Top Five Ways to Draw a Crowd

I spent this entire past weekend behind a booth at an Expo in order to recruit new members to my soccer club (I'm the newly elected Officer for Membership/Secretary). Expos are pretty much like any gaming convention's dealer room or an exhibit hall for a research convention (as mentioned in my Nashville post). Basically, you've got rows upon rows of tables with people behind them trying to get you to buy into something or another. Hopefully when you're at one of these, you're not directly next to a competitor, but even if you aren't, it ain't no walk in the park. There are a lot of people floating around and, all things being equal, the majority of them won't stop by your booth at all. Let's face it, there are a lot of booths jam-packed together and at times they all seem to run together. This combined with the fact that the average person is well, average, means you may not get noticed by someone walking right by you.

I've heard people go on and on about how you need to have a good speech to tell the people that visit your booth or a good demo routine to reel them in or a great selling point for your product. Well, that's a lot of hooey. After careful consideration of this weekend's events and events I attended in the past, I've determined what the four most important things to have at any booth are:

5. Cute Furry Animals: Let's face it, we're all suckers for cute and cuddly creatures. The women will be suckered in immediately. The guys may resist at first, but on the second day, they'll cave in. They always do.
4. Entourage: Nobody likes a loser or a perceived loser. So, if you're alone at a booth people are going to think there is something wrong with you or be painfully reminded of their own lonely inadequecies and will stay away. To avoid this make sure you've got a posse with you and make sure it's full of colorful, humorous and outgoing individuals.
3. Eye-Catching Displays: If you're a white on white banality, nobody's going to give a damn. Make sure you have a colorful display and secondary props that catch people's attention. Things that move, even if it's a TV program showing are great eye-catchers. So are colorfully dressed members of your posse (as exemplified by the Pirate hat worn by Mark a few years ago).
2. Free Food: This should never be underestimated, especially at Cons/Expos where food is obscenely expensive to purchase. The sexier the food you're offering, the bigger the line you'll get (one booth this weekend was serving up free Lobster Bisque soup). If you can't be sexy (I realize not all of you can be), then be decadent - the average person has a weakness for candy.
1. Hot Guys and/or Girls: Hopefully you all saw this one coming. Having hot people at your booth is a great draw because it makes attendees forget about everything else that's going on around them and since you've been so good and read this far in my entry, I'll tell you one of my personal secret techniques that has worked exceedingly well. After the attendee gets over to your booth you can ask them to leave their email for more information. The key to getting them to sign is to say, "If you write your email address, I'll *personally* send you an email back with more information." (note: results may vary depending on your individual hotness level)