Week 2 Project Update: Iges Trade Show

Hey ya’ll, I’m Grace and this month I took on the challenge to set myself up to become a successful sales rep in 30 days. In this project I landed a job as a sales rep, traveled with the company to work a booth at a trade show, networked at mixers with new and existing clientele, created leads lists for my area, making cold calls and emails, and presented material to clientele.

Check out the full project here!

What I Accomplished

This week I flew to Gatlinburg, Tennessee to work a booth for Black Metal Apparel at the Iges Trade Show. I met the company’s administrator on the trip and together we put up the booth, presented to customers, attended networking events, and wrote out orders. The week was insanely packed from working the show from 9-5, then attending Iges sponsored networking events to meet new clientele. This gave me an opportunity to work on my time management and learn how BMA works.

What I Learned

The number one lesson I learned was the importance of networking. Trade shows are about a lot more than just writing orders. They are all about making connections with new clientele and maintaining current ones.

I wrote an article on networking at the Iges show. You can check it out here!

While working the booth, I had the pleasure of being taught how BMA uses Excel to write orders and Dropbox to send them to Steffany (administrator). I also got to sit down with BMA’s top sales rep, who walked me through the ins and outs of presenting the brand to businesses. I got to put his tips to use as I walked new customers through our custom screen print tees and filled out orders. By the end of the show, I had most of the garment prices memorized and a good sense of what products sold best in the 2022 line.

Takeaways

Jumping right in with a company was a great learning experience! I met a ton of business owners (both buyers and exhibitors) and made a bunch of connections.

Having worked alongside Steffany and the top sales rep, I was able to brainstorm some good areas to target for cold emails and visits. Taking over the lower peninsula of Michigan gives me the opportunity to reach out to breweries (a big market living in Grand Rapids, which is beer city USA) and hit towns along the Great Lakes.

Next Week

Next week I will create a leads list for GR breweries. Then I will sit down with the owner of BMA to talk about the trade show and review the leads list I plan to follow with him. With his guidance and a few additional resources (my business cards and uniform pieces should be in that week), I will be ready to hit the ground running.

The biggest bonus of the trip was how beautiful the Smokey’s are this time of year. Check out some pictures from the trip below!