Sales Manager
Laura Diane Moore
May 2008

It’s almost as if we went from winter to summer and skipped spring entirely!  The high-season for most all of NAI commercial members (and professional members) is upon us and everyone is busy, busy, busy!  Including, of course, the sales office.

The final version of the Green Pages got sent off to the printers the first week of May along with the Interpreter magazine.  This year, the Green Pages is a special pull-out section within the magazine and has been upgraded to full-color (without increasing printing costs).  I added an additional revenue stream into the Green Pages by offering logos to be printed along with listings.  The Green Pages was a good money-generator as well being a great marketing tool for NAI, creating an excellent reason for me to contact all current and past commercial members for renewals and upgrades.

Tim and I traveled to Denver for the American Association of Museums (AAM) annual meeting and trade show April 29th.  With over 350 exhibitors our strategy of “divide and conquer” worked very well.  We came away from the show having had dozens of excellent face-to-face conversations with major decision makers.  This was also a great chance for me to engage with many of our commercial members like Split Rock Studio, Portico Group, BarZ Adventures and Acoustiguide.  The AAM Museum Store buys many InterpPress books, and we were able to connect with them and confirm an upcoming buy.  I was even able to sign up one new commercial member right at his booth!  I’m continuing to follow up with the leads and contacts we made and have already sold one new booth at NW from a contact made at AAM.  I feel confident I’ll be able to pick up some more new members and sell booths at our trade show in Portland and Hartford.

Speaking of Hartford, on May 7th I was part of a conference call involving the planning team there and we are beginning to brainstorm on sponsorship leads for this show.  Some potential big players are moving on to our radar and I will be contacting them in the upcoming weeks.

On sponsorships for Portland, the California State Parks will be buying $1000 worth of Sourcebooks and Keynote speakers on CD rom.  And Oregon Parks and Recreation Department is participating with a sponsorship for $5000.  There is another $5000 sponsorship proposal on the table that involves two commercial members that should be finalized by the next staff report.  The sponsorship involving National Forest Foundation and American Park Network was given the thumbs up by all involved, so there will be a tree planted for each workshop participant.  The details of that program are published in the May NAI Now e-news letter and in the registration packet.  I’ve made some initial contacts with Weyerhaeuser and will be following up with them next week.  Our contact person with Aramark has been given a sponsorship proposal and she has indicated a strong probability of them participating at a high level (we asked for $25,000).

There are 65 booths reserved in the Exhibit Hall and each week I contact new potential commercial members from various lead sources on my continuing effort to sell out the hall with 120 vendors.

I just submitted my July Legacy advertising run sheet to Paul.  I was able to upgrade a major commercial member to a full-page buy (from a 1/3).  As part of that conversation, they are also looking into a sponsorship as well as a booth buy.  For the Interpreter, the BookSmart page of advertising continues to bring in new revenue and is an excellent program I use to approach publishers and authors with.  I’m developing a mailer that will include a cover letter and the two flyers we developed for the BookSmart ad buy and the BookSmart Booth at NW that I will send to the publishers list I am developing. 

State Park Interpretive Coordinators is my target list for selling bulk Legacy subscriptions to and that is an on-going project that has not generated a solid buy, yet.

I’m accompanying my 10 year-old son on his class trip to Mesa Verde National Park this week and am looking forward to experiencing the guided interpretive program offered there—my first one since joining NAI.  I’ll be going through it with a more trained eye.

Enjoy your new season (spring or summer!) and thanks for listening!

Fond regards,
Laura Diane