Well, December is the time of year that all the conference begin to start registration, both for attendees and vendors. The past 2 years we’ve attended the SAP Manufacturing conference out in Vegas. The results have been less than expected. As expected, the first year was a learning year. A rather expensive lesson, but important nonetheless. Year two we were pretty well prepared, we walked away with, what we thought, we some very promising leads. Now maybe it was bad luck, maybe we misread the prospects, or maybe we are talking to the wrong people. Wish I knew the answer.
All of this got me to talking with a good friend of mine. He’s not in SAP, so I was able to get a good answer from him, without an bias. He started asking me about other conferences that are available, and what kind of people they have attending. I answered that ASUG/Sapphire goes on every year. Since it’s Sapphire, it’s likely that a lot of people in control of the checkbooks will be in attendance to see the latest and greatest that SAP wants to sell them.
Well, the light bulb went off in my head, that maybe I need to change venues… So started doing some research. There are some definite drawbacks to doing Sapphire vs. MFG.
Cost: ASUG/Sapphire is 40% more expensive.
Booth: ASUG/Sapphire you get a “cube” which looks roughly to be a 5×5 closet space.
Focus: ASUG/Sapphire brings in people from every area, many of which won’t apply to what we do.
My biggest concern is that after spending all of that money, we will be in this tiny cubicle, and might be perceived as too small to talk to, or a gamble to do business with because of our size, or maybe we won’t even be noticed. On the flip side, we only need to be noticed enough to get one sale and the whole endeavor is paid for.
I’d love to hear your feedback. I’m sure many of your have attended conferences. Do you skip the people in a tiny booth? or is it true what women say, “Size doesn’t matter” 🙂
Thanks for reading,
As always, thanks for reading and don't forget to check out our SAP Service Management Products at my other company JaveLLin Solutions,Mike