Many small, entrepreneurial retailers struggle with cash flow. Seasonal retailers in particular are confronted with the challenge of stretching their cash through slow periods and then coming up with the cash to build fresh stocks leading back into their busiest periods.

As a result, many small retailers find themselves having to finance these seasonal cash needs using a line of credit and having to secure the loan with collateral. Lenders typically require a personal guarantee from the borrower, but they also require tangible assets to be pledged as collateral. For most retailers, inventory is the only tangible asset significant enough to secure a line of credit.

These types of loans are frequently called asset-based loans. Most small retail loans are asset-based, secured by inventory. There are some retailers, primarily businesses that are a mix of retail and wholesale, that may carry significant accounts receivable balances; for those businesses, the accounts receivables may also be used to secure the loan.

In very simple terms, here’s how most asset-based loans work for retailers. The lender (often with the assistance of an inventory appraisal firm) evaluates the quantity and quality of the inventory. The fundamental question they want to answer is: "If I had to call this loan and liquidate the collateral, how much could I get for the inventory in a liquidation sale?" (This often infuriates a retailer seeking a larger line of credit. "My inventory is worth a lot more than that! Why are they valuing my inventory based on liquidating it? I’m not going out of business!!")

To do this, the lender segregates the inventory to exclude items or categories they don’t want to collateralize, sets aside any additional dollar reserves, and arrives at what is called an advance rate. An advance rate is the percentage of the cost value of the inventory that the lender will lend. Once the advance rate has been set, the amount that may be outstanding on the loan will vary with the amount of inventory on hand.

After arriving at the advance rate, lenders may further cap the outstanding balance on the loan in order to limit their exposure. In addition, they will likely impose a set of financial covenants that the retailer must meet.

For lenders, collateralizing the inventory secures the loan, but for retailers, these loans create a perverse set of incentives"incentives that are often at odds with prudent management decisions. Clearly, a retailer applying for an asset-based loan requires a cash infusion. It’s possible that they are short on cash due to ill-advised capital expenditures or cash withdrawals from the business. More likely, it’s because inventory has built up and is tying up valuable cash, meaning that some portion is excess inventory. Instead of encouraging retailers to address their seasonal cash requirements by tightening up inventories and freeing up that cash, an asset-based loan can actually exacerbate the problem and further weaken the retailer.

For a cash-strapped retailer, an asset-based loan looks like the way to go because it is a way to immediately generate much-needed cash. Once in place, however, an asset-based loan often leads to a problematic mindset: "The more inventory I have, the more I can borrow, and the more I can borrow, the more cash I have." Even worse, it can leave a retailer that’s fully drawn in a real bind: "I have to keep my inventory high (and run up my payables, if necessary) or I’m going to have to pay down my outstanding balance with cash I don’t have." At its most insidious, an asset-based loan can actually lead a retailer to decide not to address the very situation that created the problem in the first place.

For these reasons, the imperative for most small, entrepreneurial retailers is to self-finance as much of their seasonal cash needs as possible. The cash flow generated from each season needs to be used to internally finance the next season’s purchases rather than pay off the loans that financed the previous season’s purchases.

This is where a cash flow plan can really help alter the basic financial structure of the business. It won’t happen overnight, but if each season is planned to continually increase the ending cash flow balance, that will leave an ever-increasing amount of cash available to self-finance the next season. This incrementally reduces the amount that needs to be borrowed, until, in the best-case scenario, the business can ultimately completely self-finance its seasonal cash needs. If unavoidable, an asset-based loan should be narrowly viewed as providing a short-term window of opportunity to finally get the financial structure of the business back on a sustainable footing.

An asset-based loan may not start you on a downward spiral, but all too often it can exacerbate it by leading you to take your eye off the real work that needs to be done to correct the problems that have led to the cash flow crunch in the first place. It’s one thing to have a line of credit available if you need it, but it’s another thing entirely if you find yourself relying on it.

An asset-based loan may make sense if you are looking to invest the proceeds in a way that will genuinely grow your revenue. If, however, like many small, entrepreneurial retailers, you find yourself considering an asset-based loan to finance your seasonal cash needs, it should be a wake-up call that you have serious work to do on your cash flow.

Now is the time when successful retailers set themselves up for future success.

The economic recovery is coming. Really. You heard it here first.

The only question is when it’s coming. So far this year, business certainly suggests that it’s still not here, but I can assure you it is on the way.

Actually, there is a second question, and it’s a question that all small retailers need to be asking themselves. When the recovery comes, will you be ready? Will you be ready to take advantage of all the breaks that appear when a down economy turns back up?

During difficult economic times, farsighted companies reinvest in their businesses and prepare to fully capitalize on the opportunities that present themselves when the customer comes back out of hiding. Consider Walmart. In the late ’70s Walmart was a successful midsized southern retailer. By the time the recession of the early ’80s was over, Walmart had built the infrastructure to expand confidently from its southern base into every corner of the country and, ultimately, around the world.

You may have more modest objectives, but the lesson remains. Are you preparing now for the coming recovery? When it arrives, will you be prepared to fully capitalize on the new opportunities?

Here are a few thoughts on what you can do to prepare your business for the coming recovery.

Update your customer e-mail list. There are many small retailers who have never found the time to update their e-mail lists. I know from experience. Many retailers are still sending out postcards to communicate with their best customers, a timely and expensive way to stay in touch. Now is the time to contact the customers for whom you have no e-mail addresses. When the recovery arrives, you’ll want to be able to announce its arrival.

Update your website. A new era is about to dawn, and when it does, you don’t want your website stuck in the previous era. Maybe it needs a full makeover, or maybe you merely need to improve navigation. Perhaps you need to put more of your items on the site to increase your units and dollars per order. Or maybe you need to provide more product information or rewrite your text for better search engine optimization. Whatever your website needs in order to be generate more business, now is the time to get after it.

Invest in your salespeople’s skills. For small retailers, the personal touch is becoming an ever more important point of differentiation with the competition, large and small. Now is the time to invest in the training programs to improve your salespeople’s selling skills and help them connect more effectively with your customers. Now is also the time to schedule those seminars for your salespeople to update their accumulated product knowledge so that it remains state of the art.

Go shopping. When business is good, it’s easy to get all wrapped up in it. Now is the time to break out of the cocoon and go shopping. Shop your competition, shop everybody else, and look for those innovative ideas that you can apply to your own business. Shop the market to include vendors you might have passed by or overlooked in the past. Do they have items or categories that you might have missed, or new items or categories that you need to jump on?

Review your assortments. There are very few clients that I’ve worked with who didn’t need to tighten their assortments. When times are good, assortments have a habit of growing. When there’s more money circulating, marginal items and categories appear to have more potential than they really do. Now is the time to carefully review your assortments, tighten them up where necessary, and cull out and liquidate the deadwood.

Improve the customer experience. When your customers walk through your door, what do they experience? Are you exceeding their expectations and surprising them with things they never thought to expect in the first place? What new services can you develop that can address your customers’ needs, perhaps needs they didn’t even know they have? What capabilities, expertise, and skills do you possess that you can leverage to further distinguish yourself in your customers’ minds?

Give yourself a makeover. Stores have a way of growing stale right under your feet. Walls get dingy and carpets wear thin. Lighting that you thought was fresh and bright several years ago just doesn’t illuminate the merchandise like it once seemed to. Display fixtures start to feel dated, and the cash wrap starts to show its mileage. As you look at your store, inside and out, what needs to be done to make it feel new, fresh, and exciting again?

Think outside the box. A recession like this one represents not just a natural retrenchment of an overextended economy, but also a certain staleness in thinking. In a macro sense, the current approaches are no longer as compelling as they once were. This is a moment for fresh thinking, for reinvention, reinvigoration. Come at it from your customers’ perspective: think in terms of reconnecting with your customer. Which products, services, and experiences would capture their imaginations as they begin to venture forth from their bunkers?

Through it all, of course, you’ll have to budget carefully for whatever you decide needs to be done and then continue to keep a close eye on your cash. It is a recession, after all. But now is the time when successful retailers set themselves up for future success. Now is the time when savvy retailers reinvent themselves to offer customers a fresh and compelling experience once the gray clouds have given way to blue skies again.

Line reps are facing a significant technology-driven change in their business that will make some reps much more influential and put many others out of business. The apparel industry is slowly embracing the Internet, and the line reps who profit most in the future will be those who best exploit the information they have always controlled.

Seasoned businesspeople are comfortable with the general idea of a business cycle, even when the cycle is painful. Business decreases sharply, then a year later it surges. But for apparel line reps, this recession marks a significant change"a major shift in how business will be conducted. Over the next five years, I expect that many line reps will find business much more difficult, while a few will profit from the changes, gaining substantial influence and additional business.

These changes will create new opportunities for line reps: using Web technologies, they will be able to provide excellent service to more buyers, reducing the costs to vendors. The most successful reps will provide their vendors more than sales support, making their roles as educators, mentors, and advisors to buyers more explicit. This will result in more capable buyers who will increase sell-thorough to the ultimate benefit of the vendors. The reps who can address this opportunity will displace those who do not, resulting in a future of fewer, but more influential, line reps.

The changes that line reps can expect are the result of the apparel industry finally embracing Internet technology and learning how to use technology to develop and enhance, rather than replace, their business relationships. Line reps who understand how to use Web technologies, and more importantly, understand how their vendors and buyers want to use the Web, will gain a broad reach, while the laggards will be left with the low-margin scraps.

These new opportunities are the result of a confluence of trends and technologies:

• High-profile vendors have skipped recent trade shows, and many of them will learn how to do business without the shows.
• Vendors are wary of the costs of hiring line reps but not aware of the full value they bring to the industry.
• Independent retailers are burdened with many new requirements for success, including advanced skills with merchandising, inventory control, marketing, e-commerce, and online promotion.
• Internet technologies are radically changing how products are promoted and sold and making meetings less important for business-to-business sales.

Some of the opportunities for line reps are:

• Moving the first stages of the buying process online to reduce costs and make buying more efficient for buyers.
• Developing data-driven purchasing guidance, helping buyers know what to purchase based on actual sales data.
• Facilitating or delivering retailer training and education.

The Confluence of Forces

Vendors are skipping trade shows. As one of the first major trade shows after the Fall 2008 market crash, January’s ASR show was a bellwether for the new order. By some accounts, the show was about 40% smaller than the previous show, and notably absent were several major brands like Quiksilver, Roxy, Hurley, RVCA, and about 30 other brands. These brands skipped the show not only because times are bad, but also because they realized they could. ASR is a marketing show, not an order-writing show, and these brands realized ASR wasn’t the best way to spend their marketing budget. Additional major brands like Adio, Reef, Rip Curl, DC, and O’Niell skipped marketing on the show floor to take orders in private rooms. A similar set of reductions are happening at New York Fashion Week.

The changes to trade shows may result in lower attendance in the future, but the shows won’t disappear; they will continue, but with a different purpose. Trade shows will have a greatly diminished role in promoting brands and writing orders for larger buyers, but they will continue to be important venues for buyers to discover trends and new products, take educational seminars, and build relationships with business partners.

Vendors want to reduce costs. If these brands adapt by discovering a higher ROI in other marketing methods, they will reduce their spending on shows, and other brands will learn the same lesson, resulting in a permanent reduction in trade show attendance, first among the marketing shows and eventually among the order-writing shows. Vendors have long complained about the high cost of trade shows, but they felt that they had no other options. This recession has given them encouragement to find new options, and they are finding those options, many of which are online.

These same trends will affect line reps. Line reps have a powerful and contentious position in the industry. Vendors appreciate the sales work that line reps perform for them, but they chafe at the fees. They see line reps as a pure sales cost because they are not aware of the value that line reps have as mentors, advisors, and advocates for buyers. Buyers rely on the line reps they have established relationships with for the reps’ knowledge, experience, diplomacy, and ability to help independent retailers be better business people. Unfortunately, vendors don’t see the line reps in these roles, so they don’t value the reps appropriately.

Modern retailers need many new skills. Today, independent retailers need the experience and guidance of line reps more than ever. Retailers are burdened not only with the business challenges they have had for decades, but they must also learn about inventory control, point-of-sale systems, websites, e-commerce, and e-mail marketing. Large integrated retailers handle these issues with dedicated staff, but for most independent retailers, the owner must be proficient in everything, a crushing encumbrance. Independent retailers will need additional help from all quarters to succeed.

The Internet is pushing change. Weaving itself through all of these issues is a broad range of Internet technologies, most of which the apparel industry is only in the early stages of sporadic adoption. Few line reps have websites, and even fewer are using web marketing, social media, or online video. But these technologies are proving themselves among consumers. Consumers’ use of e-mail, social networks, video, and e-commerce to discover and purchase apparel is flourishing, but the same technologies are rare among vendors, retailers, and line reps. When the apparel industry discovers how to adapt the vibrant consumer technologies to their business-to-business transactions, the resulting shift will create a new set of winners and losers.

The results of these forces, the current recession, and increased regulatory requirements are likely to be a significant contraction in the apparel industry, a consolidation among businesses, and an increase in the size and professionalism of the remaining businesses.  

The apparel industry consists of  41,000 apparel manufacturers and 91,000 clothing stores, with 68% of manufacturers and 40% of stores having no employees, the largest portion of manufacturers making less than $10M per year in revenue, and about 30% making less than $3M in revenue. These numbers will change in the next 5 years, with a lot of closures and acquisitions reducing the number of companies and increasing the average revenues. With the reduction in the number of manufacturers and retailers will come a reduction in the sales force.

The Opportunities for Line Reps

By embracing new technologies and expanding their traditional roles, savvy reps will be able to provide extraordinary new value for vendors, extending their influence and growing their businesses.

The critical observation behind these new opportunities is that because the apparel industry is fragmented, relationships will always be important. An industry with so many businesses requires people to be brokers of trust, stores of experience, and advocates for common interests.

Fortunately, despite frequent lamentations of neo-luddites, Internet technology has not destroyed the value of relationships, it has simply transformed them. As businesspeople become more comfortable with e-mail and Web conferences, face-to-face meetings can be less frequent. Face-to-face meetings are still important to establish a connection, but they are no longer necessary for every business transaction. After a relationship is initially established, business can often be conducted more efficiently online, opening possibilities for savvy showroom owners to absorb the business that will be leaving the trade shows.

Move the top of the sales funnel online. The first opportunity for line reps will be to move the initial stages of the buying process online, by giving buyers easy ways to identify what lines they should carry in their stores.

Blogs, social networks, and new tools like Twitter allow a line rep to develop and maintain contact with many more people, and contact them more frequently than with a telephone or e-mail alone. Internet tools make the sales funnel wider at the top and allow salespeople to pre-qualify buyers with much less expense. These cost savings allow them to give the buyers more personal support later in the sales process. Reps who learn how to use the Internet to manage their sales process will be able to get more leads at a lower cost.

Success will depend on control of information. It is no secret that we are doing business in an information economy, where fortunes are won and lost based on how much and what kind of information the players have. Line reps might think they are just selling clothes, but they have a much greater investment in the information that they control.

Line reps already control a lot of informal information, collected through their many contacts with both vendors and retailers. They have a strong sense of which products are selling now, what will be selling next season, and which products are right for different types of stores. In the future, this information will become even more important and will be augmented with accurate sales data from point-of-sale machines. Coupled with a detailed understanding of the character of individual stores and their customers, line reps will be able to accurately pair buyers and lines in ways that manufacturers will not be able to do alone.

Success requires more training and education. One of the prevalent industry themes post-market-crash is a return to business fundamentals. Manufacturers and consultants are urging retailers to strengthen their knowledge of merchandising, inventory control, open-to-buy analysis, and marketing. Independent speciality retail is marked with high turnover, meaning that many of a vendor’s retailers are new to the business. Inexperienced retailers bring innovation and passion, but they often lack a solid understanding of business fundamentals. Too many retailers have been able to survive with only basic business skills, often relying on solid foot traffic and strong cash flow to mask fundamental weaknesses in the business. The post-recession economy won’t allow these weak business to survive.

If retailers are suffering, so too are the line reps and vendors who depend on retail sales. Both line reps and vendors would benefit from a more skilled retail force, and both are well-positioned to facilitate and promote business training for retailers.

The first step is for line reps to encourage retailers to join organizations like the Board Retailers Association or the National Retail Federation and participate in their training and education programs.

Line reps can also develop their own training programs in conjunction with manufacturers to teach retailers the most effective ways to promote and sell the lines they carry. This is traditional product training, a practice common in other industries, but rare in apparel. The best product training is a partnership between retailers and vendors that is increasingly critical because consumers expect a higher level of service from independent and speciality retailers.

In the apparel industry, with much less complex products than, for instance, electronics retailers, product training should be as much about how to select, promote, and display products as how to describe them to customers. Line reps, with frequent interactions with a diversity of retailers and vendors, are uniquely positioned to understand broad trends and recommend the best products to stock in a particular store and the best methods for promoting those products. Successful line reps will learn how to capture and process the information they already have access to and then profit by transferring that information to retailers and increasing sales for vendors.

How to Prepare for the Future

Line reps can prepare their businesses for the future by getting online, learning about recent Web tools, exploring them, and seeing how they fit into their businesses.

Some of the technologies that line reps should be exploring are:

• Basic websites
• Online photography and video
• Social networking

Line reps should become familiar with the popular and innovative consumer Web services, such as:

• Daily Candy
• Shopflick
• Polyvore
• The Budget Fashionista
• The Sartorialist

Most of these websites help consumers find new brands, and they all have innovative use of photography, video, and social networking.

Spend time on the Web visiting the websites of line reps and showrooms like the bluebird showroom and observe what vendors like LnA are doing on their websites and their Myspace pages. Visit online sales training company 3point5 for a glimpse of what is possible in online sales and product training.

The Internet has redefined entire industries, with the fashion and apparel industry being a late holdout. With the combination of the recession and the maturing Internet, the apparel industry can’t hold out any longer. Line reps who embrace the changes now will be best positioned to capitalize on the post-recession trends and grow their businesses.

 
Thank you to Nicole L. Reyhle and Kathleen Fasanella for the comments, corrections, and important ideas. 

Times are tough nowadays, and retailers are feeling the pinch as much as other businesses. However, while working with certain brands, I’m seeing a few habits that, left to fester, will be the death of any business. It’s my duty to point these out to you in a way that’s designed to get your attention. Hang on, because class is now in session.

You insist on having the only opinion about your store. By this I mean all the force-fed pontificating at the consumer about what they should know or feel about your brand, like "Our boutique is all about individuality and a desire to be true to oneself." You know who you are! So what’s the reason why I should come to shop there? What’s in it for me?

Solution: Get with the unique selling proposition already. Invest time and energy into getting inside the heads of your most loyal patrons. Find out enough about them to be able to draw up a profile of the type of person most likely to shop with you. Then examine your competition and see what they don’t offer and in which way they’re not servicing the person most likely to shop with you. Make sure you call out those differences in every marketing tactic you implement so that your target customer knows what’s in it for THEM.

You refuse to take online networking sites seriously. Social media is the wave of the future, and it’s tailor-made for small brands that need to dominate a niche before spreading out. It allows you to microtarget and start authentic relationships with people who are most likely to feel that your brand represents them. But if you don’t do what’s necessary to connect with them online, why would they bother?

Solution: Conduct a small survey with your customers, and ask them where they like to hang out online. Since “birds of a feather flock together,” your likelihood of connecting with groups of people that fit your target customer profile will be greatly increased. Make sure you maintain a consistent, active presence at those sites, and make sure that you build real relationships that show an interest in your customers as human beings, not cash registers with legs.

You will not properly research your competition. So many of you are saying Hot Topix or Intermix or some other brand is your competition. News flash: they’re not. You’re not in the same category as those big brands because you cannot compete on the open market with them.

Your real competition has a good relationship with the sales reps in the region. She goes to the right markets for her niche. Your competition is networking at concerts, at community events, and with every person that walks in the door and is kicking your butt because you’re too proud to roll up your sleeves and make an honest assessment of the situation and go to where your target customers are.

Solution: Do your research and react to the real data from real interactions you have with your customers, not your gut-level reactions. Take the time to network with other boutiques, online if you must, and exchange ideas on loyalty reward programs and other promotions that create a loyal fan base out of the customers you have. Make an honest assessment of where you are today, set proper goals, and stop setting your sights on competing with the chain stores.

The bottom line is that even though people appear to have slowed down their purchasing, they haven’t stopped buying altogether. It’s just that they are not wasting money on things they don’t have a connection with. But you can survive and even thrive if you take the time to understand your niche and build a profile of your most likely customer and use that information to create connections with them. Learn to create a shopping experience for them that will bring them back every time!

In 2004, several groups interested in retail, including the  National Retail Federation, published the report Challenges of the Future:  The Rebirth of Small Independent Retail in America . The report explores trends that affect independent retailers and explains how they can grow in the future. Being almost five years old, it is dated, but the advice is still strong and encouraging. Some of the hopeful trends the author notes are:

• Personalization. “ small independents are still the best poised to get to know their customers individually as they are  often a personal part of their lives.”
• Community activism. ” There is a growing national trend of community resistance to unrestrained retail development in order to protect local community personality, feel and values… This trend obviously speaks to the perceived benefits of small independent retail.”
• Changing consumer attitudes and behavior.  ” Retailers need to make the shopping experience easy for the customer by eliminating confusing or inefficient elements that frustrate customers and complicate their choices. Consumers want a transparent buying process devoid of hassles. A retail experience that fulfills these dual emotional needs will be highly valued.”
• Urban sprawl and real estate development. A recent trend in new retail development is to create community spaces of mixed use that exhibit a strong sense of place … According to America’s Research Group, consumers are spending 20 percent less time in shopping centers since 2001 and 20 percent less time driving. People are shopping closer to home. “

The report also discusses many challenges, such as the need to be proficient in new technologies, transparent pricing that commodifies products,  and the need for higher levels of service. See the full report for all of the details. 

More and more we hear and read about corporations and their “brand promise.”  The promise is made to the customer, is a guiding principle for company employees, and in theory is reflected in the company’s approach to everything it does.  While a mission statement looks inward to what a company stands for, a brand promise is external. It defines what the customer can expect from the brand and the positive impact that brand will have on a customer’s life.

I believe the best brand promise any retailer can make is a guaranteed memorable customer experience.  Many retailers like to think they do this, but our own shopping experience tells us that isn’t the case.  It’s not easy to deliver that memorable experience, and you won’t do it unless you are specifically trying to do so.  The reason is that those who create these brand promises fail to realize that ultimately the promise is kept or broken by the frontline employee.  Much like a mission statement, it’s just words until the rubber meets the road.

For any retail brand promise to be kept, all frontline employees must understand the promises and the actions they must take to fulfill them.  If a retailer promises friendly and helpful employees, then the store staff must engage the customer in an upbeat and friendly manner.  Often the barrier to keeping these promises is put up by the very same executives who’ve created the promise.  Many retailers have an “easy returns” brand promise for their customers but at the same time penalize store managers for having too many returns.  When an internal policy, guideline, or metric is in conflict with a brand promise, the promise will inevitably be broken.

Some brand promises are assumed by the customer even if the retailer doesn’t state them.  Customers assume that independent retailers give better service but have higher prices.  Either may or may not be true. 

While any one of your brand promises can help you attract a new customer, breaking any of your promises can lose them.  Retailers probably lose more customers to a broken promise than they know.  Those Silent Majority customers I wrote about recently will leave without telling you.  This is why it is so important to measure how well you are executing your brand promise.  Many retailers know the results of the promise (sales) or how well they are keeping the various facets of the promise for a few customers (mystery shops), but without data directly from the customer or feedback from the frontline it’s tough to measure exactly how your promise is holding up.

Try this brand promise exercise.  Take a sheet of paper and draw three columns.  In the first column list the brand promises you’ve stated to your customer and the ones they are likely to assume.  In the middle column list the accompanying frontline actions that you’ve communicated to your employees and trained them to take.  In the third column, list the measurement, metric, or frontline feedback you use to measure how well you keep your promises

So let me ask, how’s your brand promise?

Read more of Doug’s writing on his website. 

Throughout the years, I have seen many vendors do a great job in working the trade show booth. Unfortunately, I have also seen some vendors do a horrible job. Last month, for example, I attended a local trade show, and when I got back to the office, I sent e-mails to the potential vendors that I met there for more information. Shockingly, many of them didn’t even reply, even after a second or third e-mail! Successful selling at a trade show depends upon two things: your products (how good are they versus the competition) and your personnel (how well your people represent your products).  If you plan to exhibit at a trade show and want to stand out among the  competition, here are some tips I would recommend:  

1. Research the trade show before you commit (I have seen too many vendors who should have not exhibited at a particular trade show). 
2. Send enough people to ensure adequate booth coverage throughout the show.
3. Stress the value of friendly greetings, polite manners, and appropriate body language. 
4. Be sure to have someone on your team who can answer technical questions. 
5. Product demonstrations are a great way to draw a crowd. Make sure your team knows how to give an effective and engaging presentation (have them practice before the trade show). 
6. Establish a follow-up protocol for hot leads, promising prospects, and likely customers. 
7. Always remember to say Thank You to attendees for stopping by your booth. And don’t forget the free cookies!