Dog and Pony Roadie

Mike Donoghue is a member of a multinational information technology corporation where he collaborates on the communications guidelines and customer relationship strategies affecting the interactions with internal and external clients. He has analyzed, defined, designed and overseen processes for various engagements including product usability and customer satisfaction, best practice enterprise standardization, relationship/branding structures, and distribution effectiveness and direction. He has also established corporate library solutions to provide frameworks for sales, marketing, training, and support divisions.

  CRM   Stakeholder Management  

Foolishly, I said yes.

I hadn't done the grunt work for a tradeshow in about 15 years, but since personnel was stretched thin on other projects and our executive director for sales and marketing had heard my pointed questions in an earlier brainstorming session about our overall strategic timing of product releases as was related to customer financial cycles, news release process and the exhibition schedule, he must have thought I knew what I was talking about.

So when he asked if I would help him organize details for an upcoming tradeshow, what else could I say?

Things Had Changed (…Or Did They?)

I realized in short order that a number of new variables had been introduced since I had organized attendance at a show. Unfortunately, there were also the inevitable issues that didn't change.

Miscommunication and non-communication were chiefly responsible for a number of problems. The organizer for the affair was doing a decent job of getting specifics of the facility taken care of--assigning spaces, giving contact names, etc.--but dissemination of what was needed to be done by each of the show attendants was slow in coming and inconsistent. Case in point:

As many veterans of these affairs will tell you, "There ain't no such thing as a free lunch" (or TANSTAAFL, as the jargon goes). Everything is à la …

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