The EDPA Midwest Chapter hosted the first annual Great Sales Debate on August 23, 2011. The event, which was held at the Itas-ca Country Club in Illinois, was a heavyweight bout between some of the best in exhibit sales.

The panel, which was moderated by Dan Greene of Freeman, con-sisted of an elite group of seasoned account executives with years of ex-perience in the industry. It included Joe Houle, vice president of strate-gic development for LAB Exhibits, Chris Kappes, senior vice president of strategic alliances for 3D Exhib-its, Tammy Woods, new business development manager for Duo Dis-play, and Rhonda Brooks, sales and marketing representative of Eleva-tion Point.

Houle and Kappes came up with the idea for the sales debate months ago, hoping that attendees would walk away with valuable informa-tion on building sales in their own companies. Leading up to the de-bate, Houle was instrumental in the planning and development of the event.

Greene directed questions dealing with both tactical and strategic sales topics to the speakers, generating a spirited discussion with the attend-ees.

All the panelists came out swing-ing as they strongly advocated their views for a successful sales strat-egy in the tradeshow industry. And although the debate was vigorous,

order and respect was maintained throughout the event.

Kappes presented himself as an agent of change, preaching the need for new tools, training and social media to drive growth in the future. Houle, who had obviously trained for the event, relied on his experi-ences building a multi-million dol-lar book of business through hard work and the ability to read people. Both Woods and Brooks demon-strated their expertise as relation-ship builders through cold calls and the significance of service.

Questions posed by Greene ranged from how salespeople dif-ferentiate their companies from the competition to predicting how tradeshows will evolve in the fu-ture to serve the global business climate and the evolving buyer/

seller relationship.Attendees included exhibit man-

agers, account executives, business owners and some of the top exhibit designers and builders in the coun-try. With each panel member having come from a different background, there were plenty of vantage points for everyone.

The sold-out event, which was originally scheduled for two hours, went 30 minutes over and could have continued much longer.

The next event hosted by the EDPA Midwest Chapter, to be held on October 25, will discuss the changing landscape of exhibit de-sign as demonstrated at Euro Shop, Exhibitor and Globalshop. This event will be moderated by John Pavek, chief marketing officer for Exhibitor Media Group.

Inaugural Great Sales Debate is a successSeptember 2011

Panelists for The Great Debate included Joe Houle, Chris Kappes, Rhonda Brooks and Tammy Woods.

There was a memorable moment at the EDPA Golf Tournament. Christo-pher Clark of Riverview Systems Group Inc. hit a Hole In One to win the

closest to the pin contest. Pictured here left to right are Craig Shelter of Di-mensional Communications, Chris Clark and Joe Houle of LAB Exhibits.

December 2011