Health B2B Marketing

Some HIMSS11 staffers wasted thousands of their companies' dollars

I’ve said before that trade show staffers need to treat trade show booths like a stage. When you walk on the stage, you’re at best in character and at least in business. Well, the trade show secret shoppers of HIStalk caught more than a few HIMSS11 booth staffers loafing on the job:

Mr. HIStalk:

I got some e-mails from execs of some of the vendors I mentioned yesterday as ignoring my “I’d like a demo” booth body language to give them a second chance. I did so today, with mostly the same results. I should mention, however, that my title and hospital name on my badge wouldn’t necessarily make me a likely candidate, although the small font size makes it unlikely that they ignored me for that reason. Today was the last exhibit day and nobody was paying much attention to those of us still roaming the exhibits late into the afternoon. Mostly I saw reps talking on the phone or sitting together in their couch / table areas making dinner plans or cursing as they spoke animatedly among themselves (I’ve noted that young, male sales reps seem to curse a lot in each other’s company – it’s like using profane emoticons).

Inga:

From one very smart CEO: I figured out how much it cost us per hour to have people here and it is about $7,000. They better be standing on the corner of the booths trying to sell and not checking messages on their smart phones. Good advice that a lot of vendors should have heeded, including some that I kind of wanted to check out. Like CattailsMD, Azzly (the second time I came around), Wavelink, and a dozens of others.

Intelligent InSites’ VP of sales of marketing, Houston Klassen, took some time to talk about marketing his health care software platform.

Jon Forknell of Atlas Business Solutions, a provider of staffing software for healthcare, spent some time with me at HIMSS11 talking about their marketing efforts. Their focus: direct sales engagement.

Josh Elson of Fluent Care, a provider of real-time location services on the Intelligent Insites platform, took some time to speak with me at HIMSS11.

After meeting with with Hyland Software at last year’s HIMSS conference in Atlanta, I’ve kept an eye on what they’re doing with social media. This year, I caught up with their Twitter account manager, Kaitlin Maurer, who gave me the details of her tweeting and blogging success. Check it out:

Had a chance to interview Marshall Votta, VP of network development for NaviNet, at HIMSS11. Marshall shared some info about his company’s move into mobile healthcare and the idea behind their “unified patient information management” campaign.

I had a chance to meet up with Matthew Browning at HIMSS11. Matthew is a nurse and healthcare IT entrepreneur, whose product—YourNurseIsOn.com—is getting a lot of buzz. Matthew talks about how important Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn are to his marketing efforts.

Just settling back into the office after a whirlwind trip to Orlando and back for HIMSS11. It was typical HIMSS: lots of people, lots of vendors, lots of Health IT discussions. Here’s a video blog, recorded on March 22, with my impressions of HIMSS from a marketer’s perspective.

As you’ve come to expect, I recorded a number of videos with marketing directors, which I’ll posting over the next few days.

Had a chance to talk with Roger May, Senior Marketing Director for Siemens Medical Solutions, who shared some insight on yearly marketing planning. Marketing planning, by the way, is the planned topic of discussion in the October posts on the Health B2B Marketing blog.

Had a chance to interview Bob Turk, chief marketing officer of Precyse Solutions, at the 2010 AHIMA Convention in Orlando. He had an interesting booth—the brand wasn’t front and center. He discusses his reasoning behind diminishing the brand name in the Precyse booth. He also shares some of his thoughts on marketing planning (the October topic on Health B2B Marketing).