The head of exhibition sales will report to the Commercial Director and be responsible for exhibition and sponsorship revenues on a flagship energy event. You’ll primarily be selling exhibition space across the oil, gas, and energy markets on a truly international basis.
As the head of exhibition sales, you will work closely with the commercial director in maximising the event exhibition and sponsorship revenues. You will need to effectively target clients and be prepared to sell to customers from a conceptual starting point, follow up on marketing campaigns, and help achieve optimum square meter sales for the exhibition.
You will be responsible for the execution of B2B sponsorship and exhibition sales campaigns for your assigned events and accounts, so the ideal candidate will be both analytical and creative, in addition to having the ability to successfully deliver against multiple projects throughout the year – efficiently and effectively following a plan to meet targets and ensure a great customer experience.
KEY ACCOUNTABILITIES:
• Conducting thorough analysis of the vendor landscape (including but not limited to: market research to ensure that you understand the dimensions of the vendor/client relationships in the market relevant to your events, target market segmentation, identification of industry trends; and monitoring competitive event performance, cost, and market penetration)
• Working with our internal database to select and accurately target vendor organisations, including building and/or filling in the gaps in our vendor database and specific contact list development
• Creating compelling and creative packages/proposals that deliver against the budget and managing your own timelines to deliver against pre-agreed objectives.
• Assessing current and prospective customer retention and acquisition strategies
• Developing sales plans as specified as well as coordinating on-going sales initiatives, including coordination with the conferences’ and exhibition marketing managers of the sponsorship marketing (online and offline) campaign and relationships with relevant external partners that can help promote the events to vendors
• Developing and managing a budget for each event sponsorship and exhibition sales campaign
• Working with the entire event project team to ensure that exhibitor and sponsor requirements and expectations included in their contracts are executed
• Oversees the administration and fulfilment of each sponsorship package sold in liaison with event operations
• Attending events and liaising with exhibitor clients onsite to ensure that their contract is fulfilled any of their concerns and needs are addressed
• Attending the exhibition with the objective of re-booking and/or gaining commitment from a high proportion of the current sponsors for the following year’s event
• Keep up to date via a wide range of material including various industry publications relevant to the topic areas and audiences of your assigned conferences for developments and trends in the industry and to develop new sponsorship opportunities
QUALIFICATIONS, EXPERIENCE, & SKILLS:
Key Knowledge, Skills, and Competencies
Technical / Functional
• Extensive experience in B2B exhibition sales, ideally in the energy sector
• Self-motivated and able to work effectively both independently and as part of a team
• Experience in the use of databases (preferably Salesforce) in both mass and targeted sales campaigns
• Knowledge of the energy industry a distinct advantage
• Excellent negotiation and relationship building skills
• Customer focused
• Budget management
• Contract management
• Writing proposals
• Excellent command of written and spoken (business) English – other languages could be an advantage.
