How to Work a Medical Meeting

Companies traveling the trade show and conference circuit must always make the most of their experiences—good or bad.

ByErik Goldman

Over the years, I’ve been to a lot of conferences: the American Holistic Medical Association, the American Association of Naturopathic Physicians, the American College for the Advancement of Medicine, A4M, American Academy of Medical Acupuncture, the CAM Expos, Institute for Functional Medicine courses, Scripps Center’s Natural Supplements Update, Columbia University’s Botanical Medicine and Nutrition & Health courses, and local and regional events. The list is long and it keeps growing every year as more companies and institutions jump into the conference-making fray.

No doubt, the increasing number of medical shows has made life a bit more complicated for marketing directors and CEOs of supplement companies in the health practitioner space. More shows mean more eager sales people trying to sell booth space, more hard decisions, more budget bending, more time on the road, more opportunities to reach new practitioner niches, but also more possibilities for lost time and money.

Friends and colleagues at supplement companies often ask me what I think of this or that conference, or whether such and such a meeting is “good.” By “good,” they inevitably mean: “Does the show draw a lot of doctors?” and “Is there a lot of action in the exhibit hall?” These are understandable concerns. If you’re going to spend a lot of money to buy the booth space, ship the goods, and house and feed yourself and your employees, you want maximum exposure to the hearts and minds of the practitioner attendees.

To be sure, there have been some disappointing shows over the years—poorly marketed and thus poorly attended, lacking in enthusiasm and scheduled exhibit hall time. Sometimes, show managers neglect to encourage attendees to hit the exhibits. Even worse, some shows exaggerate their projected draw.

No doubt, some conference planners need to learn a thing or two about working with their exhibitors. I’ve been to shows where the exhibit hall was way off the beaten track, so that physicians practically had to consult a GPS tracker in order to find it. I’ve witnessed exhibit breaks so short that attendees barely had enough time to walk to the hall and grab a cup before they had to turn round and head back for their next sessions.

There is no excuse for running out of coffee and snacks mid-break, and it doesn’t take a lot of brains to realize that if you put the coffee and pastries or the luncheon buffets in the back of the exhibit hall, you’ll generate more traffic for your exhibitors. More than a few times I’ve scratched my head in wonder when it seems the show managers have failed to figure these things out.

I’ve seen show management treat exhibitors carelessly, and of course I can understand the outrage exhibitors feel when the booth sales team promises thousands but the show ultimately only delivers a couple hundred doctors.

At the same time, I’ve found that even at some of the best meetings—the ones that draw lots of the right physicians with top-flight educational programs and plenty of exhibit breaks—exhibitors are disappointed. Far too often, I hear things like, “The floor was really slow.” Or “Hardly anyone stopped by the booth.” Or “I only got a handful of good leads.”

My sense is that medical conferences, even the so-called “bad” ones, are as good as you make them, and I’m often stunned by the passivity, the downright laziness on the part of exhibitors to reach out and engage with the conference attendees, to become part of the conference’s community.

I’m always amazed that exhibitors will sit in an empty hall working on their fluorescent tans, nibbling each others’ samples, reading USA Today, or grumbling to their neighbors about the lack of floor traffic, when they could be in the educational sessions learning about the clinical science, interacting with the physician attendees, asking questions, making friends, and generally becoming active participants in the meetings.

Keep in mind that while your primary reason for going to shows and conferences is to market your company’s wares, the practitioners attend conferences to expand their knowledge, obtain continuing education credits, and perhaps most important, connect with each other, rekindle their professional passions, and renew old friendships. They’re there to hash out political and economic issues relevant to their professions. Whether we like it or not, hitting the exhibits and talking to “booth bots” about the latest supplements is a fairly low priority for a lot of them.

The most successful companies in the practitioner space have developed deep connections with the clinical communities they serve. They understand that a mutually rewarding relationship is built on trust, a shared goal of optimizing patient health, and most important, personal contact. In other words, the companies that do really well are those that have made friends with and earned the trust of the practitioners. They become part of the clinical community, and they don’t rely exclusively on booth traffic to make or break a show.

Yet it seems many exhibit booth attendants are almost afraid to get to know the doctors. I find this strange because the holistic practitioner communities, be they chiropractors, naturopathic physicians, holistic MDs, traditional Asian medicine practitioners, nurses or nutritionists are almost by nature warm, friendly, intelligent, curious and welcoming people—the sort of folks I like to have as friends, let alone business acquaintances. They certainly don’t bite!

Nearly all of these conferences have evening social events, and I’m always surprised when I ask supplement industry colleagues if they’re going to the evening’s soiree only to get a negative response. My question is simply, “Why not?” You’re certainly not going to develop your business by sitting in the hotel bar nursing a Bloody Mary and watching ESPN.

Likewise, if the hall is slow and the docs aren’t coming through, put away the Grisham novel (you’ve got plenty of time for that on the flight home) and go to where they are. Attend the conference sessions—this is where you’ll learn about important clinical trends. The question and answer periods can provide you with valuable insight into the attitudes, concerns, and needs of practitioners out there on the front lines of healthcare.

No, these sessions are not opportunities for you or your reps to hawk products, but they can provide a wealth of free market research, not to mention opportunities to expand your own knowledge of natural medicine. You’ll find out who the thought leaders and inspiring teachers are. You’ll get a better sense of what topics are hot in the heads of the practitioners you’re trying to reach, and this can be very valuable for product positioning and future product development.

You’ll also learn more about what turns your prospective customers off, what frightens them, and what they worry about at 2 am. You’ll gain a better understanding of what they’re really looking for from the natural products industry, and what they’re up against out there in clinic-land.

Those casual one-on-one post-session conversations with the people sitting next to you could be the seeds of very fruitful business relationships, if you let them grow organically. Just don’t try to razzle-dazzle them with a product rap right away. Get to know them, and let them get to know you. You’ll both learn important things.

You’ll understand more about your customers, and they’ll start to see you and your company as a potential ally in their practices—as people genuinely interested in helping them help their patients. So long as your intentions are good and your products really are what you say they are, the sales opportunities will develop naturally over time.

Of course, it’s much easier to just sit at the booth and kvetch to a neighbor about what a lame meeting it is, and how the organization just isn’t doing enough to cajole the doctors into the exhibit hall. Yes, the organizations could and should do more to encourage exhibit attendance and to build relationships between their industry supporters and their practitioner attendees. But exhibitors could also do a whole lot more to reach out and get to know prospective customers.

If the organizations sponsoring the meetings you attend do not welcome exhibitors into the scientific sessions or social events, you need to raise your voice about it. Most of these meetings wouldn’t exist without exhibitor support, so it is in the producers’ interest to make you happy. At the same time, be respectful of the ultimate purpose of these conferences: practitioner education and community-building. Unless it is a session or event that you are actually sponsoring, don’t try and turn a general plenary session into a platform from which to pitch your product. That’s no way to win respect.

Some meetings will inevitably be more fruitful than others. Even the same meeting, if it is an annual event, can vary in attendance, energy level and business opportunities, depending on timing, location, management and who knows what other factors. But with a little outreach on your part, even a “lousy” meeting can prove very worthwhile.

So what if the floor is slow? If you come away from a conference having developed a few good relationships with practitioners, learned a thing or two about the field, picked up on a hot trend, or made a good impression on the organization’s thought leaders, you’ve gotten your money’s worth, even if it doesn’t immediately translate into increased sales next quarter.

On the other hand, if you’ve spent three days sitting in an empty hall, and you leave disappointed, with only a handful of marginally promising business cards in your pocket, you need to ask yourself whether you’ve really done your best to make the most of your time on the road. If the practitioners aren’t coming around to you, you need to go over and connect with them. It’s that simple.NW