One of the first and most important tasks military and civilian administrative experts need to accomplish when facing new and unusual challenges in the mxl tv, is to quickly and efficiently create a fully functional command post from which they can effectively communicate, direct and manage their resources.
Exhibiting at a major trade show and managing equally diverse company resources in a city away from the home office can be just as challenging, especially when one considers the amount of time and money trade show exhibiting consumes. One way to successfully accomplish managing important logistical and detail coordination efforts at a trade show is to create a command post in a near by hotel suite from which management can direct the action created in and around their exhibit at the convention center.
Over the years many corporations have created so called “hospitality suites” for entertaining invited prospects and customers, however, these pricy adventures in good will often became hard to manage and usually ended up creating more problems then they were worth. One major concern was in deciding who should and should not be admitted into the room especially when the news of a free hospitality suite spread like wild fire on the trade show floor.
In addition, the unmanaged and often irresponsible consumption of alcohol sometimes led employees, prospects, customers, competitors and suite crashers to act in manners directly opposed to the goals and objectives of the good natured hospitality suite idea and over the years the hospitality suite function has all but ceased to exist for many trade show exhibitors.
However, the unfavorable hospitality situation mentioned above can change dramatically when the suite is instead designed and managed to function solely as a private headquarters corporate command post. This modest innovation promises to deliver greater human resource utilization, expanded communications capabilities and increased overall value to the exhibitor. Here management can more effectively utilize the suite facility and various hotel provided services to direct and accomplish many more important trade show support functions such as:
The night before the opening of the trade show, the headquarters suite would be the site of the pre-show briefing and motivational sales meeting where the entire team meets to review activities scheduled for the show and where various assignments to the staff are assigned. In addition to top management’s presentation and goal setting statements, marketing and product support would make formal presentations outlining the products on display and key presentation points the sales team will want to focus on.
The Trade Show Exhibits Manager would outline various exhibit details logistics, boothmanship strategies and generally discuss how the booth will function during the entire show.
It is also an excellent venue to introduce a motivational speaker to focus everyone’s attention away from their normal daily routines and direct their attention to the trade show and the many unique opportunities the event will offer the company during the next three days.
In addition to the trade show’s own public relations center where company press kits are provided for the press, the headquarters suite can also be utilized to stage pre-scheduled, one on one business sessions with selected media editors to meet with key corporate managers to review relevant corporate business issues.
Individual media technical editors can also be scheduled to meet with selected product experts for one on one product presentations in hopes of gaining favorable mentions in post trade show round up articles or discuss opportunities to contract articles in future publication issues.
In many cases, the relationship formed between technical editors and product development experts often develop into one in which both can communicate to assess industry trends for upcoming articles or magazine features.
The entire PR function should be coordinated, scheduled and managed by the corporate public relations manager and in some cases transportation might need to be arranged to comfortably and efficiently transport selected editors to and from the suite and convention center.
There should be a selection of non-alcoholic liquid refreshments and perhaps a spread of sandwich meats and some fruit in the suite during the press meetings for the editors to enjoy while they meet with key people.
