You Catch More Flies With Honey

Ok, I can't lie - I'm incredibly excited right now. But first the backstory:

Yesterday was a super busy day trying to get a bunch of things done here at the home office (aka - the dining room table) so I didn't actually go collect the mail until around 4:30. In the mail there was an envelope from one of the two big fall tradeshows I'm going to with my booth assignment for the show. Two years ago, when attending my first tradeshow, I learned that booth placement is a pretty important thing as I received next to no foot traffic being tucked back into the far back corner. So this is now something I pay a lot more attention to and send in the applications way in advance to try and secure good space.

I opened up the envelope to find that while I was given a corner booth like I requested (and paid more for), I was still back pretty far and only two rows from the back. I was not pleased. It would be fair to say that I was livid but it being 4:30pm here made it 6:30pm there and no one was answering the phones.

So instead I sat and stewed and identified which of the open booths I would want since I was going to call in and change. That's when I noticed that there is a PRIME booth in a FANTASTIC location that wasn't taken. The only catch - apparently it has some sort of pole or something in it.

Regardless, I called this morning and figured that rather than flying off the handle I would just be as sweet as honey as someone once told me that you catch more flies with honey. So I chatted them up, commisserated with them about all the work they had to do, sympathized that they had to deal with callers like me calling to complain about their booth positioning, and lo and behold they were more than happy to not only switch my booth assignment for me but also send me the booth skematic so that I could look at the booth layout and figure out if it would work for me. My thinking being that I can be creative and work around anything for this space - not to mention that my product is small so it's not like I have a huge display I have to worry about setting up - and I am now the proud owner of the 10x10 booth (minus the space taken up by the pole).

I just looked at the diagram again - it really is a killer location. I'm so happy. Guess what they say about real estate is also true in tradeshows: location, location, location. Now I'm eagerly anticipating the news on booth assignment for the other fall tradeshow.