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I get a chuckle from some of the websites I see where some magicians advertises “Magic for Any Occasion.” Oh yeah, what about a funeral.  I have a wide range of shows. I perform for a wide range of audiences in a wide range of venues and situations. But, a funeral is one of those occasions I do not think I would do well.

A few years ago I did a show for a church in Texas. The after the show I spent some time with members of the audience as I always like to do.  A little boy came up after wards and was all excited about what he had just seen. He was telling me how much he enjoyed the show and he thought I was really cool. Then he asked me something that I have never forgotten. He told me his mother had recently died and asked if I would perform at her funeral. I expressed my condolences and politely declined his invitation.

Seeing the wonder of magic at such a traumatic time had an impact on him. It touched him deeply. He still calls me on occasion just to talk for awhile. I enjoy our short conversations. I was able to touch his heart with a silly magic show at a deeply emotional time. But he continues to touch mine.

Professional trade show magicians can be a powerful tool in your trade show tool belt. They increase traffic at your trade show booth, as well as heighten awareness of your products to conference attendees.

You should not think of a trade show magician simply as an entertainer. Because when you hire a trade show magician you are not hiring an entertainer. You are hiring another member of your sales staff. The time they spend is considerable prior to the show. They will spend time with you and your staff, to better understand your company and the goals for the trade show. Trade show magicians will then carefully select the tricks they will use that can illustrate you message with impact. They script their shows prior to the show with enough time for you to review and modify the script. This interaction allows you to be sure you will receive the maximum benefit of having a magician in your booth.

An experienced trade show magician charges anywhere from $2,000 to $5,000 a day, but the expense is well worth it because they provide a blend of sales and sleight of hand that bring prospective customers to your booth.

Here is a common error. Assuming any entertainer can work your exhibit. All they need to do is draw a crowd. Drawing a crowd should not be your goal. The goal is getting the name and contact information of qualified leads. This requires the work of an experienced sales professional and entertainment professional not just an entertainer.

Trade show magician

In an article on my site, entitled Creating an Innovative Culture I spoke about how some companies sabotage their innovation effects by not encouraging networking among  department and suppliers and customers. The reasons for encouraging a networking culture are numerous and obvious. No only for innovation and creativity but for simply maintaining business health. The idea of the lone ranger or isolated genius coming up with sparks of insight and creativity is no longer true. As a matter of fact, it never was true.

Innovation comes about when groups of people, from divergent backgrounds,  come together to share and leverage their diverse experiences, disciplines, abilities and view points. This can only happen if you encourage networking within your organization. This happen only if it is done by design. And then supported and modeled by company leadership.

Another key motivation for setting up networking initiatives, other than innovation,  is based on the simple fact that a business actually exists in the knowledge, relationships and minds of its employees. Distributing this knowledge is always a challenge, but replicating that information and knowledge through networking allows your business to weather losses of employees which inevitably occur. But leveraging a company’s collective knowledge, experience and relationship via either virtual or face-to-face networks  is vital to it ability to innovate.

Additionally, there is a lot of value that can be obtained through sources external to the company. Harnessing this the power and potential of this new knowledge and experience demands a strong networking culture. And a strong networking culture must be supported from the top.

You need to provide creative environments or events that encourage people to extend or develop their networks. People need to talk and discuss problems, issues, or ideas with people they have not yet met. These are events or situations where people regularly collaborate on new ideas.

You need to provide formal events that cause people to interact with people they would not normally interact with. Later review who has made connections and allow these new acquaintances to work on projects together. This effort can pay off handsomely with big ideas. These type of events also allow the seeds of new networks to be planted. You then are allowed them to blossom with the informal networks events. Encouraging these types of activity and put programs into place that increases the number of networks and their size will help you insure innovation increases in your organization.

How do you develop really good ideas? The answer to that is simply. Develop a lot of them. Most new ideas will fail. Only a few will succeed. How to you come up with really good ideas? Come up with a lot of ideas. Since it is recognized that most new ideas will fail you have to create an environment that allows for failure. Now saying you have allow for failure is easy. Living it is hard. But the fact is failure is not tolerated. And you are punished for failure. Stockholders will not accept failure.

So how do you fail and end up with a success? Start by looking at the data. Since we know most new ideas will fail. First thing to do is generate a lot of ideas. The more ideas you generate the higher the probability you will generate one that will succeed. The chances of finding a successful idea is better when you are looking are 200 than if all you have to look at is 20. Once you have generated the ideas you have to evaluate them. I do not know any organization with unlimited budget undergo a full on evaluation  200 new ideas. every month.   You need a methodology to identify the good ideas and eliminate the bad ones. Fortunately, a methodology has been  developed, tested, and proven. The agile development used in software development.

Software developers faced the problem of trying to deliver software projects on time, on budget and with the functionality promised. They almost always failed. It reached to point that no one ever believed estimates given by the developer. The developers would point out how the specifications for the project were different at the end then they were at the beginning. Generally there was a constant finger pointing war going on. Then agile projects were created. This is where the project was divided into very small deliveries and each delivery had to provide value to the customer. The project team provided small pieces to evaluate, test and use. Now the customer has a view inside the project and a chance to provide feedback and change course if needed.

The same project can be used in developing innovation projects. Divide the development into small incremental deliveries. Most innovation project are high risk. You do not know it they will succeed or not. And most will not. So you want to terminate the work as soon as possible on this projects that do not show promise and reassign the resources  to those who do show potential or at least more potential. Using a methodology base on the agile model you get to evaluate early and often limiting the amount of resources spent on those ideas that will not work out.

A recent article in the Harvard Business Review How to Kill Innovation: Keep Asking Questions pointed out the natural result to the question “What about….” The idea dies. But if you don’t ask questions how do you know if a decision is correct of a idea should be pursued? Only companies or organizations that have a wealth of resources (like the government) can afford endless analysis to determine if a course should be taken or not. The agile software development model is a good one to pursue. The idea is do deliver early and often. What is delivered has some value to the project’s customer. The same can be done with an innovation idea. Break it down and determine what part can be developed and delivered to test the idea. Just as in the agile software model, small deliveries are made often. This provides the need basis for analysis and moves you down the path at the same time, saving time and money