The Destination Doctor is in

This post is by guest contributor and notable travel writer, Allan Lynch
Read more about Allan at http://www.destinationdoctor.ca/

I have been on fam trips on four continents. There are great fam trips, good fam trips and unbelievable fam experiences.

My work, when I return to my office, is to interpret a place for readers who might be interested in bringing their corporate group or incentive program to the destination. It’s surprising how bad most destination Convention & Visitor Bureaus (CVBs) are with follow up. Face-to-face people will tell you, “Call me anytime, I’m happy to help.” I know they mean it. But then they disappear behind an impenetrable technological veil. It’s perverse that we are the most connected society in history, yet have all these impediments to communication. Things like a telephone menu that either doesn’t list the department you’re trying to reach or is only accessible if you know how a surname and how to correctly spell it.

In my work I have learned that accuracy is a loose concept for many destinations and properties. Why can’t a property offer consistent information about their facilities? Many hotels give conflicting information about simple things like room count or restaurant names. A restaurant may have been renamed and both identities are left floating on the information highway. Confusion grows when the website describes it as fine dining, a guidebook says it’s a bistro, a press kit calls it a lounge-restaurant. Have you one eatery or three?

For a piece I was doing for meetings magazine I needed to confirm a couple of details I couldn’t get from the resort’s website. The moment I heard the bright, enthusiastic fresh PR grad voice on the phone I knew I was in trouble. I wasn’t looking for a comp stay, free meal or to sell an ad. I wanted to know her property’s total room count, how many were suites, ballroom capacities and number of break out rooms. The woman I spoke with told me she wasn’t familiar with the magazine and didn’t think they wanted to associated with marginal media and hung up. Where is the harm in saying we have 400 guestrooms and 30,000 sq ft of meeting space?

I did what any self-respecting journalist would do and contacted their biggest competitor. That hang up meant the competition got exclusive mention and because of editorial cycles that first resort was shut out of the magazine for three-to-five years. They were also shut out of any Google searches a planner might do.

For many years I thought it was only media who didn’t get their telephone calls and email returned. I have learned that an astonishing number of meeting planners are also ignored.

As covered in Greenfield's November e-newsletter, the failure to return information requests is so rampant it prompted the Institute for Hospitality Management to conduct a secret-shopper style survey with 167 hotels. Only 15 percent of properties send a tailor-made offer based on client needs. This raises the question are staff working for you or the competition?

So what are three best practices to ensure you’re not working for the competition:

1. Make sure requests are not only directed to the correct people but that they are being received by them. One destination made an incorrect assumption about who was managing their trade website. Because of my questions they found 400 unanswered requests from media, meeting planners, incentive houses, travel agents and tour companies. How much business was lost because of that?
2. Have a policy detailing who handles media requests and ensure that the front desk, receptionist or whoever answers the telephone knows who to forward calls to. Media have deadlines. If the spokesperson isn’t available now, when are they back? And who stands in in their absence? Hotels always have a duty manager on site, so there should be a duty person to handle meeting planner and media requests.
3. Items 1 and 2 are reactive policies. What about a proactive policy? Do you court media coverage? Do you know how to get media and meeting planners interested in your product/service/destination? Do you have a communications plan and a concise message for both traditional and social media? It’s great that you’re using multiple platforms from traditional and social media to face-to-face fams to connect with clients, but you need to have something to say beyond book with us. When someone asks why they should focus on your property don’t tell us it’s how friendly your staff is – smiles are your business. Sell us.

All of us work in a 24/7 world-wide environment. Your competition is no longer the place down the street, it’s every place and property down every street, in every time zone. You cannot afford to miss connecting with anyone who is interested in you on any level. Today’s board meeting could lead to a national conference. Every call, every request is important.

Greenfield Services to attend CSAE Tête-à-Tête

On Thursday, February 9^th, 2012 Canadian meetings industry suppliers will be congregating at the Ottawa Convention Centre to attend 2012’s installment of CSAE’s Tête-à-Tête – and Greenfield Services Inc. is thrilled to be joining them!

As a platinum sponsor of the event, Greenfield helped CSAE formulate a proactive attendance promotion program. This started with beefing up the CSAE's list with its own Association Executive and Professional Meeting Planner data.

For the second year in a row Greenfield also will be hosting a foot massage station so that fellow hotel, CVB and other meeting services exhibitors can relax and get off their tired feet!

Every year Tête-à-Tête continues to grow, and 2012 is shaping up to be the best year yet! Doreen Ashton Wagner (Chief Strategist & Managing Director) & Meagan Rockett (Director, Client Solutions) are looking forward to re-connecting with old friends, and establishing new relationships. See you all at the show!

Caesars Windsor's Jeremy Tyrrell Visits Greenfield

left to right: Meagan Rockett, Director of Client Solutions; Tanya Rolfe, Business Development Specialist; Jeremy Tyrrell, Caesars Windsor; Doreen Ashton Wagner, Chief Strategist, Greenfield Services

On Friday morning, December 9, the Greenfield Team had a wonderful surprise visit from long-time friend and client, Jeremy Tyrrell of Caesars Windsor. Jeremy was in the area to visit association clients and to attend the MPI Festive Flicks luncheon at the Delta City Centre Hotel in Ottawa.

He took time out of his busy schedule to drop by the Greenfield offices, bringing us a yummy box of chocolates, nuts and popcorn!
Jeremy finally got to meet Tanya Rolfe, the Business Development Specialist who had been developing leads and setting up new client appointments for him and another Caesars over the last few years!

Thank you, Jeremy, it was great to see you! We hope you have a great Christmas!

Listen while Prospecting for New Business

Last week I got my first prospecting call from an organization looking to see if we hold meetings or events outside of my immediate area.  While I am sure the owners of our company get these on a regular basis, I was surprised to hear how the call went.

The introduction was perfect. I was even asked if I was caught at an appropriate time.

But the rest of the conversation went something like this:

Prospector: I was wondering if your company held any offsite meetings outside of the Alexandria area?

My reply: Not regularly.  Let me explain – we are a market research and business development firm for the hospitality industry.  Our clients are like you – and come to us when it comes time to fill their funnel with new leads to continue to nurture.  We are their lead generation firm.

Prospector: (Pause) Would it be OK to send you some information by email?
Really?  Did you not hear what I just said?

There are several things I can address in this lead generation scenario, but my top two are:

1. Did the prospector even look at our website?  While a call may have still been warranted (as they are told to call everyone on the list, I’m sure), the prospector did not seem to have any idea of what our company did.  Research is key.
2. I raised an objection, and it was not heard.  I clearly told the prospector that we are lead generators ourselves, and that we do what she is doing every workday.  She acted like she did not even hear me, which makes me believe that she was literally working off a piece of paper.

I said that I was willing to receive information by email should they wish to send it through. While I did not get the information I agreed to, I think it may be time to approach this organization regarding a customized lead generation program.  We are in a position to help this organization grow their lists of conference attendees, and generate qualified leads for them.

The simple solution to cold calling

This article was written by Nicholas Button, one of Greenfield's Business Development Specialists.


In the hospitality industry cold calling is a necessary part of the sales process. Some people have some trouble in this area. They try to come up different techniques. They obsess about when to call, where to call, who to talk to.

As a Business Development Speciality for Greenfield Services, prospecting is what I do for a living. My philosophy about doing business development over the phone is summarized by Occams Razor which states that the simplest answer is most likely correct. Let me explain.

The simplest and probably most important thing that you have to remember when phoning prospects is that they are just people. It doesn’t matter if you’re talking to the CEO of a Fortune 500 company, or the Administrative Assistant for a company with three employees. They are essentially the same. They expect to be treated with respect, and to be spoken to as if they are the most important person you will speak with (and they are correct). If you can envision that the person you’re talking to is the lead to end all leads, it will come through in every nuance of your voice. Then half the trouble with cold calling is already behind you.

The other half of the trouble, the simple yet deceptively difficult part. You have to sell yourself to the contact. In an initial cold call, you are not really selling a product or a venue. You are selling yourself as that product or venue’s representative. In my experience it doesn’t matter so much what you are trying to sell if the person is already sold on you.

How you can accomplish this is not something you can be trained about, or told how to do it simply because it will vary for every person and sometimes every situation. You will know when you have found it however; as soon as you feel more confident, you will see a marked increase in your results.

So just remember: simplicity is key. Talk to your clients like you would want to be treated if the situations were reversed. You know what works for you when sales people call, use that to sell yourself to your clients. Occam’s Razor says the simplest answer is usually correct; we have all been told to treat people like we expect to be treated, I doubt there is a simpler way to call on a new prospect.

Database Cleansing – We Practice What We Preach

This fall, we decided it was time to practice what we preach, and update our B2B Database by conducting our own data cleansing campaign.

While our main objective was to ensure that our database was as clean as possible (to continue to market to Hospitality & Meetings Industry professionals, as well as Association executives), we recognized that this was a prime opportunity to track metrics and see how our database measured up compared to other data cleansing campaigns.

We selected records we had not connected with in 2011.  These included contacts from independent hotels, chain hotels, Convention & Visitor Bureau’s), the Meetings Industry (Audio-Visual Suppliers, 3^rd Party Planners), and Professional & Trade Associations.

A total of 603 calls were placed to update 420 records, averaging at 1.44 calls placed to complete 1 record (strictly data cleansing).  The results were as follows:

• 276 of the contacts were still with the organization, and updated their information (65% of the total completions). 
• There were 55 new contacts who had replaced people who we had on file (13% of the total completions).
• 71 contacts were terminated for various reasons (mainly, the contact was no longer there, but we also found a few who were no longer interested in continuing a business relationship) – representing 17% of the total completions.
• We were unable to connect with the remaining 18 records (5% of the total completions).  We are keeping these records on file, and will attempt to update the information at a later date.

What did we learn?
The database, once completed, shows that 95% of the contacts we had on file were updated over various results, and we can now proceed with actionable marketing efforts in from our CRM to the right people.

This ratio is much higher than what we typically see statistically (our typical aver is between 60-70% for client projects), however, we clean our database at least once per year, which is why the ratio is higher.

Our goal was to clean up as much as we could in order to create an appropriate marketing approach to re-engage these prospects.

Making an annual data cleansing exercise part of a marketing plan is an excellent way to ensure you keep costs down, and your marketing activities as effective as possible!

IMEX America 2011 was a Resounding Success…

…and Greenfield Services was proud to be a part of it!

In February 2011, Greenfield Services was approached by organizers of IMEX America to support their attendance marketing campaign.  We drew from our extensive database to identify 13,500 meeting and event planners that fit IMEX rigorous hosted buyer criteria.  The Greenfield list used was distinctly separate from the existing list maintained by IMEX.

This collaborative effort produced a compaign comprised of seven informative emails, as well as one postal mailing.  Greenfield Business Development Specialists took the marketing effort one-step further by placing phone calls to a select group of contacts after each email, to further support the key messages and encourage qualified planners to register for this groundbreaking event.

According to a press release from IMEX America:
The inaugural event was considered “A breath of fresh air”.

Feedback from over 2,000 hosted buyers, 1,700 attendees and 2,000 exhibitors who attended demonstrates that it lived up to its promise to reinvigorate business with a successful collaborative model.  The tradeshow received a widespread positive reaction, with a high-volume of pre-scheduled appointments (30,000 total appointments made), with many additional “walk-up” business meetings as well.  Nearly 53% of the hosted buyers had a budget that exceeded $1 million!

To read more from the press release, click here.

Says Doreen Ashton Wagner, Chief Strategist at Greenfield Services, “We were thrilled to be approached by IMEX to be a part of this groundbreaking event with our Attendance Promotion & Email Marketing services.  IMEX America generated a lot of positive feedback (both before and after the tradeshow) – and it was great to be involved with it in its first year.  We look forward to strategically partnering with them again!”