Affiliates Forum: What's New, St. Louis?

It may be hard to believe but the 2012 I&E is less than six months away!

St Louis, with its magnificent Arch, is reaching out to the fleet world. Planning is well under way to make April 21-24 the most comprehensive and educational experience for customers and suppliers alike. (Did I mention fun as well?)

The Planning Committee has welcomed your feedback after this past year’s I&E and has implemented new features for the 2012 conference to make St. Louis a "must attend" event. Highlights include:

New registration categories, providing more flexibility for conference access
Industry specific education "tracks", with subject matter designed for corporate, public safety, government, and utility fleets, insuring the best use of time for attendees
Fewer overlapping sessions, allowing time to schedule the subject matter most important to you
Longer down time between sessions, providing valuable networking time during the conference

NAFA wants only success for our exhibitors so, to increase their drawing (and staying) power on the Expo floor, NAFA has provided some tools to help define the best practices, tools, and tips for getting the biggest bang for your booth on the floor. You can learn all about it by heading over to NafaExpo.org.

NAFA has paid for access to a webcast on Exhibiting at an Association Tradeshow. The webcast is intended for vendors who participate in association trade shows and offers tips on how to attract people to the booth, manage leads, and follow through to close sales. This webcast will be available to you so you can prepare for the 2012 Expo! You can access the webcast here (and select Segment 19).

Enter the unique username: prusso@nafa.org
Enter the password: prusso@nafa.org

Slide printouts from the webcast are available here.

The NAFA Affiliates Committee and Exhibitor Advisory Council have developed a Free Exhibitor Toolkit for your usage as you prepare for St. Louis. We hope you will use this as a learning tool for new booth personnel or as a refresher for those more experienced. Click here to download the Exhibitor Toolkit.

Exhibit space for St. Louis is over sixty percent sold, putting us well ahead of last year’s pace over the same time period. Questions about the I&E can be addressed on the NAFA website. See you in St. Louis!

The Affiliates Committee is also excited to report that we will be embarking on a new communication initiative in the coming weeks. By linking the NAFA Chapter Affiliate Chairs in each region, we can promote a more effective exchange of ideas and learn from each other, thus helping to insure the continued growth of NAFA as an educational model for our industry. We plan to hold a webinar in the near future to introduce this initiative, so stay tuned.

Thanks for your support.

This month's Affiliate Contributor is Rich Wanders, National Account Sales for Leggett & Platt CVP.