DELIVERY EXHIBITIONS
Crossed arms, hands in pockets, even hiding behind a desk: the bloopers caught on camera by the man who’s teaching the world how to do tradeshows
Han Leenhouts has travelled 29 countries with his unique brand of exhibition evangelism
BY KEVIN O’SULLIVAN T
hey sit comfortably at their desk behind what looks at first sight like an astroturf ski slope but turns out to be a scale
model of a skyscraper’s rooftop garden. But it’s not the exhibit we’re
focused on here; it’s the people ‘hiding’ behind it. Han Leenhouts, the photographer, has travelled the globe documenting the absolute horrors of the exhibition industry,
and this image is just one of hun- dreds he uses to train people and stand builders to do their events better. Leenhouts, a sales trainer from
Holland, says: “Tis is the kind of thing you see all the time. Guys looking like they’d rather be in a pub with their friends drinking a nice beer, anywhere but at the show. “And this is the impression
people are left with; ‘why would I come and speak to you when you don’t look you’re interested?’ Or if you’re hiding!” Leenhouts believes success-
ful exhibitions start and end with having the right people working at the show. Having a nice stand is complementary to that. “You might have 20 account
managers who travel the country, 36 | EVENTSBASE | MARCH 2016
and they’re great with clients. But put them on a stand and they’re out of place, they don’t perform.”
LEENHOUTS IS A natural performer himself. I first encounter him as a speaker at an “Exhibitor Master- class” put on by the Association of Event Organisers at Glasgow’s SECC. His style is friendly yet brutally frank. He invites audience members to the stage and asks them to try and sell something to him. It’s a painful watch. Most fail miserably at the first hurdle, asking closed questions, strangling more productive conversations at birth. But it’s a revealing and gripping
lesson in selling; it feels like a bit of a lost artform, certainly one that is perhaps not as valued as it once was. Leenhouts knows this, hence
why his talents are so in demand by events organisers. But he’s also keenly aware of the
fact that, with the rise of the in- ternet, the traditional marketplace concept is now a hard sell itself, even though it can open up inter- esting and different avenues which a binary transaction perhaps can’t. “Everyone thought the market-
place idea would go away and it would stop happening when the internet came along,” he says. “Violence has been done to trade- shows because there are so many other means and alternatives to do business but what has changed is that the level of knowledge of the people working in the industry has decreased tremendously.” Leenhouts believes however that
exhibitions are holding their own and perhaps even making a come-
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