E56: How To Genuinely Succeed at Franchise Trade Shows! With National Event Management

Hosts: Michael Hyam and Liane Caruso
Guest: Michael Hyam, Franchise Show Director at National Event Management and Co-Founder of Franchise Assembly.

In a first for the LFG Podcast, Liane turned the tables and put her co-host Michael Hyam in the guest seat.

Michael has spent 20 years on the supplier side of franchising, specializing in lead generation for franchise development. In that time, he’s worked across trade shows in the U.S. and Canada, magazines, email marketing, and online channels. 

He’s watched thousands of franchise brands succeed and fail at the same thing: converting in-person opportunity into franchise sales. As National Director of the National Franchise Show, he oversees 13 franchise trade shows in the U.S. and another 11 to 12 in Canada each year. Here is what he shared on how brands can stand out and succeed at franchise trade shows!

PODCAST SUMMARY: GETTING THE MOST OUT OF FRANCHISE TRADE SHOWS WITH NATIONAL EVENT MANAGEMENT

WHAT IS A FRANCHISE TRADE SHOW

For anyone who has not been on a trade show floor, the premise is straightforward. Franchisors set up booths in a convention center. Attendees, people who are actively seeking to become their own boss, walk from booth to booth exploring opportunities. The National Franchise Show targets a 100-150 mile radius around each event city, driving in qualified, regionally relevant prospects rather than claiming a national draw that would require attendees to travel significant distances.

This geographic focus matters for how brands should think about which shows to attend. If you are targeting the Southeast, you want Atlanta and Tampa. If you are targeting the Northeast, you want New York, Virginia, or DC. The right show is the one closest to where you actually want to grow.

WHY SOME BRANDS SAY TRADE SHOWS DO NOT WORK

Michael has a clear answer to this one, and it is not what most brands want to hear.

He can spot a struggling exhibitor from across the show floor. They are sitting behind their table catching up on email. They are watching the room rather than engaging it. They are wearing a scowl that tells every prospect walking by to keep moving. Meanwhile, hundreds of qualified prospects stream past them unchallenged.

The show is not the problem. What you put in is what you get out, and that principle applies at every stage: who you send, how they show up mentally, how they engage with people, how they follow up afterward.

Michael is particularly pointed about the staffing decision. Sending someone who barely knows the brand, or someone who does not want to be there, is worse than not exhibiting at all. That person will not represent the brand, will not engage prospects, and will be the first person to tell leadership that trade shows do not work. The owner or a seasoned franchise salesperson who genuinely believes in the opportunity will outsell them every time, and not by a small margin.

PRE-SHOW: WHAT TO PREPARE BEFORE YOU HIT THE FLOOR

Good preparation covers three areas: the booth, the collateral, and the mindset.

The Booth

With 100 franchisors competing for attention on the same floor, you have roughly five seconds to make a prospect stop and look. A single pop-up banner blends into the background. You want something that earns a second glance. That said, Michael’s honest take is that who is working the booth matters more than how impressive the display is. A compelling person with a basic setup will outsell a disengaged person with a stunning one every time.

The Collateral

Have two tiers of material ready. A simple one-pager for the person who is browsing and not ready to engage deeply. A more complete package for the prospect you have spoken with for five to ten minutes and assessed as genuinely viable. Not every person on the show floor is the right fit for your brand. A million-dollar investment opportunity is not for everyone walking through the door. Match the material to the depth of the conversation.

The Mindset

Working a show floor is a physical and mental grind. You are on your feet for six hours, making eye contact with every person who passes, bringing energy to the hundredth conversation of the day the same way you brought it to the first. Michael makes the point that most people underinvest in the mental preparation for this. Get your team in the right headspace before the doors open. Enthusiasm is audible, and its absence is equally obvious.

THREE BOOTH TACTICS THAT MOST BRANDS LEAVE ON THE TABLE

Beyond the basics, Michael flagged three things that good exhibitors do, and most others miss.

Bring a Franchisee

Prospects want validation above all else. If you can have a real franchisee from the region standing in your booth, they can answer questions from lived experience in a way that no salesperson can replicate. You are a step ahead of every booth neighbor who cannot offer that.

Use a Nearby Location 

If you have a location within reasonable distance of the show, use it. Tell prospects about it during your conversation. Offer to meet them there. A group invitation to come by on Monday morning, see the physical space, and hear the pitch over breakfast is a low-cost, high-value extension of the show that turns a warm conversation into a semi-discovery day.

Book The Next Meeting

Before they leave the floor! Instead of saying you will call them Monday, pull out your calendar and book it while they are standing in front of you. A prospect who has just had a great conversation with you is also about to have a great conversation with the booth ten doors down. If you leave their next step to chance, you are betting that your conversation was more memorable than everyone else’s. Book the meeting on the floor, leave with 50 appointments confirmed, and turn the post-show follow-up from a cold chase into a warm calendar.

POST-SHOW: THE FOLLOW-UP MOST BRANDS GET WRONG

The leads you collect at a show are only as valuable as what you do with them in the 24 hours after the show closes.

Michael’s advice is to tier your follow-up by temperature. Hot prospects, the ones you had real, substantive conversations with and who expressed genuine interest, should be contacted the same evening if possible, and no later than the next morning. Some of his best exhibitors call their hottest prospects from the hotel room before dinner. That level of urgency is not aggressive; it is what separates the brands that close from the ones that wonder why leads went cold.

The reason speed matters so much: that same prospect had equally good conversations at multiple booths. The person who follows up first changes the nature of every subsequent conversation. You are no longer one of many options; you are the person who was already in touch before anyone else.

For emerging brands especially, Michael flagged a structural issue: many do not have a CRM or a consistent follow-up process in place before they arrive at the show. If you cannot capture leads systematically and move them through a defined next step, you will collect cards you never convert. Getting that infrastructure ready before the show is as important as getting the booth ready.

WHICH BRANDS SHOULD EXHIBIT, AND WHERE

Trade shows are not exclusively for emerging brands. The National Franchise Show hosts everyone from first-time franchisors to Empire brands with thousands of locations, each for the same reason: you go where your growth territory is.

A brand targeting the Southeast goes to Tampa, Orlando, and Atlanta. A brand targeting the Northeast goes to New York, DC, and Virginia. A nationwide brand with open territory across all 50 states may exhibit at every show in the calendar, because the show is always in someone’s growth market.

Michael was also direct about the lead quality question. The prospect who gets up on a Saturday morning, drives to a convention center, pays for parking, buys a ticket, and spends three or four hours on a trade show floor has made a meaningful investment of time and money to be there. That is a fundamentally different level of qualification than someone who fired off a portal inquiry at midnight while frustrated with their boss. The show floor is full of people who are ready to have serious conversations. The only question is whether you are ready to have them back.

THIS EPISODE IS BROUGHT TO YOU BY…

Franchise Ninja, Franchise Assembly, and The National Franchise Show.

Listen to the full episode now to hear more from Michael, and subscribe to the LFG Podcast so you never miss an episode!

Listen on Apple, Spotify, or YouTube.

If you are interested in exhibiting at an upcoming franchise show, you can reach out to Michael directly at michael@nationalevent.com or michael@franchiseassembly.com. 

Upcoming shows include Philadelphia, Tampa, Los Angeles, and Atlanta this fall, with New York, Dallas, Houston, Virginia, DC, Chicago, and Miami on the spring calendar.