1. Check previous history and years of experience including backing by any large industrial groups: This is most obvious way to research on event planners. Trade shows backed by large organizations would have greater availability of resources and marketing skills.

2. Demographics of previous trade shows: Did last show done by trade show provider have a decent show of visitors? Is trade show provider boasting about numbers on its marketing material or hiding it in some obscure corner for number crunchers? Did trade show provider have a professional organization draw up demographics of visitors? Do demographics fit your requirement? Answers to these queries should help you decide if you should use this trade show as a sales and marketing vehicle for your company.

3. If there is a conference, who are speakers? You should have at least heard of a few of speakers or their organizations if they are speaking in conference. A quick check should also be done to see if speakers also have a booth at tradeshow. Tradeshow booth providers usually give out speaker slots as an added incentive to exhibitors and you might like to avoid such events as they are not very genuine.

Perhaps that sounds crazy. Well, here's info...

But before anything else - let me stress that when I say "celebrities", I'm not talking about Tiger Woods or Tom Cruise!

Who I'm talking about is celebrities in YOUR market. People who are very highly thought of and well known in market you're selling to. People who your target market look up to.

Take this real life example:

An online publisher named Alex was just about to launch an information product revealing psychological sales tactics.

However, even though his product was of very highest quality, Alex was looking for something "extra" that would increase sales of product even more.

What Alex wanted to achieve is to boost *credibility* in sales message presenting product. So visitors to his site would actually believe what they read, and therefore be a lot more likely to buy.

Now, since product Alex was selling was revealing sales and marketing tactics, it would of course be purchased by people interested in selling more online.

So who better to give Alex a testimonial than a world famous marketing expert?...

Alex managed to get a testimonial from none other than Joe Sugarman - hugely successful direct marketer and famous for his BluBlocker sun glasses infomercials.

So - how do YOU go about boosting your own sales with testimonials from celebrities?

Well, let me firstly stress that unless you already have a relationship with person (you know each other), there's a strong chance they won't reply to you. They may, or they may not. So be prepared for that.

Sending them an email is quick, but I get 200+ emails a day at moment (spam included), and that's on low end compared to number of emails some people I know get.