the Future Financial Freedom group

While attending a national trade show held in a large convention center, I stopped walking suddenly and had an epiphany.

Actually, I had been walking the aisles back and forth looking at booths and realized that I had probably walked the last two aisles in a zombie-like trance and needed to take a rest. So I stopped, sat down for a moment and started observing.

There were two small booths next to each other. The difference between them was significant:

• One company had obviously invested a lot of money in their booth: four-color graphic backdrop, extra lights, signs, giveaway pens, carpeting, two laptops running videos extolling the product's virtues and two company representatives wearing logo-ed polo shirts -- lots of glitz and glamour . The two representatives were sitting on chairs in the back of the booth talking.
• The second booth was far less expensive: a simple cloth backdrop with one fairly basic sign. One woman was standing at the front of the booth holding the company's product. She sought to engage each person by making eye contact, smiling, and politely asking, "Did you know that this product can lower your energy usage by 20 percent?" -- lots of substance.

While I watched, she engaged four potential prospects in conversation and exchanged business cards with two. Meanwhile the two in the lavish booth had one person stop in who obviously knew one of the two people sitting in the back of the booth.

When I was ready to resume my walk through the convention hall, I walked past the two booths. The sitters didn't look up, while the woman looked at me, smiled, made eye contact, and asked me her question.

While her product had no application for me, I stopped and told her that I noticed how well she was succeeding in engaging potential prospects. She told me, "I better do a good job because our company is new and doesn't have the financial resources to fund a glamorous, glitzy booth. So I have to stop people with polite substance."

It looked like her effort was paying off and proves that substance beats glamour and glitz.