Remember the old days when the only guide you needed at an art fair was that of the fair floor? Now, you not only need a GPS to find obscure satellite fairs and galleries without signs in dodgy warehouse districts, but it seems as if you need a social secretary to help you schedule your every move on the ground.

As Art Basel Miami Beach gears up this month, collectors will again be reminded of how competitive the art world has become and that much of the business of fairs these days takes place beyond the convention hall floor at private dinners with artists, exclusive gallery events, curatorial lectures and all the other happenings that are now part of the international fair-going experience. To learn how to make the most of your fair visit, we talked to art world professionals who shared their strategies.

CONNECT BEFORE THE FAIR. "I was just talking to a curator who was trying to make a plan of attack for Miami," says Helen Allen, founder and director of the PULSE Miami fairs in New York and London. "And a couple of days ago, a collector told me she was doing the same." Surprising? No, except that this was in mid-August, months ahead of the December fairs.

Courtney Plummer, the director of Lehmann Maupin Gallery in New York, says serious collectors do need to be organized. She suggests that they talk to their favorite galleries before they attend a fair and request images of pieces the gallery will be bringing, or at least ask for a list of artists who will be on view. "I work with about 20 collectors who want to see images before a fair," says Plummer, who shows at both Art Basel fairs, Frieze, the Armory Show and the ADAA Art Show.

Citing the blur of activity that happens in the booth, Plummer also suggests that new collectors make an appointment to visit one of Lehmann’s two New York galleries if they are in town, outside of the fair. "That way, we can look at images together, cultivate opinions and taste, get to know each other," she says. "That’s a luxury we don’t have at the fairs."

ARRIVE EARLY. When the days leading up to a fair are booked solid with VIP events, collectors know that coming ahead of time can be more productive than staying late. The early bird also catches the first buzz on what’s new, what’s hot (and what’s not) from the art world’s movers and shakers who will be out in force before the first champagne bottle is popped at the vernissage. "It all happens in the first five minutes," says Plummer.

CREATE A STRATEGY. "When we started PULSE Miami in 2005, we were the fourth show," says Allen. "This year there will be 17." Now combine that with a 9 a.m. to 1 a.m. agenda of installation openings, museum events, VIP collector home visits and parties, and it’s conceivable that you might not even make it to Art Basel Miami Beach.

"It’s not the kind of thing that you go into blind," says New York–based interior designer Carl Lana, who with his design partner, Randall Beale, schedules to attend all the major contemporary fairs. With some of the country’s top art collectors as clients, the Lana-Beale duo—who themselves collect photography, works on fabric, works on paper and antiques—attack the fairs with military precision. "We get there early and do the VIP thing because we want to be at the events with artists and other young collectors like ourselves," says Lana. "We spend one day at the main fair, more for research and reference, to see who the galleries have found in the past year and what the internationals are showing," says Beale. "Then we split up with our camera phones and hit the satellite shows. There’s a certain pecking order. Some are very experimental. You have to have a sense of what is legitimate."