When brainstorming for the next marketing strategy to use, it is inevitable for people within the marketing team to fight. Everyone has great ideas, and no one would want to give up. It is okay to have different views on what to do next to advertise the products you sell, but it does not mean you can allow fights to continue. If you fail to control the situation, it could get too personal. These tips will help ensure a healthy discussion.

Find a facilitator

You can facilitate the discussion, or you can have someone else in the team do it. The role of the facilitator is like a referee, to determine who will speak first and who will speak next. If someone is interrupting the other, the facilitator can step in. This person needs to be in control of the situation and pause the session if it gets ugly.

Avoid shutting people down

When someone says an idea is terrible, you need to step in and prevent it. The session needs to be open. At this point, you cannot judge one idea to be awful in favour of another. Brainstorming is useful to ensure as many ideas as possible come out before you start delving deeper into each suggestion. It also needs to be clear to those participating in the discussion that shutting an idea down is a big no.

Set rules

Even before the brainstorming session commences, it is crucial that you talk about what will happen and what the rules to follow are. You will have a smooth discussion if everyone agrees to the rules. You can even include the members of the team to determine the rules to follow to allow ownership.

Invite the right people

You need different views for the next marketing campaign. If you intend to use a trade show stand since you received an invitation to join a trade show, you need various viewpoints. You can invite someone from your marketing team. You can also have another one from your production team who knows the products well. You can also have some of the most senior employees who might have a different take on the ads along with the newest employees since they might have opinions that are without bias as they do not yet feel a strong attachment to the company. Hearing different voices could help promote a more productive discussion.

Set an agenda

You need to let everyone know what to talk about. You can even inform them before the session date so they can prepare. You would rather have people come with ideas than telling them on the spot. They can research the topics to discuss. They can also look for trade show stand samples and trade show displays that could work if you are taking that route. If you start the discussion, and no one has anything useful to contribute, the meeting will be useless.

Making a successful trade show display along with other marketing campaigns could be challenging. It helps if you listen to different people and respect what they have to say.