SELLING 101

How it works?

How Does it Work?

Selling a used trade show booth on our classified site is simple and the posting process is straight forward. Our service works very similar to eBay, Autotrader.com or any typical classified listing. The difference is that your classified listing and our marketplace is tailored for the tradeshow exhibit buyer. To start, you list your exhibit for sale on our site using our online posting portal. Next, your listing is reviewed by the ExhibitTrader.com staff and lastly, upon approval, the ad will go live on our used exhibit classified listings. The listing runs for 12 consecutive months and can be renewed annually. When a potential buyer is interested in your exhibit, they will contact you via our site. All of your contact information is kept private until you provide it to the potential buyer. You will communicate directly with the potential buyer, answering questions about the exhibit and negotiating with the potential buyer on the purchase price. During these discussions the potential buyer may ask questions relating to property condition, rebranding, new graphics, shipping, setup cost, etc.., ExhibitTrader.com is happy to assist you in answering buyer questions and providing cost estimates to the potential buyer when desired. While your exhibit is listed for sale with us, the property stays stored with you, your storage facility or your exhibit company. In most cases, ExhibitTrader.com does not buy or store used exhibits. Once the exhibit is sold and paid for, the ad is closed, you will be invoiced for our services.

What Does It Cost?

Because we are so confident in our ability to help you get your exhibit sold, there is absolutely no upfront cost to list a booth for sale on our site, period! We often tout that our service is a one of a kind in the advertising world as you pay only if the service is successful! When your display is sold to a buyer who contacted you through our site, our fee is a small 15% consignment commission on the final selling price of your exhibit. (Example: you list an exhibit for $10,000 and negotiate the final sale for $8,000; Our 15% commission is based on the actual selling price of $8,000 and the consignment fee would be $1,200.) If your exhibit does not sell, you owe us nothing. It’s that simple!

A Step by Step Guide to listing and Selling your Exhibit

Creating an Account
The Seller’s Portal

The first step in getting a booth listed for sale on our website is creating a user account on what we call the “Seller’s Portal”. The Seller’s Portal will be your control panel for creating a user account, inputting details and photos about your exhibit when listing an exhibit for sale, managing / updating your ad(s), viewing stats on your ad(s) performance, and reading communications from potential buyers. The Seller’s Portal can be easily accessed by clicking the “LOGIN” tab in the upper right-hand corner on any page throughout our website.

Registration

To get started, you will need to complete the online registration first. This information includes your contact details, company information, and any additional contacts that need to be included on correspondence regarding your property in the event that you are unavailable. An important piece of required information is the company or individual who owns the property(s). This will ultimately be the entity that will be financially responsible for the 15% consignment fee upon the sale of the display. This consignment agreement is available here to review as well as is it required to sign prior to listing any pre-owned display ads.

Username and Password

After entering your contact and company details, you will be prompted to create a unique Username and Password to access your account in the Seller’s Portal. Be sure to record this information as we do not keep your password on file. This information is encrypted and to get access into your account with a lost password, you will need to complete the Forgot Password process online to retrieve access.

Once you have finished creating an account, you will be sent a verification e-mail to the main contact’s e-mail address. Upon receiving the verification email, you will need to click on the provided link to verify your identity, thus completing the registration process. You are now are ready to log in using your newly created log-in and password to post your exhibit(s) for sale. If you do not receive the verification e-mail, be sure to check your SPAM/JUNK folders and safelist all emails from @exhibittrader.com.

Posting your Display
Info Required

When posting your exhibit for sale on our pre-owned marketplace, we ask a series of questions about the display. This detailed information is what we have found buyers are looking for when purchasing a used trade show booth. Some of the posting questions are required while others are optional.

Below is a list of Required information you should gather in preparations to listing your booth for sale:

  • Exhibit Type - Portable Modular, Custom or Two Story

  • Exhibit Builder - A list of exhibit builders is provided, including unknown
  • Original Purchase Price - Approx. cost of the exhibit when purchased
  • Age of Exhibit - Approximate age of the exhibit
  • Condition of Exhibit - Excellent, Above Average, Average, Poor
  • Number of Times Used - Approx. number of times the exhibit was used
  • Exhibit Storage Location - City, State and Zip
  • Exhibit Configuration - The size of booth space the exhibit was used in
  • Additional Configurations - If exhibit can be used in other booth sizes

You will also find questions that are optional during the posting process. Optional details such as finishes, graphic applications, unique components, crating, shipping cases as well as the opportunity to upload additional media such as set up instructions, parts lists, and video of the display. While these optional details are not required, we always encourage you to fill out the posting questionnaire as completely as you can and provide as much information as you have. A more complete posting will help reduce “tire Kickers” and in many cases, help an exhibit sell quicker.

Saving Your Progress

A valuable feature is now available to our users, the ability to save your progress at any point during the posting process and return later to complete your questionnaire. This is helpful in cases where you may need to retrieve additional information about the booth, you have interruptions or other business that requires your attention. Simply hit save, exit and you’ll be ready to pick up right where you left off when you sign back in.

Keys to a
Successful Sell

Over the years we have identified a few key elements that greatly increase a used booths ability to sell, to sell quicker, and to sell for a higher value.

Good Images

Providing good quality images of your booth property is the most important element of your ad that helps increase traffic and ultimately the overall success of your display being sold. We recommend taking several images of the display while it is set up at show or other available locations. Preferred are several images of the display at a distance and getting the entire booth in the photo from multiple angles. Also recommended are close images of the additional components or accessories you have. These can include counters, storage, workstations, monitors, furniture, shipping cases or crates or any other unique elements that your booth may contain. If you have renderings or initial design mockups of the exhibit; set up prints or assembly instructions; electrical layouts or other cad files, we strongly suggest you use these as well. The more images you can provide the more successful we will be at bringing you a buyer.

A Good Description

When creating your ad, we provide a section to include a written description about your booth. The description is a great place to highlight features of the exhibit that make it unique and to call out special components or custom qualities that made it a successful exhibit for you and your trade show marketing efforts. If the exhibit won any awards, received high praise from attendees, or was an attention grabber, be sure to let the buyer know. If you have an idea of average ownership cost such as shipping, set up / dismantle, drayage, or storage cost, include these as well. While a lack of a all description will not hinder the ability to sell your exhibit, a well written description can greatly increase the amount of interest in your booth, answer initial inquisitive questions for potential buyers, get them informed as to your property, prepare them to better communicate and ultimately make an offer.

Price

Pricing plays a major role in whether many consumers make a purchase, and the same applies to the pre-owned exhibit market place. Perceived value is important to those considering purchasing a used trade show booth. The buyer needs to know that they are saving valuable marketing dollars when purchasing and re-branding a used booth. If a used exhibits asking price is too high and the potential buyer calculates the cost of shipping, setting up for re-branding, and the cost of creating new graphics only to find they are saving very little vs buying new, then they will either move on to a more competitively priced used booth listing or they will simply decide to purchase a new exhibit. We provide highly accurate tool called “The Estimator” to help competitively price your used display. While you are free to list at what ever price you feel fair, our estimates are based on current buying trends in the pre-owned market and a balanced focus toward an expedited sale.

Submitting your Ad
for Approval

We have implemented an ad approval process in order to help us maintain a higher quality control over the used exhibits and content listed on our pre-owned marketplace. This is a simple step that takes place automatically once you click the “Submit for Approval” button on the final page of the posting process. Once you submit your ad for approval, it is reviewed within 1-2 business days by our pre-owned department and you are notified via email once your ad is approved or denied.

Once your ad is approved, you will receive an e-mail with the link to your ad as well as details on what to expect now that your ad is live on site. Our Seller FAQ page is also a great resource that is always available to our sellers.

If your ad is denied, you will receive an e-mail highlighting the reason(s) it was denied and what modifications (if any) to the posting need to be made in order to get it approved. Visit our Criteria for Denial page to learn more about why an ad may not be approved.

Monitoring and
Managing your Ad

Once your used booth for ad is approved and live on the site you can begin to utilize the ad stat performance features in the seller portal. The ads performance can be tracked by how many times your booth has been clicked on to be viewed in detail and how many inquiries the booth has received.

You will also receive monthly update email messages that contain stats on the performance of your ad. Things like how many times the ad has been looked at, all inquiries made on the property and details of the interested parties.

We highly recommend monitoring the ads performance and making changes / updates to the ad as needed. An ad with a high view count, but low to no inquiry often indicates one or a combination of the following:

  • Not enough information provided when posting the ad

  • Photos used are of low quality or does not provide a clear view of the exhibit
  • A need to lower the asking price that perhaps is too high for the current market.

If at any time you have questions regarding your ad posting, please reach out to us, we are happy to make recommendations that might help boost your ads performance.

Communicating
with potential Buyers

When someone is interested in making an offer or has questions regarding your used exhibit property, they will use our Contact Seller form to inquire. This contact seller form requires the interested buyer to provide their name, phone number, email and question / offer. Inquiries are saved and visible within your Seller Portal. Each time you receive any inquiry, an e-mail is sent to you notifying you of the inquiry with a link to the seller portal prompting you to login and read the inquirers message.

Please note that your (the sellers) contact information is kept completely private by ExhibitTrader.com and only once you respond to the interested buyer will they have your direct contact information. Inside the seller’s portal, in the message center your will be able to reply to the inquires message via email, or you can call them directly. How you chose to communicate with a potential buyer after you have read their initial message is up to you. With each inquiry, we do ask that sellers please respond within a timely manner. We also ask buyers to give 24-48 hours for a response from sellers.

Helping you Sell

Trade show displays are our specialty. For over 3 generations, our family has helped provide display solutions, large and small, to businesses and professionals looking for the best in service with an eye for high-impact design. Our company works with each customer individually to help provide knowledgeable suggestions on event marketing solutions based on budget, booth size, target audience and the exact function and specific results that they desire from their display and trade show participation.

With this said, there will often be questions that arise we don’t expect our sellers to know. Most frequently asked is how buyers can rebrand a pre-owned exhibit and make it their own. We are knowledgeable, experienced and can help educate and even execute the rebranding requirements for any buyer. Questions such as estimated turn-around time needed to rebrand and estimated costs of rebranding can depend on a number of things and are handled on a case by case basis. If for any reason we can’t help provide a solution, we always will help point them in the right direction. We are available at any time during the process to talk or conference in with potential buyers to help explain the rebranding process further. Just let us know and we can schedule with our team, your team and the potential buyer.

Selling, Payment
and Shipping

Finalizing the sale and getting paid for your booth

Once you (the seller) and the buyer have agreed upon a price, the buyer will pay you directly for the exhibit via any form of payment which you or your company prefers to accept. Typical forms of payment are by: Company Check, Credit Card, Wire, Money Order, ACH, and PayPal. We do recommend that you consider using a "Bill of Sale” so that both you and the buyer have a record of the transaction. We also highly recommend that you receive payment in full prior to letting the booth ship out.

Paying our consignment fee

While ExhibitTrader.com works closely with both buyer and seller throughout the process, we ask that you immediately notify us of the final selling price of your display once it has been sold. This will reduce the amount of communications you will receive from us, assist all parties in closing the sold ad and help us maintain the most updated current and live inventory of available pre-owned booths for sale on our site. Upon receiving confirmation of the sale, we will email you (the seller) an invoice for our 15% consignment fee of the verified sales price per your signed consignment agreement. Payment is requested within 14 days of receipt of our invoice. Payment methods accepted included credit card, ACH Electronic Check, Company Check or Wire Transfer.

Shipping

The vast majority of the buyers understand that they are responsible for arranging freight and associated costs to have the booth picked up from the sellers’ storage facility. However, when posting your booth for sale we provide a section labeled “who is responsible for shipping”. The three options provided are Buyer, Seller, and Negotiable. It is up to you, the seller, as to which you choose and of course this can be further addressed during the negotiation process. If you find you or the buyer need help shipping a trade show display, we are happy to help provide assistance with our preferred trade show carrier.

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