These fellows were pumped up not because they made the bus, but because they had a good day in the booth. And they were congratulating each other on it. So I asked the one sitting next to me, Dominic Solis, what makes for a good day in the booth.

Relationships is the short answer. Dominic is director of marketing (soon to be VP of sales) for Symmons Industries (www.symmons.com), which manufactures faucets, showerheads, and other plumbing products. Relationship selling is how Symmons prefers to build its business. And to make those relationships—and strengthen existing ones—they send their top sales executives to staff their IBS exhibit.

It’s a costly approach, as executive sales time isn’t cheap. Many booths are manned by lower-level reps. Dominic says Symmons wants its top people there. That way, existing clients and potential clients know they are dealing with the top, and that what they hear is not going to be contradicted later on in the deal, if there is a deal. And that shows that Symmons is serious about its involvement in trade shows like IBS, as well as being serious about the relationship they want to build with their clients.

Symmons queries its regional reps about clients they expect to be at IBS, so the sales and marketing people from the main office (Braintree, Massachusetts, outside of Boston) are waiting for them—in a nice way. They also pre-arrange other meetings with clients.

Dominic says a lot of business is done at such dinners after the show, which is another reason to have the big guns in town for IBS. Of course, this is a key to the whole rationale for IBS. After all, anyone can see what kind of faucets you make from looking at a catalog or a website.

Even so, Dominic and his fellow Symmons reps do not shirk their floor duties. They want to be aggressively nice, to welcome you into their booth, not to look like they hope you keep walking and don’t bother them with questions, which is on display on the floor in not a few booths. Sure, there are the tire kickers, but Dominic says even they get the full-bore welcome and service. Hey, you never know when someone is going to be ordering plumbing fixtures for that condo development and remembers those go-getters at Symmons.

So it was a good day at the booth for Symmons. They had one outstanding contact that day and several good ones. In fact, the group pow-wows as the day goes on to see how they're doing. And they keep each other in high spirits. It’s not the number of visitors whose cards you scan but the quality of them. Decision makers is who they are after, be they owners, purchasers, builders, or marketers.

Today, Dominic says, they got the high traffic and the good traffic. Huzzah!