Mumbai Ultrasound Course 2009

The Mumbai Ultrasound Group organizes a conference once every two years with the slogan “education for all”. It is a very informative and study oriented conference with 4 days of sessions teaching the basics as well as the nuances of radiology and sonography complete with lectures from the experts and live sonography sessions showing how it is done. This year at the Mumbai Ultrasound Course 2009 over 300 radiologists and sonologists descended onto the JW Mariott in Mumbai. I was lucky enough to be there with my company Plus91 Technologies owning a little piece of the sponsors’ real estate.

It was a pleasure to be in the elite company of Siemens, Toshiba, Bracco among others each having their unique stall. It was really interesting to see how each company had for the lack of a better work presented their stall, capturing what is most essential for their products. For these medical hardware measures coming for such conferences is old game and they have complete ready to assemble stalls complete with props to make the best impression. We had our own stable space which we adorned with the tools of our trade the laptops. One had a running video demo, one a running presentation and the other for giving demos to interested clients. Lastly we had a hand held tablet PC to show the consumer in this case the radiology delegates how simple things have become.

The first learning was position is everything; being the first or the biggest stall didn’t matter. Being at the right place did. I think we were lucky for both conferences in that respect. In 2007 we were right next to the food court which means each and every delegate saw us and stopped by. This time it was thanks to the most popular and fast selling item at the conference namely books. We were right opposite the book publishing company stall, so we had a constant rush about us. Any doubts about how do we shape up against these fancy stalls was driven away by the fact that most of the crowd most of the time was next to us. Now it was just a question of approaching them.

The other major learning has been the power direct contact with a mass audience can have on your conference. Dr. Mukund Joshi and Dr. Alka Karnik were kind of enough to allow us a 10 minute slot prime time during the conference to address and demo the software. Here I think I hit the nail on the head (little flattery is ok) by attaching importance to improving your service to the client and increasing the efficiency of your business. I painted for them a picture where their needs go beyond just giving the patient medical advice to actually providing better service and also beyond just running a setup to running a efficient easy to manage clinic. My quick and spontaneous speech highlighted the fact that an easy to use software with just the features I have is ideal for their needs. It clicked because I did see numerous nodding heads! And they did flock to me after the last session during the banquet and that’s where we got most of our sales done.

Lastly I think at any event where we are marketing or highlighting the company it is important to always know what the closure process is. We had decided to hand out CDs to people who did purchase the software, but almost of all of them agreed to do the final installation online. I think this is an added advantage to Plus91, where we have perfected the technique of installing our softwares over the net remotely with minimum bandwidth and fuss. Added to that nice easy to understand video demos make the job of training almost redundant. This helps us cater to and sell to clients beyond our physical reach even without the CD if need be.

All in all MUC 2009 was an enjoyable experience and was good for the company. And to think we almost didn’t make it there.