in come-hither piles at their booths where everyone then scoops them up and unceremoniously dumps them in a trash can outside the exhibit hall because they've got too much stuff to carry. Instead, have just a few brochures or catalogs available discreetly under your table so that when you have a really live candidate, you can offer literature if the situation calls for it. Use your valuable literature instead as a response sales tool that you can mail to your leads when you get back home. This provides you with another reason to contact them.

Use real people. Remember, this is your opportunity to show the industry the breadth and depth of your company, so bring out your most talented, knowledgeable people. If that means engineers who aren't used to the light of day, make sure you pair them up with experienced sales people who can run interference for them if they become uncomfortable. Make sure you have the intellectual firepower in the booth to handle the kind of questions you're likely to get. The quicker you can answer a potential customer's question, the quicker he or she becomes an actual customer.

Conclusion: Less is more. In short, the ideal trade-show display has fewer barriers, less clutter, singular themes or images, and more opportunities for contact and prospecting. By using these guidelines and a little common sense, you can turn even today's diminished trade shows into the effective marketing tools they ought to be.

James D. Schakenbach is President/Managing Partner of SCT Group Inc., a high technology marketing communications agency serving clients internationally in fiberoptics, data- and telecommunications, medical technology, IT, and process control. He has a BA in journalism from Washington & Lee University, Lexington, Virginia .

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