The Meeting is Not the Value (Back Home Results Are)

By Cal Wick

Producing a great meeting with flawless execution in a great venue that gets rave reviews is a tremendous accomplishment.  But it doesn’t generate value.  And it isn’t why corporate leaders spend their billions every year in the meeting industry.  Except for incentive travel, corporations are investing in what they expect to happen when attendees return to their work – improved business results.  The better we deliver on that expectation, the more they will invest in us.

Imagine yourself as a senior line leader with P & L responsibility.  You are ultimately answerable for the meeting bills.  What would you want from a meeting?

·                      A product launch meeting that accelerates market penetration and growth

·                      An Expo presence that leads to increase sales

·                      Competitive Intelligence from walking an Expo floor leads to better strategy

·                      A speaker’s ideas that cause a new process to be implemented

·                      An Association networking opportunity leads to a valuable new relationship

·                      A management planning meeting leads to flawless execution

The point is: the meeting is just the beginning.  The value that justifies the cost is produced back home, on the job.

I would like to hear your answers to these two questions:

1.        What is your best practice to help attendees turn their meeting experience into improved results when they return home?

2.        What strategies would you employ if you wanted to ensure that attendees added value when they went back to work?

Tomorrow’s Blog will give you tips to turn your next meeting into Home Run Results for your attendees.

Comments

[Joan Eisenstodt]

Cal.. you asked:
>>1. What is your best practice to help attendees turn their meeting experience into improved results when they return home?>2. What strategies would you employ if you wanted to ensure that attendees added value when they went back to work?<<

It begins long before they go back - it starts w/ building objectives for the meeting - which are usually not done!

Thanks for addressing these issues. You and those who read this might also want to read two studies MPI's Foundation did some years ago which still have great merit. Go to www.mpiweb.org and search in the Foundation for "What Makes Meetings Work" and "Why People Attend Association Meetings."