Greater than 3 minutes, my friend!
Being an introvert and promoting your business IRL How I survived at my first trade show visit
Lies. It wasn’t my first time. When I was freelancing part-time, I was International Business Developer at an IT company. I attended my first trade show with them in Cannes, France. And hey, despite being an introvert, I did my job quite well. I mean, I managed to be enough confident when promoting the company’s products. Within six months, international sales improved significantly.
Let’s fast forward a little. Since last year, when I was the employee of an engineering company, I didn’t really get the chance of dealing with the public. Last March I registered my business. Since then, I work full-time from home, and my interactions with other people – prospects and clients included – have been mostly limited to virtual communication.
In addition, being the mother of a toddler and a baby has really limited my “me time outdoors”. On the other hand, seeing all my colleagues going to industry conferences and trade shows made me really, really want to attend some business event to meet potential clients.
After some research, I learned there was going to be a trade show in my city, in one of my areas of interest: Med/Pharma. What a great opportunity for me, I thought.
I was very excited. The night before the event, I couldn’t sleep. I stayed up the whole night, walking back and forth in my home office. It was my first trade show. For my business.
I came up with an idea to ‘break the ice’: conducting a survey-interview about trends in pharmaceutical marketing in Italy.
Marketing is one of the areas I’m specializing in, so why not using this expedient to promote myself? I thought it was a great idea.
My dear fellows, how wrong I was. Actually, the idea wasn’t wrong per se. Its purpose, the purpose I choose for it – that was wrong.
My approach to the first three booths was an utter disaster. My elevator pitch was absolutely awful. I quickly introduced myself, focused on explaining what the survey was about, left my business card and ran away with a pounding heart and a red face.
And then, something happened.
The next booth I was visiting appeared to be that of a marketing agency. There was this woman sitting at a table, and she was staring at me with an inquiring look. I timidly displayed my smile. She invited me to sit at the table, too.
She introduced herself. Her name was Giovanna.
Giovanna asked me why I was there. I replied with the horrible elevator pitch I mentioned before. I told her I would have liked her to fill in the survey. She kept on asking questions, screening my facial expressions, the tone of my voice, my gestures.
Finally, she asked me to tell her the real reason why I was there. A part of me wanted to run away and hide somewhere. But I couldn’t let my shyness prevail.
“I’m here to offer translation, interpreting and copywriting services. I’m specializing in business and marketing, and pharmaceutical marketing is one of the areas I work in”, I replied, “and frankly, this is the first time I promote my services at a trade show. I wouldn’t blame you if you’re having a second thought on my persuading skills. I swear I do much better when my face is hidden behind a computer screen!” It was at that point that I let go of my quirkiest and most honest side. We both laughed.
Giovanna told me she admired my courage, my strength. She told me that I need to be more straightforward, because that’s the only way to find out if a potential client may need my services. She said that I can make it, that I just need practice, and that in the end, things will get smoother. She also told me that the survey shouldn’t be used as an excuse to talk to potential clients, and that it was a great, interesting idea to use in a second moment.
Yes, dear fellows. The survey was just an excuse. My excuse to lessen the uneasy feeling of public exposure. To ease to the pain of being out of the comfort zone. To protect myself from the fear of rejection.
I – we introverts, shouldn’t be afraid of selling our services in real life. Because we run a business just like everyone else. Because we may find a Giovanna on our path, who would test us face to face, and eventually tell us that she’s interested in our services.
So, how about you? Are you ready to go to your first trade fair?
Audra De Falco 
Pieter Beens 
Sherif Abuzid 
Thank you for sharing this lovely post, Antonella! Going to an industry event or a trade show is still something I need to do. It’s really hard for introverts. Especially when you’re spending so much time all alone. I think the best advice would be just to do it. Just go out there and show your face and be honest about your intentions. After all, people appreciate honesty and transparency.
Thank you so much for sharing your experience with us. I hope it’ll help someone to overcome their fears. I’m going to make this story our #PostOfTheDay 🙂
“I think the best advice would be just to do it. Just go out there and show your face and be honest about your intentions.” – Well said, Dmitry. It is the best way to show you’re confident, especially in an environment crowded with sales people. And it saves time; at some point I was able to figure out who could be a potential client and who couldn’t. 🙂 Thank you very much for giving me the chance of speaking out!
You’re welcome, Antonella! Congrats on sharing your first story! Really looking forward to read more about your journey in translation! Keep sharing! 🙂
“I think the best advice would be just to do it. Just go out there and show your face and be honest about your intentions.” – that’s advice that *can* work, if you’ve got a good dose of chutzpah and a bit of luck. But there are other things you can do to reduce the ‘trade fair nerves’. I used to sell translations rights for books before I became a full-time translator myself, and trade fairs accounted for about 90% of our sales – we had to get them right! So each one was meticulously planned, starting several months in advance. We chose the exhibitors who were most ‘interesting’ to us as potential clients, and tried to guess how our offer would fit seamlessly in with what they were already doing – that was always the hardest part for me, but it gets easier with practice, age and cynicism 😉 Then we’d contact our targets to tell them that we’d be there and that we were interested in talking to them. If you’ve got an appointment with the Head of Purchasing, you really have to step up and show your face, otherwise you look really silly and you’ve wasted someone else’s time. 😉
Lovely advice on choosing the most interesting targets, Nigel! Planning and knowing what you’re doing can definitely help with nerves. But I guess there is no way to get it right from the first time. It’s all about practice 🙂
I definitely agree that you’re not going to get it right first time, unless it’s by sheer luck. I mean, I can’t tell you, or Antonella, or anyone else how to choose their clients or how to pitch their business, because each our businesses is different, and each of us has different priorities and different personalities.
I mean, I could give you some general ideas, and you can get training (hopefully from people who know much more about such things than I do, it’s not hard to find them!), but the decision has to be your own, because it’s your business.
And can’t agree that it’s all about practice. Experience helps, as long as you’ve been able to feed yourself while getting that experience, but there’s also preparation, hard work and luck. You can’t do anything about the experience and the luck, which is why I wanted to point out the importance of preparation.
To be fair, I interpreted the “just do it” part as “just get rid of the fear of being out of the comfort zone”. I am not suggesting by no means to just go there without doing your homework. As a “newbie”, it’s already hard because I am aware I don’t get the whole picture, so planning ahead what next is the minimum, the most sensible thing to do. It’s something we will fine-tune little by little. And we will make a lot of mistakes, thinking of having clue of what we’re doing when in reality we don’t. Thank you for such a great piece of advice, Nigel! 😉 It’s always appreciated.
That is great advice, Nigel, thanks. We translators don’t talk enough about the steps we should take to prepare the way for trade shows, industry conferences, or any other events where we meet potential direct clients; too often the advice we hear is about the details (like preparing an “elevator speech”) or about psyching ourselves up emotionally. It’s as if we were getting ready to go to a party rather than a professional event! If we want to be taken seriously as professionals, we need to put in the long months of preparation and hard work, just as you describe. What’s lacking in our professional forums is concrete advice for what that preparation and work entails. Advice like yours about what steps to take is invaluable. Since not many people in the translation profession are talking about such things, maybe we have to look elsewhere to learn. I hope you import more such insights to the Open Mic. Thanks!
Thanks for sharing, Antonella! I also mentioned that working from home for about two years I gradually abstract away from real life communication. However, just the day before yesterday I was invited to take part in 1-C Bitrix seminar about online business. I’ve been hesitating whether or not I should go. After reading you blog post I think I should )))
Thanks for reading, Simon, I’m glad you’ve found some inspiration from my post! If I could make it, I’m sure you can, too. Just breathe, and everything will work out fine. Good luck with your seminar!
This gave me motivation to look for fairs and festivals in my town 🙂 Gonna catch ’em all! Thanks Antonella.
You’re welcome Eugenia. Glad you read my article 🙂
Thanks Antonella for the inspiring article! 🙂
You’re welcome! Thanks for reading!
As being an introvertish person myself, the post reminded me of my first experience at a “carreer fair” of a renowned university, where I introduced myself and handed in copies of my CV for HR departments. Our dialogues at the first 2-3 booths were quite awkward 🙂
But I definitely agree with you on “just do it” and how practicing makes it better.
Thanks for the post. 🙂
Practicing and planning ahead what to do, research your potential clients. Figuring out what value your work can bring to them. Thank you for reading 🙂