Advice from a Meeting Planner to Suppliers

This post is by guest contributor Cara Tracy, CMP, CMM.  Cara is a meetings industry professional who has been on the supply side of the industry, as well as the planning side.  This post was originally titled: "Know your customer … or make it seem like you do!"  

One of my biggest pet peeves is a sales pitch or presentation from someone who doesn’t know their audience. I don’t expect you to know me or my organization personally (although doing your homework will get you further in my book), however there are a few basics you should know when selling to meeting planners.

• Watch your wording
  UKnow the differences between market segments and tailor your pitch accordingly. For example, do not refer to an association as a “company.” If you aren’t sure, call it an “organization.” Also, unless the planner clearly works for a third party or is an independent, don’t assume they have clients. When you refer to my “clients”, it tells me that you do not understand my business or associations in general. A safe term to use is “attendees”. All meeting planners have attendees.
• Don’t claim to be something you’re not
  A fellow planner received an email from a 160-room hotel claiming to be a “perfect match” for her meetings. In fact, the hotel’s website touts “The perfect fit for your next meeting or social event.” In my friend’s case, they aren’t even close—her program attracts over 4,000 attendees! Once you’ve done your research and know your property can accommodate my program, say something like “other national associations with similar size groups have found our hotel ideal for their annual convention.” And remember “fit” doesn’t necessarily mean size. In my case, I look at the feel of the property, location, amenities, among other things—and what’s important to me varies from meeting to meeting.
• Don’t spend time telling me things that don’t interest me
  On a recent site inspection, my hotel sales manager incorrectly assumed that because I work for the National Speakers Association we have high-profile or celebrity presenters who require private access onto the property. She spent a great deal of time walking us to the “secret entrance” and discussing how they can discreetly bring our VIP guests into the hotel. By simply asking “do you have high-profile guests that require a separate entrance?”, she could have avoided wasting our time and making herself look like she didn’t know her customer.
• Look me up
  If you are making a ton of solicitation calls or sending a mass email and don’t have time to “do your homework” on every customer, at the very least, check your database to see if I’ve used your property before. Nothing turns me off more than an introduction call from a new sales manager asking if I would consider using their hotel when we were just there the year before. Even worse is if I have an upcoming program! On the other hand, don’t over-generalize and assume everyone on your list has used your hotel and thank me for business I didn’t book.

When it comes down to it, the more time you spend preparing the better. You may not get through as many calls but the quality of those calls (and the outcome) will improve significantly. How do you learn about your customers and potential customers?

How do you learn about your customers and potential customers?

Image: www.FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Hiring a Student for your Prospecting?

At this time of year many organizations turn to students to staff their various departments.

While I am never really surprised when a hotel Director of  Sales & Martketing tells me that they are looking to hire a student to help with their prospecting efforts, I do wonder whether they realize what they may be in for.

After all, would a Chef consider hiring a student with no cooking experience to cook up a VIP dinner?  The same might be said for putting an inexperienced individual on the phone to develop new business relationships with prospective clients.

Yet I realize it is often because of budgets that this choice is made -- and often it's because the General Manager or Hotel Controller won't free up the funds. So if you are looking to hire a student to help you with prospecting efforts this summer, I recommend you keep the following in mind:

Be clear on the qualities and characteristics that you are looking for an individual in this capacity.  What makes a good prospector? Someone with the gift of the gab? Or someone with good listening skills? Given a choice between the two, I would argue good listening skills.

While it may be tempting to get an extroverted, fast talking individual, it may be wiser to look for someone who is a bit more reserved, yet inquisitive and focused on finding worthwhile information. After all the relationship building process will fall back to your sales managers. Find someone who loves to uncover information rather than someone who loves to talk.

Provide this new team member with a very clear picture of the information you require and expect from online research or from a phone call. Give them examples of a lead; have them review your target market descriptions, or better yet, work out a Perfect Customer profile with them. Have them understand what customer conditions or needs must exist for a worthwhile business relationship to be undertaken with a meeting professional.

Have them work out a script with you. With the understanding of course that no call will never go according to script. But having prepared questions is essential to successful making calls.

Pay careful attention to their introduction. Make sure that they properly identify themselves and the purpose of their call and ask for permission prior to continuing the conversation. Having the caller recognize upfront that their prospecting call will be an interruption helps ease any potential tension with the prospect. This may sound something like this, "Mr. Planner, my name is Doreen and I'm calling from Greenfield Services. I know you weren't expecting my call. Did I catch you at a bad time?" Having an introduction that decidedly does NOT sound like a telemarketing or prospecting call is another secret to success.

Depending on the data you provide to your student, ensure that they conduct the proper research. If the information comes from your own CRM, they need to know where to find any history or past relationship information so that they can execute the call accordingly.

And if you're having them work from a cold list, teach them how to look up crucial information on a website. If the prospective organizations are associations, most would have some meeting history on their website. If they are a third-party meeting planner, some of that information also may be gleaned from their website. Of course if this is for a corporate organization, the information may not appear anywhere on their website, but it may be in other sources such as LinkedIn Events (look under the “More” section in the LinkedIn tabs). If the information isn’t readily available, you may need to brainstorm with your student and come up with a list of the TYPES of meetings that different corporate organizations could be holding (e.g. pharma accounts will have physician consultation meetings, continuing medical education meetings, etc.).

Outline clear expectations for your student in terms of call volume, call completions, and pace. Since online research may be required, how many calls you expect them to do per hour? How many of those will lead to completions versus voicemail, numbers not in service, and other dead ends? How will they handle gatekeepers? Will they leave messages, and if so will they call back the students or the sales manager?

Call metrics are difficult to establish because they depend on the quality of the data and the market that is being targeted. Under normal circumstances however, a professional prospector may be expected to perform according to the following metrics;

• Complete an average of 4 to 6 records per hour, assuming up to three attempts per record. This accounts for the need to circumvent voicemail, absences from the office, et cetera.
• Over the course of the day this may mean an average of 28 to 42 completed records. Of course, since multiple attempts will take place, in the early days of a prospecting campaign, completions will be much lower.  But completions should pick up after the first couple of weeks.

Prospecting is such a grueling task, and that’s why most salespeople hate it.  So how will you supervise this youngest member of your team and keep him/her motivated? Don't forget that their ego may still be fragile depending on the level of experience they have working in this capacity. They may find rejection hard to take; even experienced sales reps have a hard time with rejection (click here for some of our own Greenfield staff tips on keeping a positive focus). How will you make sure that a student is prepared for this?

Hiring a student may be a less expensive option from a monetary standpoint, but be prepared to invest time in their development and ongoing progress. On the upside, with the proper guidance, your student may turn out to be a star performer you would want to hire on your sales team permanently.

Eventprofs: Looking for a Supplier or a Partner?

The other day I received an email from a hotel director of sales & marketing requesting a “price list” for our group lead generation services.  I responded that, while we have project investment guidelines, fees may vary widely, depending on the nature of the data, the timing of the project, whether it is just a calling campaign or whether there is an email component, etc. 

I asked the person to have a conversation, so we could discuss what they needed exactly. Unfortunately, my request was flatly denied, “Please send via email the pricing for the request below, as well as any recommended strategies, if you are interested in being included in the bid process for this project.”

Wow!  I was really taken aback.  I wondered how this DOSM would feel if a planner called their sales office and asked for “a rate” for a group, but was not willing to provide a time of year, the size of group and other requirements such as F&B and meeting space.  Would they just quote a group rate?  I doubt it.

This was especially disappointing since I had a few prior conversations with this person over the last 18 months.  I thought we had established an understanding that marketing services must be tailored to individual property or destination needs.  From our experience, cookie-cutter does not translate into success.

Lesson learned?  As much as it saddened me, I let this one go.  If I could not have a conversation to discuss where they were at, how could I recommend a strategy?  In the long run, my gut told me, they probably would never be happy.  They were looking for a vendor and we were looking to be their partner.  We were simply not a good fit.

I concluded that whether you are on the supply side of the meetings industry – a hotel, a CVB or a meeting services provider – or on the buying side, you must be clear about whether you are looking for a commodity or a customized solution.  And in the end, the way we treat others often will be reflected in how we get treated ourselves!

Avoid Getting the Cut

Two months ago I stopped going to my hairdresser.  It was a difficult decision; one that I suspect may be better understood by female readers.  But after spending an average of over $200 per month for the last 2 ½ years with him I felt under-appreciated.

What does this have to do with the hospitality and meetings industry?  Two things: first, I think many planners view their relationship with their event suppliers as critically as the one with their hairdresser.  As one planner I know always says, “it’s my suppliers who make me look good to my client.”  Secondly, because most event professionals are people pleasers, like me, they may not be very good at making known their decision to go elsewhere.

So like me, they go silent.  That’s right.  I’m not proud of it, but I have yet to tell my hairdresser the real reason I haven’t returned is the premature fading of my last three colours.  To his defense, he texted me to remind me I was due for my next appointment.  I didn't reply, but he never called to ask what was wrong.  It was just easier for me to try someone else.

How often has that happened to you?  You’ve had the same group at your hotel for years and, all of a sudden, they say they aren’t coming back… Or they stop returning your calls and your emails and when you finally corner them, they tell you “management” decided to try something new.

Unfortunately, it happens more than any of us would like.  Feeling under-appreciated or being dealt with by a non-caring staff person was cited by nearly 70% as the main reason they changed suppliers, according to a study by the US Small Business Administration.

So here are two strategies to avoid the pain of being cut by a regular customer:

1. Surprise-surprise: show your appreciation!  No need for big bouquets and expensive gifts here – though that is nice on occasion and if the client’s organization allows it.  Consider low-cost, personalize tokens of your appreciation: hand-written notes, “how-did-your-other-big-conference-go” calls, and forwarded emails with educational information.  Anything that you feel will be helpful to your client, on a personal or professional level.
2. Go high, wide and deep:  sometimes you’re stuck with a client who thinks they are your ONLY client.  Or they get their knickers in a twist about something outside your control.  If you’re looking for some insurance against getting dumped, Colleen Francis, my sales coach, advises to forge meaningful relationships with your client’s boss (go high), with people in other departments (go wide), and with people below your client (go deep).  You can watch a video of her discussing this concept by clicking here.  By demonstrating your value and your appreciation across the organization, it doesn’t mean you’ll keep the business forever; but you could stand fewer chances of getting the boot unexpectedly.

Now excuse me, as I have to gather courage to write a proper “Dear John” note to my hairdresser…

 

Photo credit: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net/images/Manual_Jobs_g397-Barber_p73982.html

More Twitter Advice for Hotel & Meeting Venue Reps

Continuing on the Twitter theme of my post two weeks ago, I was approached by one of our hotel clients to help their sales managers understand and use Twitter in a meeting and event environment.

This is a new challenge that had been given to the three sales managers, all of whom are seasoned sales people. In our discovery call, I could hear their apprehension about having yet another task on their already long to do list.

What is this going to help them create more leads? What is this going to help them close more business? They wondered. Yet their Director of Sales & Marketing was determined to push them out of their comfort zone to try this new tool.

Not an easy task. But I salute the DOSM for pushing the envelope. Eventually we came to the conclusion that the three sales managers could  probably share one account and, using appropriate time management and the right tool, they could away with monitoring ongoing conversation and each tweeting a few times a week.

They started to warm up to the idea when they realized that meeting attendees could be tweeting, and that they could help their clients by tweeting about the upcoming event, alerting them to pre and post block rates, cut-off dates, and other side activities.

Soon they realized they also could get exposure and build trust with sponsors and other meeting organizers within those audiences.  This could mean referrals and additional group business.

And that is the answer. Twitter strictly as a promotional tool won't take you very far. But if you look at it as a tool that helps you listen to your clients, and enables you to help them meet their meeting objectives, all of a sudden you are not just "salesperson", you are more of a solution provider. And this helps you build trust. And of course building trust helps you build more sales.

My advice to hotel, CVB, and meetings industry supplier sales leaders: don't look at social media as yet another chore. Look at it as an opportunity to help build trust with your prospective and existing clients.

Think Magnets, Not Darts

The inbound marketing trend is finally beginning to sweep the hospitality and meetings industry. It isn’t too soon for it to begin sweeping away any parts of your hotel or CVB's sales marketing program that have outlived their usefulness.


Look to attract potential clients
vs. target them.

The opposite of inbound marketing, outbound marketing, refers to the collection of strategies that most of us grew up with as the gold standard for customer contact. We would deluge meeting planners with direct mail. Follow up with phone calls. Ply them with gifts. Swarm them at trade shows. Volume was the key to success, and the best message was a relentlessly consistent (and consistently relentless) one. As fax, then email and mobile entered the mix, we adapted those technologies to the proven way of getting sales done.

But somewhere along the way, we began to realize the outbound marketing model was broken. Customers came up with elaborate ways to avoid being “sold”. Regulators and procurement officers were nervous about all the free giveaways. And the best account managers realized the expectations were all wrong: instead of setting out to build genuine relationships that delivered real value, it was all about the quarterly sales targets, methods be damned.

You’ve no doubt heard the more recent business maxim that to get something back, you have to give something away. With inbound marketing, you get back the attention and engagement of your target audience—and, eventually, their buying power—by giving away something they need and want in place of a standard, outbound sales pitch. Offer them knowledge. Point them to resources. And make it clear that you ask nothing in return, that the conversation is its own reward.

Once your customers know why they want to talk to you, they’ll figure out the rest (and, yes, you can help them with that final step).  Inbound marketing is still a new enough concept that its meaning is sometimes in the eye of the beholder.  The important thing to remember is that focus has shifted from using darts to “hit” prospects, to one where you magnetize your communication and they come to you.

To read about Greenfield’s take on how the sales and marketing world has shifted; download our Discussion Paper, The Great Shift: Why B2B Lead Generation is Changing and What You Need To Do About It. Or join the discussion by registering for one of our webinars.

*This post marks the appearance of Greenfield's Chief Strategist, Doreen Ashton Wagner, who is speaking at the Meeting Professionals International (MPI) Toronto Chapter's Education Conference in Niagara Falls, ON, on Monday, June 11, 2012.  She will be presenting the session: The Magnet vs. the Dart: Helping Meeting Professionals Create an Inbound Lead Generation Channel.

Building Trust on Twitter

Recently I wrote about ways that meetings and hospitality industry suppliers can build trust on their website.

This past Friday I had opportunity to experience a first-hand example of how trust can be built through Twitter. Mind you this was not an encounter with a hospitality company, but I do think there are a lot of similar applications.

This encounter happened as a result of my experiencing difficulties on a new social media tool called Triberr.  I had registered on the tool and was ready to start using it but for some reason I could not get to the screen that would allow me to get started. I reached out to a colleague on Twitter. And one of the cofounder of Triberr, Dino Dogan (@Dino_Dogan) happened to be "listening". And he messaged me immediately! I was so impressed that one of the key executives of the company would do that that it immediately increased my trust in this new tool.

Not only was I able to solve the problem (which appeared to because to my Internet Explorer not working properly) but it got me using the tool immediately.

So how could you use this tool at your hotel, CVB, or convention center to help meeting attendees and meeting planners have a better experience?

Imagine posting something on Twitter and having someone like the general manager or director of sales and marketing, respond almost immediately. Now that would be something that would increase my trust in a supplier!

The advent of social media is definitely changing the way we have had to operate in the meetings industry. It doesn’t guarantee success, but those embrace it just might have more chances to experience it.