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Setting Up a 'Quick' National Sales Meeting

By Donna Rosato

Introduction

A tough economy, smaller budgets, and unmotivated employees are just a few of the challenges facing corporate event planners as they map out their national sales gatherings.

Motivating reps is tough enough. Add in those shrinking budgets and the increasing glances from the penny pinchers in Purchasing—and what used to be lovely multi-day events with seminars and cocktail parties just became an event more scrutinized than any sponsorship or consumer experience.

If the national sales meeting doesn't directly impact revenues, it's game over, baby. What will it take? More work, less play, and fewer perks.

Meeting planners are unanimous when they caution that there's a fine line between controlling costs and cheaping out. "You want to be careful that you're not becoming so stingy that people start noticing," says Michael Hadlow, president of Atlanta-based USMotivation.

From registration and location to entertainment and perks, event planners and companies shared their survival tactics with EM to help make your national sales meeting a hit without breaking the piggybank. Their seven tips:

Seven Tips

1. Skip the Hotspots. Forget about Hawaii in January. More sales meetings are being held off-season and in fewer resort-like destinations. Ford Motor Co. used to bring top dealers together every two years for a networking meeting in an exotic location. Now the meeting is held annually near headquarters in Motown.

A non-resort locale makes it easier to keep attendees focused on business, marketers say. But that doesn't mean attendees can't have fun: IP networking giant Equant North America held its global sales meeting in Paris in 2002 but this year its sales force met in Atlanta. Attendees were treated to local activities, such as behind-the-scenes tours of Turner Field. "We didn't have to spend anything to decorate, so we saved money and they had a great time," says Equant marketing events manager Judith Milburn.

Cisco Systems just chose San Francisco for its upcoming sales meeting in July because the city is a hub for airlines and "all the hotels are in walking distance of the convention center and the nightlife," says Christine Castle, the company's manager of global sales programs. Dallas, Las Vegas, and New Orleans continue to be hot cities for big meetings, because they're easy to get around and are served by a number of large carriers (making airfare reasonable).

Hard-to-reach venues are falling out of favor. Time spent waiting for a connecting flight could be spent in a breakout session.

2. Pack the Schedule. Many brands are trimming costs by reducing the number of days meetings are held and/or packing more into the schedule. "Instead of flying in Monday afternoon, clients are asking meeting participants to arrive Tuesday morning and get right to work," says CB Wismar, executive vp-business development at meeting agency PGI, Alexandria, VA.

Others are looking carefully at who will attend and cutting back on the number of participants. On the agenda side, most companies are holding fewer general sessions and more breakouts because of the increased tilt on education. Lisa Busby, vp-event services at Burlingame, CA-based Conference Planners, recommends no more than two general sessions a day, preferably one to kick off the event and one at the end of each day. "You lose the audience if you have too many general sessions. Salespeople don't like to sit in one place for any length of time," she says.

Tighter agendas also mean less free time for attendees, which ensures they stick around and absorb the content you want them to. Hilton Hotels Corp. is running more intense training than in the past. Instead of an overview of different business units, for example, classes are now given on all business units—and participants are tested after each class. "We've gotten more business-oriented with our meetings," says Denise Lodrige-Kover, Hilton's vp-national sales. "Our schedule is more jammed than it was in the past."

3. Streamline Registration. More companies are also using the Internet to register meeting participants, rather than prompting forms to be mailed or faxed. Cisco outsources its registration and now has one online system for its global events, instead of regional registration. Online registration, less labor-intensive for organizers and more convenient for meeting attendees, can also house hotel information, activity planning, and session selection options.

4. Scale Down Perks. Another way to make dollars go further. At the Equant sales meeting in Atlanta, welcome gifts "were simpler" this year, says Milburn. Attendees received a memo pad and T-shirt instead of the leather portfolio and golf shirt they had in the past. Hilton also cut back on welcome gifts, giving out pens and more casual premiums instead of portfolios and logoed shirts.

Todd Hanson, a senior vp at Appleton, WI-based Creative Group, notices a number of subtle ways clients are reducing perks, including holding fewer catered coffee breaks, subbing in refreshed pitchers of water instead of providing bottled H2O, offering beer and wine instead of an open bar at receptions, and giving attendees a cash allowance for meals (instead of letting them expense dinners).

5. Lose the Headliners. Entertainment is always an important element of any sales meeting, as it adds a layer of fun and offers a chance to socialize and network. Meeting planners at such companies as IBM and Disney are still providing entertainment, but they're being more creative with spending. "In the hey days, we had headliner comedians. Now we'll use a no-name comedian or a local band," says Cisco's Castle.

6. Monitor Attendance. With an intensified focus on making meeting spending go further, companies are also doing anything and everything to make sure participants attend the meetings.

One way to keep people from skipping out on the agenda is to make attendance mandatory, as Cisco has done over the past three years. Attendee badges have bar codes on them that are scanned with a wireless device at each breakout session.

"We get a report at the end of the conference, then send it to regional managers so they know who did—or did not—go to class," says Castle. (Attendance has improved to about 50 percent attendance at breakout sessions, up from 25 percent before the system was introduced.)

7. Get Creative. Equant tied into its sales force's competitive spirit to boost involvement this year. People were divided into teams and points deducted for being late or for ringing cell phones. Teams gained points by answering questions correctly or volunteering for role-playing in breakout sessions. Scores were posted on large video screens and updated periodically throughout the day. "Attendance was between 95 percent and 99 percent for nearly every meeting," Milburn says.