This one is a special blogpost for our supplier members — and anyone else who's ever had to transfer the excitement from their table to the masses walking by.
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In 2017, the Center for Exhibition Industry Research (CEIR) released an eight part Attendee Floor Engagement Report from a comprehensive study of exhibitors at trade shows. We read it through and identified a few key takeaways that we hope will provide inspiration for enhanced engagement with attendees at your next trade show.

This is the ultimate goal for anyone at a trade show and everyone knows it. You have something you want someone else to buy. That could be an urn, software, intellect, or a preneed contract. And CEIR reports that this is the number two reason why attendees keep going to trade shows: so they can interact with the products themselves. So your focus should be on getting people to your booth and selling them on the value of your product.

The good news is that data shows that people like free stuff. The pens, candy, and hand lotion you pass out are appreciated. This is especially true at a CANA show — our association doesn’t give our attendees bags, paper, pens, or any of those goodies so they’re extra appreciated from you! Plus, these end up back at home or the office where they are shared with colleagues.

The bad news is that the paper handouts aren’t as appealing as the free stuff. We know this from both the data and the folders, business cards, catalogs, and more they’ve collected from you but left on the cocktail tables at the end of day at a CANA show. Instead, people are looking for digital versions — a screen in the booth for a quick glance or a pdf to share back home right then (especially if they can send it themselves). That way, they still have two hands free for a drink and a handshake.

If your product or service isn’t a tangible thing, or is too large to demo in your booth, you’ll need to get creative to allow attendees to engage with the product or service information in a meaningful way. Here too, a screen can allow someone to get the feel for your product with a demo, a video, or tutorial. After all, the goal is for them to understand how your product or service meets their business need.

If your product or service supports it, a sale on the premises and a receipt emailed to the office yields instant gratification for the attendee, and a satisfied customer for you. The data shows that many exhibitors aren’t doing on-site purchases, but the ones that do report high usage by attendees. Going through the whole sales cycle on-site is easier for some products than others, but there are still opportunities with big ticket items: if you can at least schedule a phone call to explore their needs further, or even better, send a quote then and there, you’re that much farther into the process.

But we’re getting ahead of ourselves, because we forgot Sales 101: people buy from people. Data shows that the most valuable tool on the show floor is emotion. Initially, it’s friendliness and approachability that welcomes someone to your booth, and we don’t have to tell you that means eye-contact, a smile, and stepping from behind the table or display. Then, trustfulness and credibility shows that you’re not some flash-in-the-pan product that’s here today and gone the next — we’re an industry of long relationships and they want to know that their business (and equally importantly, their families) can count on you when they need you most.

But to really hook them, it’s the connection of their problem to your solution and the resulting weight off their mind. Giving them that “aha” moment or that warm feeling that comes with a meaningful product to serve their communities better will go a long way to building your loyal customer. That comes from listening. There are no silver bullets, one-size-fits-all in our profession (even though your product probably comes pretty close). So you need to start by asking them about their business, their community, the persistent challenge that occupies them on their commute, and offer a solution that meets their unique needs.
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In some cases, it’s the marketing or sales person that’s best for this job, but data shows that it really depends on your product and goals. Highly technical products — like software and hardware — can often benefit from a technical person at the booth. This person can answer questions, provide recommendations, and tell attendees how this product can work for them. In other cases, someone from upper management is your ace in the hole. With their credentials, the executive can wield their position to build stronger relationships and shorten the sales cycle.

Across the board, data shows that exhibitors have been slow to add a technological component to their attendee engagement strategy. Whether through social media, the event app, or even emails, few exhibitors are doing it. But, those that are have seen value.

In general, these broadcast platforms are about buzz and thought leadership, not the sales cycle. This means that you’re working to stay in people’s awareness as a resource they might need in the future. These avenues are also great places to tell people where they can see your product in action and meet people with answers — your end goal is getting them to the booth for that emotional response.

Before you even register for the event, you want to demonstrate thought leadership or ways to think about problems they face and provide solutions your audience can use. But when you know you’re going to be at a trade show, treat it like the event it will be and start getting excited. Tap into the culture of the event and share the host’s posts to grow your audience both online and on the floor. Build buzz about the event and your booth — who will be there and what will you feature? On site, you have two audiences: the ones that are with you and the ones at home, but sharing photos will appeal to both! Other offers like free stuff, purchase discounts, and raffles will bring the people to your booth and keep the buzz going at home.

After the show is over, it’s back to thought leadership — hopefully a bit wiser from all the great event programming. When people get back to the office, they’re usually playing catch up with everything, and the energy they got from the ideas at the event quickly fades to the background. Anything you can do to recapture that emotion and keep the momentum going (while solving something with your product) will be welcome.

Attendees report three primary objectives when attending a show — engagement with people, product and learning. These become the three pillars which all exhibitor and show organizer activities should fall under.

The first two objectives — engagement with people and product — are usually met in the booth. Attendees gain knowledge through their interactions with booth staff, whether that be with product/technical experts, sales staff or management. The quality of these interactions is the top ranked reason that attendees come to an expo, CEIR reports. They also love to interact with products- whether that’s picking them up and holding them, playing with a software program, or pressing buttons on a demo unit.

The third objective — learning — can be fulfilled in multiple ways. Providing skills-based education on your product, whether it be sales tips for cremation products like urns, short-cuts for software programs, or best practice tips for equipment, goes a long way toward meeting attendee objectives and building those relationships. If your show host offers it, participate in skills-based education or learning sessions outside of your booth. Finally, one-on-one, small group learning sessions are very popular; host short sessions at your booth at scheduled times and provide education (not sales gimmicks) on hot button topics about which attendees crave more information.

Exhibitors report three main goals when exhibiting at an event:

SALES LEADS
This was 73% of all companies, looking to introduce their product to new people. While this sounds like you can count how many people are at the event compared to how many people you talked to, the math isn’t that simple. As valuable as people are, contact with decision-makers is key — just like having management staff man the booth shortens the sales cycle, so does talking to management attending the event.

That said, lead capture was the easiest way to track this. At many shows, this is digital now with badge scanning to capture contact information allowing the conversation to flow faster.

BRAND AWARENESS
More than half (58%) of all companies say getting their name out there is key. Called “impressions” on social media, this means you want to know how many people can now say they’ve heard of your company, your product, and seen your logo. And it doesn’t take a table to do it, which is why exhibitor profiles and digital engagement is so important, and why alternatives like sponsorship can be so valuable.

Here, it’s most useful to know where exhibitors are featured and how many people saw and interacted with listings there, often from the show host.

RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT
The third most common reason for exhibiting is relationship management (46%). Connecting with current clients and furthering the sales cycle with strong leads is key in this category. In many cases, this is measured by time away from the booth — side meetings, dinners, a tab at the bar, and other things that convey a mutual investment between your clients and the company.

In that case, the amount of time you spend on each of these activities is the real measure of success.

To a much lesser extent, exhibitors attend to announce a new product (23%), to offer special promotions (18%), establish themselves as thought leaders (13%), or connect with other exhibitors as partners or distributors (12%).

Overall, both trade show hosts and participants are thinking about the attendee experience. This move toward experiential design brings everything from the above plus the atmosphere and the culture of the host organization and location into account. From CANA’s perspective, we’re thinking about the most enjoyment people can get out of our event locations, not just our programming. We host exhibitor training to teach them what a CANA event is like for everything from arranging shipping to our vibe. And we make sure that our promotional materials for the event are on brand for the conference and our association. As exhibitors, you do the same: choosing your events for their match with your goals, sending the right people to work the table, telling prospects to join you there, and getting your logo front and center. It’s the goal of every event host to work together with the exhibitors to make sure that the attendee experience is one to remember and tell others about.

So, how do we make changes, as exhibitors and hosts? (1) Be intentional about choices. Don’t just look around and see what collateral is cluttering the office and who hasn’t gone to a show recently. Know your audience, know your event, make the right choice for them. (2) Get feedback about the event. Don’t add the notch to your chair and move to the next. Ask the host for data about who attended, what your exposure was like, and do your own data collection from attendees on the floor or after about your booth and offerings. (3) Keep the experience alive. Don’t end the show and the conversation. Build some lead up excitement for the event, host a client or just promote your presence on the floor, and follow up about the show and the experience after.

Face-to-face is still one of the best ways to connect, and trade shows provide a perfect way to start. In the spirit of continuous improvement, CANA has implemented new tools for the upcoming convention to help you act on some of these suggestions. Our new event website and event app offer you the opportunity to increase your exposure by having expanded exhibitor profiles in both places, as well as more places for your logo to be displayed. Through the event app you’ll now have the option to add lead-retrieval. Finally, the event app allows you to send messages to attendees as well as invite them to meet with you through a calendaring function. We hope these new features make your next show with us even better. And if you won’t be at the CANA convention, we hope you can use these ideas to make your next event great, wherever that may be.

When CNN’s article regarding the JAMA radiation letter first hit the CANA newsfeed on February 26, 2019, we knew immediately it would be a big deal. And yes, the story has become a many-headed hydra of confusion, concern, and misinformation, accompanied by increasingly scary rumors.

We constantly field concerns from suppliers about cremated remains placed inside keepsakes, from crematory operators and embalmers about their cases, from families about their options, from regulators about all of the above, and from you — in the middle of it all — trying to serve your families, comply with regulations, and protect your staff.

CANA has curated several of the most useful questions in one place to counter some of the fear, anger, and rumors. And it’s all publicly available, so please share this resource far and wide, bookmark it for later reference, come back to check for updates, and, most of all, DON’T PANIC.

The radiation misinformation saga began with a research letter, titled Radiation Contamination Following Cremation of a Deceased Patient Treated With a Radiopharmaceutical and published on February 26, 2019 in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). In the letter, Dr. Nathan Yu (et. al) discussed a case study of a business in Arizona that cremated a 69-year-old man with pancreatic cancer in 2017. The deceased had been treated with an intravenous radiopharmaceutical for a pancreatic tumor and died five days later. When the medical staff became aware of the cremation, they notified the crematory and the cremation chamber, equipment, and staff were all tested for exposure to radiation. The equipment was found to have traces of contamination, as was a urine sample from one crematory operator (but it was a different isotope from the one used in the patient’s treatment). The contamination levels were below the limits set by the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission. In conclusion, because this is only one studied instance, researchers recommend further testing for more data and better understanding.
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CNN was the first major media source we found to bring the letter to the general public awareness. To round out the story, the network solicited the opinion of Dr. Daniel Appelbaum, chief of nuclear medicine and PET Imaging at the University of Chicago Medical Center. He said, "If there are reasonable and fairly straightforward and simple things that we can do to minimize radioactivity, why not do that?” Applebaum also acknowledged the need for better understanding and regulations that keep workers safe. In the case of crematory operators, the doctor recommends "robust enforcement of mask and gloves and handling techniques."

Other media outlets picked up the story and it spread quickly, with information traveling like a game of telephone. My mother’s church group argued against cremation for spreading radiation in the community. One CANA member’s staff are expressing concerns about “the crematory operator who died from radiation” (when none have). Each of which are exaggerated concerns about what we know.
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Because while the case study is new, the knowledge about radiopharmaceuticals and brachytherapy is not. And the medical community is quick to reassure that there is Low Risk of Radioactive Contamination from Cremation When Proper Safety Procedures Followed. CANA is aware that these concerns and fears are rooted in a lack of awareness and understanding, so we want to provide information to help.

RADIATION 101
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At CANA’s second Alkaline Hydrolysis Summit, we invited Jeff Brunette, Health Physicist and Manager of Radiation Safety at the Mayo Clinic, to talk about nuclear medicine and its impact on death care. His full presentation is available as a free, on-demand webinar for you, your staff, and anyone to access anytime on CANA’s Online Learning platform, but here are some highlights:

• Nuclear medicine, as administered by a medical professional, is very different than a nuclear warhead. These treatments are administered at doses for safe and healthful diagnostic imaging and cures, not mass devastation.
• These treatments have known efficacy windows which range depending on the use. Diagnostic imaging (e.g. PET scans) can take 20 minutes to 67 hours to clear the system. Radiopharmaceuticals can take 3-12 days (this is where the case study falls). Radiation oncology, like brachytherapy, implants treatment into the body to deliver targeted doses over a treatment window and these isotopes can take weeks or months (or longer) to decay to acceptable exposure levels.
  • These implants are often the size of a grain of rice and inserted throughout the impacted area, thus impractical to be removed by a funeral or medical professional.
• The variations in the length of radiation are due to different materials (called isotopes) used in treatment and their half-lives (i.e. how long it takes the radiation to degrade to half its original mass).
  • Recommendations from the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission state that "if the therapeutic nuclear medicine procedure or manual brachytherapy procedure took place more than two years ago, the decedent can be treated in the usual manner. No precautions are necessary for autopsy, cremation, embalmment or alkaline hydrolysis."

WHAT'S THE RISK?
The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission has set specific levels (mentioned above) to regulate emissions and uses. In the case of cremating a body treated with nuclear medicine, the Commission and medical community agrees that the potential exposure is too low to record. Though cremation volatilizes the radiation treatment, Brunette says even extreme cases are not likely to exceed the limits set for safe exposure due to the combination of medically accepted isotopes, their half-lives, and treatment use. He explains it with an analogy: taking a daily recommended dose of aspirin is fine (around 325 mg) but taking a year’s worth at once (118,625 mg or more than three bottles) is fatal.

Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission has their own rules and regulations and reviewed them extensively last year. CANA recommends their comprehensive Radiation Protection Guidelines for Safe Handling of Decedents as a great resource to learn more about the isotopes in question and safe handling procedures, even for non-Canadians.

Ultimately, Brunette argues that radiation is a limited concern because the levels you will encounter on the job are small, and not very common. Your bigger concerns are the activities that your staff do every day: musculoskeletal injury from lifting, exposure to disease during embalming (HIV; Hepatitis B & C; Tuberculosis; MRSA), and exposure to harsh conditions during cremation operations (heat, noise, dust or chemicals).

HOW CAN WE OPERATE SAFELY?
CANA recommends asking all families for detailed medical information to properly understand and respond to potential risks. Just as you ask about the presence of pacemakers, ask about nuclear medicine treatments.

Paul Harris of Regulatory Support Services encourages all funeral home, crematory, and cemetery owners to ask the pertinent questions of their families. Cause of death is the first indicator that a case is at risk for radiation therapy, but all families should be asked in the case of death unrelated to their ailment. In many cases, families may be unaware or not understand the procedures the decedent has undergone. In these cases, you may need to ask for a Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) release form (in the US, rules in Canadian provinces vary) to contact the medical provider yourself. Asking the radiologist for information on the treatment and about the specific isotope and its half-life is the best way to determine when (or if) it is safe to cremate or embalm the body.

The medical community also recommends installing a simple radiation detector to quickly alert staff to the presence of radioactivity (some states require them in all morgues). Brunette recommends a pancake Geiger-Mueller counter which can be acquired cheaply (particularly if you have them left-over from the old nuclear-powered pacemaker days) and built into your case acceptance procedure.  The Arizona Bureau of Radiation Control recommended a combination metal/radiation detector, such as the MetRad, which one school in considering adding to their intake process curriculum.

Mostly, Brunette recommends the following steps to reduce exposure:

• Awareness: Talk to families, ask the radiologist, consider purchasing and/or installing detectors.
• Protection: Wear appropriate PPE when potential for contact with body fluids, cremated remains, or AH fluids.
• Disposal: Drain blood and body fluids during embalming directly into the sanitary sewer system and don’t aspirate unless necessary.
• Proximity: Maximize distance to the body and minimize time in close vicinity to the body.

The medical community should do what Drs. Yu and Applebaum say: research. Learn more about these situations so everyone can make informed choices about safety. In the long-term, this will serve us better than knee-jerk reactions and blanket rules to refuse all cases who have ever been treated.

Our professional community should continue to do what you do best: serve your communities safely and compliantly. Enforce PPE, add this to your list of questions for families, do your due diligence. You should review your existing policies, processes, and procedures to ensure that you are screening for the use of radiopharmaceuticals and staff are taking proper precautions. Inform yourself and staff with basic information about diseases that could indicate potential treatments and which isotopes are used. Know who to contact with questions like your local hospital’s radiology department (or the decedent’s doctor) or regulator.

Mostly, DON’T PANIC. Now that the public is aware of this issue, this is an opportunity to educate our communities and ourselves with good information from reliable sources. CANA will periodically update this post with new knowledge, so bookmark this for later.