Simplicity

Under Steve Jobs, simple, clean and distinctive design became the hallmark of Apple products. But as Jobs said, “It takes a lot of hard work to make something simple, to truly understand the underlying challenges and come up with elegant solutions.” To design great experiences, start with the fundamentals:

• What is the essence of what you want to achieve?
• How can you align the experience to that core concept?
• What elements don’t fit the main idea and should be removed?

2. On-Brand

Inessah Selditz, an interaction designer at the LAB at Rockwell Group, says always identify two or three brand attributes to weave into the best design design of your live event. “These attributes will make up a ‘unifying touchstone’ you’ll come back to again and again over the course of a project.” For example, Apple’s attributes include innovation and sleek style, while Zappos’ brand represents customer service and fun.

Throughout the creative and production process, revisit these attributes to determine if your ideas and experience elements are on target.

3. Storytelling Elements

Selditz also says a meaningful experience design includes a storyline. “This is really important because that’s how our minds work. Stories are what makes something memorable.”

Think about the story you want visitors to experience as they pass through your space. From the time they enter to the time they leave, what do they think, experience and remember? Is the goal to educate, entertain—or both?

4. Seamless Flow

Whatever your ultimate event goal is—increase brand awareness, generate leads or drive sales—the attendee journey from entrance to exit needs to be strategically designed.

• Decide what, where and how your story is communicated.
• Define how visitors interact with staff and technology along the journey.
• Determine how to capture contact or lead information.
• Identify visitors’ next steps once the experience is complete.

A seamless attendee flow throughout makes the most immersive and engaging experience design.

5. Cohesive

A sense of cohesion is crucial to the best experience design. Every element doesn’t have to be identical, but you do need for all elements to share a strong, unified visual relationship throughout the design.

From the smallest touch to the largest element, be consistent in colors, fonts and images to maximize your brand impact.

6. Balance

In Chinese philosophy, yin and yang describe how opposite forces are actually complementary and interconnected. This concept of balancing conflicting elements plays a critical role in the best experience design.

For example, it isn’t easy to incorporate the latest technology and create a warm, welcoming environment—but with the right balance, it can be achieved.

7. Focused

Similar to the simplicity exercise, stop and consider what you want as the main focus of the experience: what element, message or feeling should stand out first and foremost?

Once you’ve decided, use that information to help decide what to—and what not to—include in your best experience design. Prioritize elements that support your focus, and remove anything that distracts or doesn’t fit.

8. Accent Lighting

Lighting is one of the easiest ways to create a mood or environment. From moving fixtures and video integration to holograms and other AV effects, lighting can enhance design and help articulate your story.

Be intentional with lighting elements. Consider how lights can be used to create depth and highlight focus points.

9. Balanced Tech

We’ve talked about all the ways event technologies are used to create a more cohesive experience. But don’t be lured into using technology just because everyone else is.

Jamie Barlow, VP of creative technology at Sparks, says there are critical steps to making a sound technology investment. Barlow says to ask:

• How do you connect the experience beyond the real world touch point?
• How can technology help bring your brand’s best assets to life?
• What specific action do you want attendees to do, and what tools do they need to make it happen?
• Does the technology medium map back to the story you’re communicating?

Use your answers to help balance your technology selection and supporting media.

10. Multisensory

Jinsop Lee, a TED Talent Search winner and industrial designer, believes great design incorporates all five senses to create an unforgettable experience.

Plan and design your experience to provide attendees with a great experience across multiple senses. Good design looks great, but shouldn’t it also feel great, smell great, sound great and even taste great?

Door-to-door marketing is a canvassing technique that is generally used for sales, marketing, advertising, or campaigning, in which the person or persons walk from the door of one house to the door of another, trying to sell or advertise a product or service to the general public or gather information. People who use this sales approach are often called traveling salesmen, or the archaic name drummer, to “drum up” business. This technique is also sometimes called direct sales. A variant of this involves cold calling first, when another sales representative attempts to gain agreement that a salesperson should visit.

With the realization of telephone “Do Not Call” lists it is becoming increasingly more difficult to connect with consumers and business people. An emerging trend is the deployment of very professional, highly skilled door-to-door canvassers to drive product sales and brand awareness.

Coordinating, training and motivating these teams to produce results are at the very core of Fulcrum’s proven capabilities. Fulcrum has the knowledge and experience required to implement these programs, such as best days and times to canvass, who will sell the most product; male, female, young or mature and what geographics and demographics respond best to door-to-door marketing. Put Fulcrum’s experience to work for you and avoid the costly mistakes of trying to manage these programs in-house.

Hire and Train Door-to-Door Marketing Team

If you’re in charge of hiring people, that typically means that you’ve found success in Door To Door Marketing yourself. You know what it takes to be great, but now you’re stuck with an entirely new problem. How do you find others who will be just as good (if not better) and will stick around and grow into important influencers invested in the long term growth of the company? A great D2D sales company is a great recruiting company. So what does that greatness look like?

First off, you need to realize that you’re not going to hire a superstar every time. If you think you have found one, be careful. It’s not hard for someone to seem golden during one interview and you don’t want to be fooled.

Even if you think the candidate does have a lot of great experience working in the field for other companies, you have to realize that success doesn’t always translate. What worked for them at previous companies probably won’t work as well for you. In fact, their success will probably make them stubborn; after all, what reason do they have to follow your approach when they’ve figured out their own?

It’s also possible that the rep’s previous company might have had much better-developed training and selling systems than you do, and that system was the key reason they killed it. If you’re not developing a competitive system, what does that communicate about your company? The more dialed-in you are about a rep’s success, the more likely you are to attract and keep strong performers.