On the flip side, as a sales engineer for a national integrator, I am getting inundated with unsolicited telephone calls and e-mails this week to set up appointments at the show, many times for products and services we do not sell or have interest in selling. While I applaud the persistence, I generally like to roam the show floor to search out new and interesting products on my own.
Show sales guys, please don't treat me like a "lookie-loo" when I walk in your booth and ask a few technical questions about a specific product or want to see a product demo. If you're not a tech person or really busy, introduce me to your sales engineer. If you didn't bring an engineer with you to speak "Geekish" then shame on you.
An even bigger sin is look at my name badge and notice that I am not in your geographic territory or a national account and ignore me or give me the bum's rush. It's rude. I know you sales guys have numbers to hit (the ones I work for do too) and you are looking for those one or two big sales or 10-20 qualified leads from the show. While I may not have an immediate need or a whale who wants to buy 10,000 units this week, I'm the guy who finds the applications for your product and wants to know tech details so I can add your product to my bag of tricks for future projects. I get the calls from my sales team routinely when a customer has an unusual request or application and can be your product evangelist if I know about and understand the applications and tech specs of your products.
FWIW, I like to spend more time off the main aisles at the smaller booths, looking for developing technology or newer startups (although there haven't been many the past few years) and off-beat products. Yes, I'll stop in the big manufacturer's booths just to see what's up. But if I'm already not familiar with their latest products, either I and/or IPVM haven't been doing their job very well.
Final note, I run like hell from any booth that has goofy themes, booth babes, B-List celebs like the cake boss, magicians, a singing Elvis impersonator, or other such buffoonery. Your marketing folks might think it's a cute idea, but it's cheesy. Wow me with your product, don't schmooze me with gimmicks.