If you prefer to read instead of watch our short video, please see the transcript of the conversation between Mike Gilvar, Mal Gilvar, and Mike Graziani.

Mike Gilvar: Thanks everybody for joining this session of The Bottom Line with TTG. I’m here we Mike Graziani and Mel Gilmore today to talk a little bit about mobile sales tours. Guys, tell me, what is a mobile sales tour and why should I care about it?

Mike Graziani: Well, obviously, right now with the current conditions and trade shows effectively being shut down, the mobile tour is much like a trade show. It’s your 3D brand, but we’re just basically bringing it to the person in a different format, and it’s allowing you to get your message, your product, your services out to that audience in basically a face-to-face manner, which is one of the big positives of trade a show event.

Mal Gilvar: Yeah, I would add to that, that the thing that’s really cool about the mobile tour, is a company normally doesn’t have the resources to send their entire team out to a particular trade show. They would like to, but they just don’t have the resources. Well, if you’re bringing the mobile tour or directly to their factory or their company, it allows you to have a really intimate experience with a large group of people from that same company, which is really great.

Mike Gilvar: Interesting. And do you see this as always having a sales person who’s waiting for them inside a trailer or can it be a combination of physical and virtual?

Mal Gilvar: Absolutely. It can be a combination of physical and virtual. You almost can leave it up to the company you’re visiting. If they feel comfortable having a one-on-one experience with the brand ambassador who’s there, fantastic. If they don’t, that experience could be done virtually with streaming equipment.

Mike Gilvar: Right. And when should a company consider using a mobile sales trailer? When does it make sense?

Mal Gilvar: Well, I could take the first stab at this, Mike. To me, if you’re trying to generate revenues from a trade show and you no longer have the opportunity to do so, what better time to do that? It can be a replacement for those lost opportunities.

Mike Gilvar: Right. What is the cost? I know that’s probably a loaded question, but what do these tours cost?

Mike Graziani: We’ve seen the tour, the cost range wildly, anywhere from $75K and up past a half million, all the way, close to a million. It just depends on the size, the scope, the needs. And then again, just like I said, it’s a 3D brand. You can outfit it just as elaborately as you do your trade show exhibit, or you can scale back on the visuals and so forth. So, the way it’s decorated and so forth can have a big impact on that final budget.

Mal Gilvar: We’ve seen really cool activations where the trailer is really tiny and they do maybe 30 stops, but we’ve also seen somebody use a tractor trailer that has 200 stops, the variances are so much.

Mike Graziani: Right. And I would probably say that I wouldn’t look at it as a low-cost replacement for the traditional trade show experience. It’s not necessarily going to save you money, but it also can play a role in other ways, and it can become part of your traditional trade show program, once trade shows come back. It can be pulled into the exhibit hall, parked in the exhibit space, and whatnot. We’re actually working on a project right now for a client doing just that.

Mike Gilvar: And so really right now, I guess during these COVID times, it’s really about understanding why you were going to trade shows, how many meetings did you intend to have at that show, and now just duplicating that within this mobile sales trailer kind of thing, right?

Mal Gilvar: Exactly. Take a look at, figure out what your objectives and your KPIs are for a particular event, let us know what those are, and we can craft an experience that can duplicate those kinds of results with a mobile tour.

Mike Gilvar: And where are the challenges, kind of coming back to reality? Where are event managers going to have issues with trying to pull this off?

Mal Gilvar: To me, one of the big ones is you’ve got first and foremost… Any activation or marketing program you do is only as good as the list that you have. If you know who the people you aren’t doing business with today that you want to do business with, you’re halfway there.

Mike Graziani: And I think some of the nuts and bolts aspects are the unfamiliar territory with regard to logistics, the travel, the rendezvous of the vehicle to the client locations or the target locations, if it’s a regional set up kind of thing, to obviously try and maximize a number of meetings in the fewest number of days.

Mike Gilvar: Great, alright guys. So, what’s the bottom line?

Mal Gilvar: Well, to me, the bottom line is if you are missing out on the revenues that you normally generate from trade shows, and we all know those are fantastic, the mobile tour can be a way to have really interesting one-on-one engagements, VIP experiences with your potential customers and prospects in a way that is very similar to being at a trade show forum in that you can have your actual physical product there and do demonstrations and so forth.

Mike Graziani: Yeah, I think it’s going to have a real strong place even beyond the pandemic situation.

Mike Gilvar: That’s great. And I would say that from measuring your ROI standpoint, from that perspective, being able to measure is going to be really, really easy.

Mal Gilvar: Definitely.

Mike Gilvar: Awesome. Hey guys, thanks for helping out with this, and thanks everybody for watching and we’ll see you real soon on the next edition of The Bottom Line with TTG.

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