Couldn’t make any of HSMAI’s MEET shows this year? Maybe you were there but couldn’t make a certain session that interested you? Or, maybe you took advantage of the great educational opportunities but now want to refresh your memory with some key takeaways?
Following are some of the highlights of this year’s MEET programs, supplied from some of the top speakers that presented at the various shows, covering topics ranging from food and beverage and Strategic Meetings Management to social media and corporate social responsibility programs.
A compendium of information is also available via HSMAI’s Knowledge Center. This resource center contains informational materials that include white papers, articles, podcasts and tip sheets provided by the speakers of HSMAI’s MEET series, ranging from budgeting to contracts and negotiation strategies to professional development and meetings industry trends.
For more information about HSMAI’s MEET events, access its website here.
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Presentation: A Taste of Value: Does Your Food & Beverage Make or Break Your Event?
Presenter: Joy Schechter, Event Strategist & Business Consultant, The Joy of Live Events
Key F&B Tips
- Be clear on the objective/mission
- Choose F&B items that enhance the objective
- Watch out for distractions/derailers
- Recalibrate GPS as needed
- If you don’t know the purpose of the item, don’t bring it into the room!
© 2013 The Joy of Live Events
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Presentation: The Why and How of Event Measurement, presented by the MPI Foundation
Presenter: Peggy Hemphill, Your Corporate Source Inc.
Overcoming Obstacles
- Know your stakeholders
- Relieve their fears
- Set goals and objectives
- Ask good questions
- Keep it simple
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Presentation: Selling in a Revenue-Managed World
Presenter: Amber Fox, National Director of Sales, Signature Worldwide
Bridging the Understanding Gap
- The challenge faced by most sales professionals is that customers cannot recognize (presale) the value of your solution without your help.
- They tend to focus on what they know--PRICE!
- Highly successful sales professionals understand this.
- They work to bridge that understanding gap by focusing the conversation on the things that truly matter to the customer.
The sales process can be developed to proactively steer demand. There is usually some probability that a customer, when denied a booking at a lower rate class, will agree to buy the requested service at the applicable rate for a higher rate class.
For example, if the “ultra saver” airfare of $200 is “sold out,” he may be willing to buy the $250 “super saver” airfare in order to ride on the flight of his choice. This possibility also needs to be factored into the EMR formula. To do this, one need merely to reflect the fact that the expected revenue from a turned away potential “ultra-saver” passenger isn’t zero, it’s the $250 “super saver” rate times the probability that he will opt to pay that higher fare.
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Presentation: Event Strategies & Planning: Improve Your ROI & Shine
Presenter: Joy Schechter, Event Strategist & Business Consultant, The Joy of Live Events
Key ROI Questions to Ask
- What is the game (objective)?
- Where am I now (measure)?
- How will I get there (Strategies)?
- What are the action steps (plan)?
- Will they come back (audience experience)?
© 2013 The Joy of Live Events
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Presentation: Strategic Meetings Management 101
Presenter: Gwen Sims, Operations Manager, Maritz Travel
Presenter: Jen Traeger, Director, Information Management, Maritz Travel
What to Measure? Understanding Your Goals
- Ensure processes are aligned to support the end result
- Do you have the complete process in place to support your goal?
- Do you have organizational support to implement your process?
- Ensure methodology and definitions support end result
- Have you clearly defined the components of data to be captured?
- Have you created a standardized methodology to ensure data capture is consistent across users?
- Ensure data collection supports end result
- Are you capturing the data in the correct format?
- Are you recording the data at the appropriate level of detail?
- If you don’t have the data, you’ll never be able to report on it.
- End result
- What is the ultimate goal of your program?
- What types of reports and analysis are critical for success?
- Can you tell a story that your audience will use to impact business decisions?
- Have a clear vision of your end result.
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Presentation: Getting the Best Results from eRFPs
Presenter: John Oliver, Regional Director, Elite Meetings International
How to get your RFPs to stand out?
- Be a part of the Lead Spam solution.
- Send RFPs to 6 hotels or fewer (per event)
- Include complete data (no more RFP Poker)
• Flexible dates
• Event budget
• Historical data
• Goal of the meeting
4. Utilize time-saving tools such as MPoint, Cvent, EliteMeetings.com, SpeedRFP Network
- Avoid sending the same RFP thru multiple systems
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Presentation: Today’s Best Practices: Face-to-Face Selling and Communication Skills
Presenter: Amber Fox, National Director of Sales, Signature Worldwide
Active Listening
- In general, we remember less than 50% of what we hear
- Active listening will help you remember the entire message so you can recommend an appropriate solution
- Pay attention
- Show that you are listening
- Provide feedback
- Defer judgment
- Respond appropriately
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Presentation: Engage Audiences for Happy Exhibitors
Presenter: Angela Carr, VP Professional Services, a2z Inc.
Tools for Exhibitors to Engage their Audience and Enhance their Experience
- Provide attendee acquisition tools
- Ask your exhibitors to include your event on their website.
- Make it easy!
- Provide event logo for their marketing materials
- Provide e-mail signature containing the event information
- Provide complimentary exhibit hall only registration for their customers
- Provide canned marketing campaigns
- Make available the event’s attendee marketing emails that the exhibitors can
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Presentation: Conference & Tradeshow Trends
Presenter: Jenny Van Riper
VP, Strategic Account Management, Experient
Projected Growth (Hotels)
- Supply: Below average through 2016
- Demand: Above average through 2015
- Occupancy: Above average through 2016
- ADR: 2X Above average through 2015
- RevPAR: 2.5X Above average through 2015
*Source: PKF Hospitality Research
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Presentation: A Planner’s Guide to Saving Money Using the Internet
Presenter: Lisa Barham, President, Hotel Resources
Five Great Events and Travel Websites
- Events in America
You can customize this website. Click on the state, number of attendees, name of events or dates. Find groups and venues the size of your group and be able to see what you can get for your money before calling on the venues.
- PerfectTablePlan
A resource for creating a table seating plan in the least time.
- Bing Maps
Select your category, Hotels & Motels. A listing of hotels will appear on the map with their location, you can even zoom into the hotel via satellite and take a look. Use the “Bird’s Eye View” to see the hotels and their exact locations.
- Bing Travel
Travel website that will save you 50%-60% on all business or personal travel. It provides a graph to show when to select the cheapest time to fly during the day.
- Yapta
This travel website will also save you money, but the best thing about this website…you can even save money after you’ve booked your trip.
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Presentation: Strategic Meetings Management: Myths, Challenges and Opportunities
Presenter: Kerry Lambert, Manager, SMM Strategic Accounts Team, Cvent
Top Reasons Why You Might Need an SMMP
- Between registration forms, RFPs and budgets I’m drowning in paperwork.
- Although I work for a small company, I still need to leverage what I spend on meetings to negotiate better rates with my preferred suppliers.
- I’m spending too much time manually sending RFPs rather than analyzing my overall program.
- I need to identify everyone who is signing hotel contracts to make sure they are using standard contract terms/addendums to protect the organization’s legal and financial interests.
- I can’t get the important meeting information I need when I need it.
- I’ve heard technology can help me be more efficient (and by efficient I mean make my job easier).
- I want to stop keeping track of disparate meeting budgets in Excel and I want all of the planners on my team to track budgets in the same way.
- I want my attendees to visit one site to register for the event, schedule 1:1 meetings, book their travel and reserve their hotel room.
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Presentation: Meetings Are Social…Why Aren’t Yours?
Presenter: Justin Ramers, Director of Digital and Social Media, ACTIVE Network Business Solutions Group
Crisis Management
- Identify internal delegates
- Create a crisis communication plan
- Map out scenarios ahead of time
- Draft base messaging
- Run through mock disasters
- Learn from others (even other industries)
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Presentation: The Two BIG Legal Issues for Meeting Planners
Presenter: Jefferson C. Glassie, Esq., Whiteford, Taylor & Preston
Music Licensing
- Performance of live or recorded music requires license from song owners.
- Not enforced against musicians.
- ASCAP/ BMI/SESAC represent copyright owners and license music on their behalf.
- Hotels, retailers, and others have blanket licenses.
- Now, associations must have them for meetings if music played or performed.
- Licenses are not complicated or expensive.
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Presentation: Roundtable Session: Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)
Presenter: Tyler Davidson, Chief Content Director, Meetings Focus
Just What Is CSR?
- It’s short for corporate social responsibility, and is fast becoming a staple of top-shelf meeting and convention programs.
- It’s definitely heartwarming
- It can also address acute needs. The Stop Hunger Now program gathers teams to buy and package ingredients to save those at risk of starvation…NOW!
- It’s an ESSENTIAL part of the marketing effort of the most successful organizations and corporations in the world.
- Don’t forget—it’s a blast!
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