Field Notes / Defence & aerospace events
Seven mistakes founders make at defence trade shows
Land Forces, Avalon, Indo Pacific, AUSA. The show changes, the mistakes don't. Most dual-use companies arrive with a pitch built for investors and commercial customers, then spend three days watching people nod politely and move on.
fig. 01 — three days, one hall, everyone you need
The seven mistakes
I've spent fifteen years making complicated products make sense, for Qantas, BINGE and Toyota, and the last few doing it for deep tech, defence and aerospace founders. Twenty-odd of them so far. What follows is what I keep seeing.
Good technology companies walk into defence expos and leave with a stack of business cards and nothing else. The technology was never the problem. The translation was.
These apply whether you're exhibiting, walking the floor or speaking. Land Forces is in Perth from 6 to 8 October, so if that's your next event, these might come in handy. And if you're coming, do say hello.
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01
You're pitching features. Defence buys capability gaps.
Army doesn't want your sensor, your model or your material. It wants to see further, decide faster or sustain longer than it can today. So rewrite your one-liner as a capability outcome, then anchor it to a gap Defence has already said it has. The National Defence Strategy, the Integrated Investment Program and this year's Innovation, Science and Technology Strategy all name them in public. If you can't say it in one sentence without a slide, nobody on the floor will do it for you.
ReadThe Shopping List: what the 2026 IST Strategy means for your positioning → -
02
You aren't clear on who you need to speak to, or what to say to them.
“Defence” isn't a buyer. Army sets the requirement, CASG runs the acquisition, the primes integrate, and ASCA, DSTG and the state defence agencies sit in between. A major show puts all of them in one hall, and each wants a different conversation.
Use this free tool to work out who those people are and what their roles actually involve. It saves you bouncing between the wrong people and gets you to the right ones faster. Be clear on who you're talking to, how you'll pitch to them, and what you want out of it, rather than aimlessly having a chat.
ToolThe Defence Procurement Map: tick what describes you and your route lights up → -
03
You haven't learned the language.
AIC. Sovereign industrial capability. TRL and MRL. DISP. These aren't jargon, they're the criteria you're scored on. Speak commercial and a prime hears risk. Speak their language and they hear a company that can be integrated into a programme. A fortnight is enough time to learn the vocabulary. It is not enough time to get DISP membership, so if you haven't started, say so honestly and say when you will.
ToolThe Defence Procurement Map: who's who, and where each of them sits → -
04
You're leaving meetings to chance.
The exhibitor list and delegate programme go public weeks out. Pick the twenty people who matter, including the two journalists who cover your segment, and ask for time before you arrive. The stand is where the meeting happens. It is not how the meeting gets booked.
Connect with them on LinkedIn, reach out, and think about what you're actually going to say: why it matters to them, and what they get out of it. “I need five minutes to show you something I think will improve X” is far more compelling than “can I pick your brains?”
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05
Your team is telling different stories.
Primes talk to each other, and they notice when the founder, the BD lead and the one-pager don't agree. Sit everyone down before you go and land one version of what you do, why it matters to Defence, and what you're asking for. Then rehearse it until it's boring to you. It won't be boring to them.
ReadThe Six Deadly Sins of a Founder Pitch → -
06
Your pitch isn't ready.
Be very clear on the messaging: who you are, what you do, and how it benefits the warfighter. These people will meet dozens of companies in a day. They need to walk away from your stand knowing who you are, what you do, who you do it for, and how it might help them. A distinctive giveaway, a competition, anything that separates you from the stand next door, helps more than you'd think.
The same goes for whatever you hand them. One page a Colonel can photograph and forward. A capability statement written against sovereign priorities, not a product brochure. Succinct, free of jargon, and nothing that needs a controlled technical detail to make sense, because you can't show it anyway. A QR code that lands somewhere worth landing, and an interactive tool they can go away and use afterwards, both work harder than a brochure.
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07
You have no follow-up plan.
The show doesn't create momentum. The seventy-two hours afterwards do. If a conversation goes well, lock in the next step on the spot rather than leaving it to the follow-up. Capture properly while you're there: who you met, what they care about, what was promised. Then work the list.
With the hot leads you'll ideally have locked a time in already. If you haven't, call them. Don't email them. Call them, and lock in the next step.
Then make something of value out of what you saw on the floor: observations and learnings relevant to the audiences you're chasing. That's for the people you had a good conversation with who aren't buying today. Put it together quickly off the back of the event and send it out to keep the relationship warm. They might not be your customer today. They will almost certainly be one tomorrow.
Treat it like a campaign, not a ticket
Most of this can be done in a fortnight. Do it and you'll be in the top ten per cent of companies on that floor.
Too many still buy a ticket, or sponsor something, and hope. Nothing running in tandem, no subsidiary events, no plan to extract the maximum from the thing they've already paid a lot of money for.
Whether you're a single operator or a company of a hundred, have a plan and treat the whole thing as a campaign. Do that back to back across a few events and the discipline pays dividends over the following six months.
The seven, in one screen
- 01Pitching features, not capability gaps
- 02Not knowing who you're speaking to, or what to say to them
- 03Not speaking the language
- 04Leaving meetings to chance
- 05A team telling different stories
- 06A pitch that isn't ready
- 07No follow-up plan
Murphy & Company · murphyandcompany.com.au/land-forces
BackgroundWhy the market rejects the work of understanding you, not your science →
All seven come back to two things
Read them again and they collapse into a pair. Either the market doesn't understand what you do, which is mistakes one, three, five and six. Or nothing is reliably carrying your message to the people who matter, which is two, four and seven.
Those need opposite fixes, and most companies guess which one they have. The first conversation is a straightforward call to work out which half is actually broken, so you fix the right thing before you brief anyone on your stand copy. No pitch, no obligation.
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Who wrote this
Chris Murphy
Founder & Principal, Murphy & Company
I market hard things: defence, aerospace, dual-use and advanced manufacturing. Fifteen years leading brand and strategy for Qantas, BINGE, Toyota and Google, now pointed at companies whose product takes twenty minutes to explain.
- 20+Founders advised
- 15+Years brand & strategy
- 50+Creative & effectiveness awards
- 01Principal on every engagement
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What translation looks like when it works
Not trade show stories. Three companies whose technology needed explaining to people who would never read the spec.
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