The first of a three-part FutureWatch 2011 feature series.
It used to make sense for the Delta Faucet Co. to convene its 300-large sales staff at a single annual conference to provide a crash course in its latest products. Then the economy tanked. The Indianapolis, Indiana-based manufacturer of faucets, cabinets and other home-improvement products took a close look at how much time its far-flung salespeople were actually investing in getting to and from the event.
"Everyone would leave their offices for three or four days," recalled George Sechrist, president of BMG Event Productions, which handles meeting planning for the faucet maker.
In 2009, Delta Faucets rethought its events strategy. It now holds three separate meetings, each for about 100 salespeople, in easy-to-access cities such as Atlanta and Las Vegas. This has reduced the time its salespeople spend away from the field by two days in many cases.
"It’s 28 hours of boot camp," said Jeff Andress, senior training manager at Delta Faucet Co.
To measure how much attendees are learning from the meetings, the company has begun testing them afterward.
"It enables us to know we are connecting with our audience and they are retaining the information," Andress said.
The company is exceeding its goal of having 80 percent of attendees complete a quiz.
There’s no denying the landscape for meeting professionals has changed in the last few years, as companies such as Delta Faucet and associations have looked for creative ways to get more out of meetings in an era of tight budgets. Even with the economy showing some signs of growth, meetings will face intense budget scrutiny this year, according to the FutureWatch 2011 study, conducted annually by MPI.
To do business effectively in 2011, meeting professionals need to embrace smarter meetings, the survey found. Planners will need to work together to create events that are extremely well targeted regarding size, location, content and attendance—and to quantify the meetings-derived ROI.
"It really is about driving revenue at the end of the day," said Ian McGonnigal, senior vice president of client strategy and brand performance at the experiential marketing agency Jack Morton Worldwide. "How are your events contributing to your bottom line? The findings out there are showing that events have the ability to accelerate the sales cycle for companies as well as increase the value of the accounts for customers that actually go to meetings."
Strategic Management on Steroids
With economic uncertainty continuing, many meeting professionals will continue to embrace strategic meetings management in 2011, according to FutureWatch. Given tight limitations on budgets for meetings, organizers will have to make sure the money spent on events produces acceptable returns on sales, education and even morale. That will mean taking a look at both long- and short-term goals for the group behind the event—and making sure the meeting is closely aligned. Some survey respondents reported that they had recently been hired solely to help develop, act on and improve strategies for enhancing the ROI of meetings.
Finding the right ways to measure whether the information shared is absorbed—and acted on—will be an important task.
"Management is quick to ask after 30 days, ’We spent US$1.4 million for the meeting—what did we get in return?’" said Gary Sain, president of the Orlando/Orange County (Florida) CVB.
But that poses some challenges for the meetings community.
"If you only have 30 days to track sales, that’s a very different metric than if you wait six months or a year," Sain said. "Management has to be educated to know the ROI is not immediate. It’s not like you’re going to a trade show and getting all the sales the same day. The key for a meeting professional is to make sure, when they’re establishing metrics and goals, that they also establish that it’s going to take time and you need to be patient to understand the ROI."
As many meeting professionals have discovered, tracking the results of a meeting isn’t always a simple matter, and the approach that works for one event won’t necessarily suit another. inVNT, a global meeting planning firm, is well aware of this. When it plans meetings for pharmaceutical giant Merck to educate its sales team about the company’s newest drugs, inVNT typically builds testing into the last day of the event, says Scott Cullather, the company’s founder and managing partner. But the measurement of results doesn’t stop there. At six-month and 12-month intervals after the meeting, inVNT works with Merck to take stock of whether salespeople who attended have met revenue goals.
"The real way to drive behavior is to get people to move from Point A to Point B," Cullather explained.
But inVNT uses a very different way of measuring the results of the annual professional development-focused meeting it plans for the Society for Human Resource Management. During and after the conference, inVNT scans social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook to see what participants have said about it.
"One of the hardest things to track in our business is ROI," Cullather said. "Social networking is an interesting way to get a snapshot of your ROI, from ’citizen journalist’ comments. They are not afraid to share their opinions on Twitter and Facebook. We’ll go online, review the comments and compose a report."
To measure how much attendees have gotten out of breakouts at an event, some companies are eschewing traditional surveys and turning to RFID tracking technology to see where the participants have gone, McGonnigal says. These technologies show which sessions are of most interest, which, in turn, helps companies plan future events that grab attendees’ attention.
Of course, participants in many meetings are there to get more than new ideas. They want to emerge with enhanced professional credentials—even at meetings where this wasn’t expected before. Recognizing this, Mark Amtower, who has run seminars for many years on how to do business with the government, is finalizing an arrangement with George Mason University to offer classes for which attendees will receive a "Government Market Master" certificate showing they have taken the courses.
"It raises our visibility," said Amtower, founding partner of the consultancy Amtower & Co. "There is a plethora of conferences, but no university that offers a legitimate program."
In a similar vein, Christine Clifford, CEO and co-founder of Divorcing Divas, a company that runs day-long conferences for women going through divorce, recently partnered with organizations such as the Minnesota Board of Psychology, the Minnesota Board of Social Work and the Minnesota Board of Marriage and Family Therapy to offer continuing education credits to mental health professionals who attend its February 2011 event, "Be Your Own Valentine!"
"In all of the mental health fields, practitioners are requested to get a certain number of continuing education credits per year," Clifford explained. "It really validates the quality of the content we are presenting."
Clifford hopes the move will help her to continue to grow the event, which already draws professionals in fields such as law, mediation, financial planning and psychology to offer free consultations to its attendees.
Targeted Content Rules
Another key trend to emerge from FutureWatch 2011 is an increased demand for high-quality content developed for niche audiences, as opposed to independently developed content that is offered to a wide range of attendees.
While some companies and associations are aiming these low-cost, specialized meetings at people whom a company or association already knows, others are creating proprietary events to drive awareness of their brands.
"They’re starting to use some unique venues," McGonnigal said. "I’m seeing companies use schools, universities, libraries and galleries to host these proprietary meetings."
Amtower is well aware of the trend. He has recently recruited experts with experience in niche areas of government contracting, such as selling auto fleet products, to teach his certificate classes at George Mason University, to distinguish them from the many more general seminars that exist in his field.
"It’s hard to populate seminars," he said. "There are so many competing events."
Some companies and associations are finding that small, highly focused meetings work well for their internal teams, too. For instance, Delta Faucets has discovered that its smaller regional meetings are a more conducive place to teach salespeople about the nuances of its latest faucet technologies than the annual, companywide gathering of the past.
"We’re finding it’s much easier to communicate this to a smaller audience and give them an opportunity to talk with the engineers one-on-one, as opposed to a big meeting where they may be reluctant to ask some important questions," Sechrist said.
The aircraft engine maker Rolls-Royce has also been gravitating to highly customized meetings as of late. Sechrist says the company has many meetings centered on specific, intricate training and communications. For instance, one meeting might focus on a particular engine being used in the field.
"It’s very defined, very strategic content," he said.
But providing niche content within large events can pose challenges for planners of bigger events.
"How do you make the content broad enough to cover the larger audience and also specific enough to cover the personal and customized interests of the attendees?" Sain asks.
In the survey, some respondents reported they were using demographic information to better understand attendees. Some planners are finding social media communities and virtual technologies to be effective ways to reach niche groups of participants, both before and after the events.
Piggybacking Takes Off
In healthier economic times, it might have seemed odd for the Screenprinting & Graphic Imaging Association, which supports the digital and screen printing community, to partner with the Industrial Fabrics Association International in co-locating an event. But the two groups have joined forces for a 2013 event at the Orange County Convention Center. Sain talked recently with organizers of a consumer show who are interested in a similar arrangement.
"The economy has, over the past couple of years, forced almost everyone to figure out how they can be more cost effective," Sain said. "There is a trend toward the strategic thinking of how we can make this the best ever—how we can synergize with related organizations."
The trend, as one might imagine, comes with some built-in challenges. Many associations depend on their events for revenue, so splitting the proceeds could have an economic impact.
"It may be a strategically good move but may not be a financially good move," Sain said.
While "coopetition" will ultimately be a small trend because of the financial implications for the associations that try it, it’s one that speaks to a larger issue.
"I think the bigger trend is that people are being more open," Sain said.
Given that it’s no longer an option to look at meetings the same way, many would say that a willingness to rethink every aspect of events is a smart survival tactic for the future. One+
