We have said that salespeople should help the overall show; by the same token, other departments should support sales when appropriate. To illustrate, consider the situation where sales is having difficulty with a specific category of prospects (say widget machinery). Here is how everyone can help:
The conference department creates three sessions on widget production engineering, including a panel session of exhibitors (moderated by a neutral expert).
Marketing establishes relationships with Widget Equipment News and The Society of Widget Engineering to actively support the show.
Marketing includes in its promotion plan a targeted package to 30,000 widget production engineers. They also plan a telemarketing campaign to the 300 key buyers responsible for 72% of widget machine purchases.
With this plan, sales has a specific message to pitch to widget machinery prospects: we are serious about attracting the specific attendees you want to see. And be sure everyone on the show team feeds useful "patter" to sales, such as, "as of this morning, pre reg for widget production engineers is 37% ahead of last year."