Special Effects -Selling Power Magazine

How meeting sites help you create team spirit

Source: Selling Power Magazine

ROI. Three magic letters. Three directives from the top brass. The meaning is clear. R = Return O = On I = Investment Simple enough, yet sometimes really hard to produce. Especially when you’re producing something that you don’t plan to sell or market or reproduce immediately – like a meeting. A simple sales meeting.

As senior C-suite executives, from the CFO to the CEO, are demanding measurable results that prove sales meetings are worth their escalating costs, your next meeting has to measure up. Does that mean you should cancel all meetings until further notice simply to save money? No way.

It does imply that meeting design, format, even where meetings are held have fallen under minute examination as today’s planners seek to cut fluff while beefing up content that will deliver impact. Every proposed agenda item is open to debate (“Do we really need to hear from the Asia HR VP?”). Traditional activities are falling out of favor (golf is so 20th century). But at the same time, planners are on the prowl for new ways to bring people together. Even in this world of heightened ROI awareness, nobody says meetings shouldn’t be fun.

The upshot: ROI concerns are driving a pervasive re-inspection of what works in meetings, what doesn’t, and what shouldn’t be part of the meeting at all. Effectiveness is a word on many lips as these questions become crucial: Does it work? Will it help us achieve our goals?

None of this should surprise. As the cost of meetings has climbed, it’s inevitable that the C-suite would question the need for more of them, says Lenann McGookey Gardner, an Albuquerque-based sales trainer and author of Got Sales (Jarndyce & Jarndyce, 2007). In an era when entire departments are outsourced to low-wage places such as India as part of a corporatewide cost-cutting program. It’s predictable that the rising costs of sales meetings would catch the eye of top executives. “The insistence on a provable ROI just may be the biggest trend transforming meetings,” says Gardner.

A new meeting recipe is emerging to more directly deal with providing tangible ROI, and steps range from the predictable (cutting agenda fluff) to the surprising. Like what? Read on for the ingredients today’s meeting planners say concoct the tastiest meetings.

TIPS AND TRENDS

Due Dilligence

Dog fights, alleged rape, shootings, doping. The list of felony charges leveled against star athletes seemingly just keeps growing and one impact, says Robert Tuchman, president of TSE Sports & Entertainment, a Manhattan-based event planning firm, is that more companies are demanding meaningful due diligence before booking a jock for an event. In some cases, that same caution applies to TV and film stars. The logic (and caution) is plain. Any group that had recently booked NFL quarterback and accused dogfighter Michael Vick, for instance, easily could find itself tarred with the same attacks that animal rights groups are hurling at Vick. Lapses in judgment – sometimes sheer criminality – is nothing new for athletes or entertainers but, lately, seemingly there are more of them, and an upshot is a cooling of interest in many athletes (an exception: mature retired stars who are widely known for their stability) and entertainers. Why risk buckets of bad ink for two hours spent with a name-brand athlete?