SISO's Big on Little Operators
Heidi Genoist -- Tradeshow Week, 3/26/2007
Spring is a time of renewal, appropriate for this year's Society of Independent Show Organizers' CEO Summit in Miami Beach, as it turns out. With behind-the-scenes discussions about partnering with other exhibition-industry organizations in the past, SISO can return its attention to what really matters.
One of the things — or in this case, people — that matters most to SISO, as recent events have reminded the board of directors, is the small operator.
About halfway through his term as SISO chairman, Access Intelligence CEO Don Pazour spoke to Tradeshow Week Senior Editor Heidi Genoist about the so-called little guy: his or her profile, needs and reasons for caring about what's going on in Miami Beach this week.
Question: In the past, SISO has had a reputation as something of a country club for big business-to-business media corporate types. Would you say that's an accurate description?
Answer: Absolutely not. That perception is of the CEO Summit. It's just CEOs, but not just CEOs of big companies. The small startup CEO is the life blood of our organization.
Q: How does SISO define "small"?
A: By our dues structure, based on revenue — those companies that do under $1 million in sales annually. In our case, we don't audit. We just ask the revenue.
Q: And how many SISO members are in this category?
A: About 70 percent.
Q: Of how many, total?
A: We have 165 primary members. Membership to SISO is a company; when we talk about primary members, we mean the CEO or other key executive.
Q: That's a large percentage. What does SISO offer them?
A: I think it's a two-way street. A lot of innovation happens with the smaller operators, in terms of either identifying market opportunities or finding creative ways of doing things, creative ways of marketing.
By the same token, as some smaller companies get larger, they establish best practices for growing a show, optimum cost of marketing per delegate, record keeping, online capabilities, references for outside suppliers — it's a very symbiotic relationship between the small and large operator.
Q: Aren't there also opportunities for growth?
A: Yes, another thing that happens, but doesn't get talked about, is, big companies identify opportunities to buy smaller companies, and small companies identify buyers for their projects.
A lot of the reason you have guys like David Levin from UBM and John French from Penton (at the SISO CEO Summit) is that the whole independent industry comes together. Part of what attracts the larger operators is the smaller ones being there.
Q: Why has SISO decided to improve its outreach to small operators?
A: I think it was a re-commitment. The small operator has always been part of the life blood of the organization.
Since we have a small membership, we're able to track which companies aren't coming. This year, some other board members and I have been calling them to understand why they're not coming, and trying to find out how we can up their participation — not as a sales call, but to understand what we can do better.
Q: What are their specific concerns, that are different from those of the big guys?
A: If nothing else, just off-the-record networking: How much is this supplier? How much should I be paying for this service? If somebody's show is getting very large and they need a new registration company, they want to know who's good and how much they should cost.
On the other hand, you have somebody coming in who says, "Direct mail? What's that? I've never used it," because some of these really big firms have been so focused on the Internet.
Q: What does the small operator get from SISO that he can't get from the Intl. Assn. of Exhibitions and Events (formerly IAEM), American Business Media, or some other industry group?
A: Networking in a shared environment. The independent show organizer is for-profit, and SISO is very much about how to optimize profit and optimize performance. Most of the members of our board don't feel those two specific opportunities are offered anywhere else: networking to share best practices and learning from each other.
Both IAEM and SISO are very much Tradeshow Week 200, but they have different goals. That's why they did not merge. SISO this past year has done a strategic plan and mission statement, and we see that IAEM provides a very valuable service in networking and learning among all levels of a company. It also is built up as an individual member organization, so, if you take Reed Exhibitions or Hanley Wood for example, you might have 40 people out of a staff of 50 at IAEM. They go to their big shows and learn there. SISO doesn't duplicate what IAEM does very well, which is basic training.
Relative to ABM, they do a spectacular job of marketing the medium of magazines and Washington lobbying. Members of our board and other senior executives that belong to both organizations are lobbying hard within ABM to make sure that expertise is applied to our medium (tradeshows) also.
We see all these organizations as necessary to the medium.
Q: What else did discussions about the strategic plan and mission statement bring to light?
A: We see training next-level CEOs as one of our goals, and we refined the target. We used to have the senior and junior track, with the senior-level taking place at the CEO Summit in the spring and the junior-level at the Executive Conference in the fall.
We don't have that (division of educational tracks) anymore. Now, the CEOs-to-be get senior-level training too.
Q: You've got about half your term as chair left. What else is on your to-do list?
A: We are going to be introducing some programs to encourage, measure and reward the use of the Internet within our businesses. We do salary surveys and cost surveys, and we'll be continuing and updating those.
After focusing for a while on how to work with the other organizations, the big thing we did this year was to say, "What are we, and what aren't we?" Once we answered that, the goal became to do everything we do well, better. We're focusing on where we're strong, what are our priorities are.
For instance, the educational programming for the Executive Conference used to be done by the CEOs. This year, the CEO wannabes are putting together the content, instead of the CEOs.
Q: What's the most significant issue the SISO board of directors will discuss at its meeting (before the CEO Summit begins)?
A: This whole Internet project. It's quite an exciting program.
We don't have a lot of controversy this year. I think our organization lost some momentum and focus during the years when everybody was playing merger speculation. The board today is very comfortable with who and what we are.
Q: What do you think will be the best part of the meeting?
A: I'm very much looking forward to the sessions. We have a dynamite one on how to prevent a show from going under. It's by a strategic consultant, and that one's going to be very, very rich. On the CEO panel, we have some fresh faces, and that's going to be interesting, too.
