Too many plumbers overlook the opportunities presented by home and garden shows. Attendance at shows has been increasing every year since the pandemic. Up to 90% of attendees are homeowners. Attendees are typically is 35-64 years old and affluent. They are attending the show because they want to make improvements in the homes and yards.

When plumbing contractors do exhibit, they tend to do a poor job. It’s a last minute, hurried effort and it shows. Here are 12 steps to improve your home show results.

1. Plan Early

Write down the dates of home shows you are interested in. Reserve a booth at the earliest opportunity. Remember, most people will turn to the right when entering a show. Pick a location near the entrance, a food court, or a cross aisle. You want traffic. Back up two months from the show date and start formal planning.

2. Set Goals

What do you want to accomplish? Is it introducing a new product or service? Is it building your mailing list? Is it solving a particular problem? Is it showing the flag (i.e., brand awareness?

3. Market to Your Customer/Prospect List

Before the show, send invitations to your entire customer list. Invite them to attend the show and stop by your booth to say hello. You might include card entitling them to a free gift when they come by. Suggest they schedule a time at the show to meet in your booth and talk about kitchen or bath remodeling opportunities.

4. Design Your Booth 

Start with your goals for the show. If you want to introduce or emphasize a product, everything in the booth design should be focused on that, starting with the banner across the top. Ask a question across the top. If you are focusing this show on your RO systems, ask if people would like better tasting water. If you are focusing on water heaters, ask if people if their water heater is 10 years old.

If you goal is to meet with existing customers and people who know who you are, put your name bold across the top. If you think people are coming to find your company in particular, make it easy for them.

Come up with interactive displays that catch people’s attention. It’s okay to have games if they give you the opportunity to talk with people who are playing them or waiting in line.

5. Giveaways Should Reinforce the Goal

Whatever you give away should align with your goal for the show. It might be as simple as a refrigerator magnet; maybe one that doubles as a coupon. The best things to giveaway are those people will find useful enough to keep around, making it easy to find your phone number and website when there’s a need.

6. Hold a Drawing

Give people an opportunity to enter a drawing for something business related that will help you collect qualified leads. One of the best is an oldest water heater contest where you give away a free water heater to the entry with the oldest water heater, provided they use you to provide professional, code-compliant installation. Everyone who registers is a qualified prospect with an old water heater that needs replacement and a willingness to pay for the installation. Get a supply house to donate the water heater to reduce your expense to virtually nothing. While only one entry will have the oldest water heater, everyone can be a winner and receive a gift certificate with your company. This is a proven and successful lead generation contest.

7. Run a Show Special

Make some special offer that is only good at the show. It could be sale related to a product or service offered, a bundled offer where the homeowner gets a free automatic water shutoff valve with every water heater replaced.

8. Write Qualification Questions

At a home show, you want to spend time with prospects, but it’s possible to waste lots of time shooting the bull with people who will never buy. What are the qualification questions you need to ask to separate good prospects from time wasters? The first one should be, are you a homeowner?

9. Train and Practice

Set up your booth in your warehouse and practice asking questions, collecting leads, and demonstrating products with everyone who will work the booth. As an athletic coach might proclaim, you practice until you get it right, then you practice until you can’t get it wrong.

10. Rotate Your People

Anyone who has ever worked a show booth knows how exhausting it can be. Bring enough people so that you can rotate people out every few hours. When they aren’t working the booth, your team can look for product opportunities and practice competitive intelligence of other plumbing companies exhibiting.

11. Focus

When people are working the booth, that should be the total focus. Remove the chairs. People sitting in chairs, slouching drains energy. Do not look at phones. If it’s necessary to take a call, leave the booth. No food in the booth. No drinks in the booth.

12. Follow Up

Once you collect leads, follow up. Think of them as commodities that will expire. Prioritize and call as soon as possible. Keep calling. Add them to hour in-house mail/marketing list.

Reach out to the Service Roundtable for their “Oldest Appliance Contest” for a turn-key system to running your own oldest furnace contest. For easy to read, inspirational stories with business lessons for plumbers, buy Matt Michel’s book, “Contractor Stories” on Amazon.