Aug. 30, 2022

This paid piece is sponsored by Experience Sioux Falls, formerly the Sioux Falls Convention & Visitors Bureau.

After more than a 2 1/2-year hiatus, the Experience Sioux Falls sales team is back on the road full time promoting the city. While Sioux Falls has rebounded nicely to pre-pandemic levels, the meetings and conventions sector of the industry has been the last to return.

Now, conferences and trade shows are back, and that includes those attended by members of the travel industry, including the ESF sales team.

The job of the ESF sales team is to market the city as a destination for meetings, conventions, group tours, sports events, leisure travel and more. Experience has shown business can be done with email and phone calls, but nothing is as efficient and impactful as meeting face to face.

The primary goal of attending trade shows is to seek out potential groups when it comes to hosting an event in a destination.

“Believe it or not, there’s an association for just about everything. These groups host a variety of events, whether it’s an annual convention, sports event or board meeting,” said Teri Schmidt, executive director of ESF. “We try to convince planners to bring their events to Sioux Falls not only because it will provide their attendees with a great experience but also to create an economic benefit to our community.”

The ESF sales team attends two types of shows. The first is a traditional trade show where each destination has a booth while event planners walk the trade show floor, stopping at booths to learn more about the destination.

The second is a reverse-style trade show where a destination representative meets with event planners in preset one-on-one appointments.

“Reverse-style trade shows are a key source of business in our world,” said Anna Derry, director of sales for ESF. “These are often viewed like speed dating because they’re relatively quick meetings, about five to 10 minutes. For these meetings, we have access to a portal beforehand where we can review each organization’s event needs and request a meeting with those that could be a good fit.”

Photo by Connect Octane Design

Event planners typically are looking at booking events several years in advance, so it can take a few years to see the fruit of the labor.

“The National Veterans Golden Age Games is a good example,” Schmidt said. “That event brought in 400 veterans from all over the country last month, and it’s all a result of our sales team meeting with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs at a national trade show back in 2017.”

The ESF sales team is hoping to produce similar results having just returned from two major trade shows in recent weeks. They attended Connect Marketplace in Detroit, where they met with 92 planners in a reverse trade show setting, and they recently returned from a gathering of the American Society of Association Executives in Nashville, where they had 220 planners stop by their booth to learn more about Sioux Falls.

To play off Nashville’s “Music City” theme along with the abundance of live music opportunities in Sioux Falls, ESF gave away a guitar in a random drawing for planners who stopped by the Sioux Falls booth.

“It’s becoming more and more difficult to get the attention of planners, so destinations are continuously coming up with different ways to create an opportunity to speak with them,” Derry said. “Some of the larger cities even brought chefs to ASAE to cook food at their booths for the planners, so it has become a fun challenge for us over the years to see what we can do to make Sioux Falls stand out.”

Photo by Connect Octane Design

The ESF sales team also will be meeting with planners at four additional trade shows across the country over the course of the next three months in hopes of securing future events in Sioux Falls.

“We’re always looking to bring groups to Sioux Falls, whether it’s new or repeat business. If you have a lead or a connection to a group or organization, we would love to get in touch with you to learn more and see if it’s something we can pursue,” Schmidt said.

Contact the Experience Sioux Falls sales team.