The problem was not with the attendees. They were great—enjoying themselves walking into each artist’s tent, admiring the work, making comments, and giving compliments. The artists, unfortunately, were not nearly as engaging. Most were sitting in lawn chairs, halfheartedly thanking people for their kindness, but you could just tell they were secretly saying to themselves, “If you like it, why don’t you buy it?!?”

The ratio of lookers to buyers was at least 100 to 1. The artists were doing the old-school method of sales, which I like to call “push and pray marketing.” Push something out there and pray people buy it. People are there to look at all these great art pieces; they were even saying to the artists that they might be interested in buying from them eventually. The most I saw any of the artists do was to hand them a card and say “Let me know!” and then, nothing. With that, the crowd of potential customers would move on to the next tent.

What were the artists hoping these people were going to do? Go home, realize they had a perfect spot in their living room for one of their paintings or sculptures and try to remember who the artist was? Here each and every vendor had a prime opportunity for engagement. Crowds of people were raising their hands expressing interest in the artists’ products, and just being allowed to walk away.

Let’s take the artist’s situation and use the pull-and-stay method instead. You pull customer information and stay in front of them. Let’s imagine that you are one of the artists at Art in the Park. Someone comes into your tent and mentions how wonderful the work is, especially your landscape photography. Instead of just saying thanks, you could say, “I appreciate it, I regularly take landscapes and it’s amazing how well they’re received. I know it’s tough to decide on art, especially when there are so many great artists here today. I have an ‘exclusive preview’ e-mail I send out to people when I take new shots. I could also send you some shots of what is here today. Would you like to sign up? No charge.” Now you control the contact. After potential customers visit 50 other booths this day at the show, they will remember that you are the only one who stood out after the event is long over. Now you can start to build the relationship.

Take it another step. That night, after taking the visitors’ e-mail addresses, write to them to say thank you for coming by the booth. Send them a few shots and ask what they thought about the event. Start a conversation. Engage with them, get to know your marketplace. You’ll be amazed at the responses you receive.

We talk much more about how to pull and stay potential customers at shows like this when we talk about trade shows later on. The same methods can also be applied to retail. Remember, marketing is not one department of your business, it is every point of engagement, including sales. The mistake by too many businesspeople is that if shoppers do not want to buy immediately, they just let them walk away when they should be UnMarketing and pulling in these potential customers.