Tag: logistics

SHOT Show Exhibitor Concierge App—You Need This

concierge phoneYes, there really is an app for everything and everyone, including today’s SHOT Show exhibitor. Witness the Concierge Elite app, available now from the Apple App Store, Android Google Play or Windows App Store. Offered by Freeman Co., NSSF’s Las Vegas exhibition partner, this app allows exhibitors instant access to:

  • Service request submissions
  • Current and previous order listings
  • Freight tracking and delivery notifications to you and other staff members via e-mail, text message, or both
  • Ordering additional furniture or other booth accessories, resolution of missing order items and scheduling of booth cleaning services
  • Shipping labels
  • Express checkout from the show; set up your outbound freight care—your material handling agreements—before the show’s even over.

As most exhibitors know, coordinating getting your booth materials to the Sands Expo Center and set up, then tearing it down and moving it off the show floor once SHOT is over, is often more work than actually being at the show. That can be exacerbated when show setup logistics require you to spend your time on the phone or running to the show’s customer service desk—time you’re losing that could be better spent on things like networking with customers and closing sales. The Concierge Elite app simplifies and streamlines those necessary behind the scenes facets of putting on and having a successful show experience and, best of all, this app is free for our exhibitors.

For more information on the SHOT Show Concierge Elite app from Freeman, click here. A demo of how the Concierge Elite app works is also available on that page. To download the free app, visit your smart phone, tablet or PC application store and search for “Concierge Elite.”

Diedra Cauley is the Director, Exhibitions and Conferences, for the National Shooting Sports Foundation. Follow her on Twitter at @dcauley.

First-Time SHOT Exhibitor? We Have the Resources to Help

ERCTrade show exhibition is nearly an art unto itself, especially when it comes to a show as enormous as SHOT Show. Simply put, this isn’t a bigger version of your local gun show with its folding high school cafeteria tables and chairs. Indeed, if you’ve never set up a booth at SHOT before, and even if you’ve attended smaller local or regional outdoor consumer shows, the list of items you need for a successful booth setup may not be obvious nor readily available to you before the show.

We can help. One of the many resources available and just a mouse click away is the Frequently Rented Items checklist. You’ll find this by going to shotshow.org, then clicking on the drop-down Exhibitors tab and clicking on the first item, the Exhibitor Resource Center (ERC). Under this heading you’ll click on the menu for General Information, Deadlines and Contract and find what we’ve affectionately dubbed the First-Timer Cheat Sheet, is an invaluable resource for any exhibitor, but especially those setting up shop for the first time at SHOT Show.

In this sheet you’ll find rates for the most common booth setup help, like electrical labor, freight and materials handling, end of show dismantling services, and post-show hours cleaning services. Then there are the smaller things, the trash cans, chairs, tables, table skirting and carpet, that one might assume are automatically provided at a show and would be woefully surprised to find they’re not (i.e., finding out you have nothing to sit on for four days would ruin almost anyone’s show experience).

One of the most important booth items you’ll find on this sheet are the listings for CompuLEAD services. CompuLEAD is a computerized sales/client lead retrieval system designed specifically for use at trade shows. You simply scan the show badge of each attendee you contact at the show, and CompuLEAD automatically collates that person’s full contact information, along with all the demographic information provided in the registration process, including job title, primary business interests and buying power, far more information than most business cards will contain.

This system not only eliminates the hassle of combing through stacks of business cards when you get home, trying to decipher all those illegible notes and numbers written on the back, you can append any prospect’s contact information and edit on the spot with notes, action codes and surveys, even run analysis reports. The setup is available for desktop and mobile use, as well as in a smartphone app.

Advanced rates on these exhibitor items and more are available until Dec. 26 (deadline for CompuLEAD products is Dec. 19), so plan now, get your orders in, and avoid a last-minute scramble to organize your booth during the winter holidays and in the last days before the show. For more information about CompuLead, click here, or call CompuSystem’s Heidi Marecek at 708-786-5565, ext. 312; Heidi.Marecek@csireg.com. If contacting CompuSystem, be sure to tell them you’re an NSSF member and SHOT Show exhibitor.

Quick Tip—Click on “Show All” at the top of the ERC page so you can easily view all forms and information within the ERC without having to go through each one individually.

Diedra Cauley is the director of exhibitions and conferences for the National Shooting Sports Foundation. Follow her on Twitter at @dcauley.