Every year, organizations come to IMSH and SimOps to showcase their products in front of thousands of simulation professionals and form meaningful relationships. Many are incredibly successful at both. Other, though, leave with a list of badge scans that never convert to anything.
The difference, almost without exception, is whether they showed up to exhibit or to engage.
Healthcare simulation is a community in the truest sense of the word. The people in this field know each other. They talk to each other at conferences, on SimConnect, and in the community groups that SSH maintains year-round. When an organization shows genuine interest in understanding what simulation professionals need — not just in selling them something — that gets noticed. It gets remembered. And it gets talked about.
The organizations that have built lasting relationships with the SSH community share a few things in common. They invest in learning the field before they try to sell to it. They send people who can have substantive conversations about simulation practice, not just product features. They follow up. And they stay present between events — through SSH Virtual Learning Labs, through sponsorship of programs that matter to the community, through the Corporate Roundtable.
None of this is complicated. It is just a longer game than a single exhibit hall appearance. And it pays off in ways that badge scan reports cannot capture: referrals, repeat business, and the kind of trust that makes a program director pick up the phone when they have a purchasing decision to make.
SSH's Industry Relations team exists to help your organization build that kind of presence in the simulation community. Whether you are new to IMSH or have been exhibiting for years, there is almost certainly more available to you than you are currently using.
Let's talk about what that looks like. Reach out at ofleenor@ssih.org or explore partnership options at ssih.org/corporate-roundtable.
Olivia Fleenor
SSH Director of Industry Relations