Tip 17: Assist the Sales Team

We have said that salespeople should help the overall show (see Tip #15); by the same token, other departments should support sales when needed. To illustrate, consider a situation in which sales is having difficulty with a specific category of prospects (say widget machinery). Here is what to do:

1. The conference department creates three sessions on widget production engineering, including a panel session for exhibitors.
2. Marketing establishes relationships with Widget Equipment News and The Society of Widget Engineering to support the show.
3. Marketing includes in its promotion plan a targeted package to 30,000 widget production engineers. They also plan a telemarketing campaign to the 300 top buyers responsible for 72% of widget machine purchases.

With this plan, sales has a specific message to pitch widget machinery prospects: we are serious about attracting the specific attendees you want to see. And be sure everyone feeds useful "patter" to sales, such as, "pre reg for widget production engineers is 37% ahead of last year."