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New Revenue Streams From Post Meeting Services

By Cal Wick

Up to now, the revenue stream to the Meeting Industry ends when the attendees walkout the door and head home.  Imagine the potential value created for the industry and its clients if we applied our skills and production abilities to help them put what they learned to work back on the job.

Our reach could be extended in these ways:

1. A Concierge service to help participants find and use the information, contacts, and connections that they made during the conference.

2. In addition to travel services to get people to the meeting, create the services of a Results Agent who would help attendees prepare an itinerary of the steps they need to navigate if they are to turn their great learning into workplace results.

3. Offer a virtual set of tools that remind, encourage, and support attendees in turning their learning and experience into improved performance.  These tools should be baked into the design of the meeting and the expectation for action set by the sponsor.  That way, the client’s would get greater return and the revenue from the meeting would continue after people returned home.

We have developed and used such systems to great effect across a wide variety of training programs and meetings with learning components.

What other ideas do you have about new approaches that could be used to turn a great meeting into business results and, at the same time, extend the revenue stream?

Home Run Results: The New Measure of a Successful Meeting

By Cal Wick

Imagine two senior leaders talking three months from now about the meeting you produced for them. Imagine that one says to the other, “That meeting has had more practical impact on improving our results here more than any other meeting we have ever held like it.”  Imagine the value to your business if the buzz on the street is that, compared to everyone else your meetings, yours have more back home impact.

Here are three tips you can use to cause this to happen:

1.        In the very early stages of planning the meeting, ask your clients what are the most important on the job outcomes and impact they are looking for.  Most of us in the meeting business are so focused on the meeting itself that we never take enough time to understand the real value our customer is trying to create.

2.        Once you know what your customer wants in terms of business outcomes, offer your customer best practice examples from other meetings you have seen have real impact rather than just entertainment.  Talk about how best practice companies deliver for application and drive follow-though on the job.

3.        Plan your part of the meeting value chain so that it is part of the process so that it will alert, facilitate, communicate, and accelerate the transfer and application of learning and help attendees keep their commitments.

Here is a question to think about or better even post a reply:  What have you seen great clients or companies do that helps turn a great meeting into great business results.

The next Blog will share how to turn the production of back home results into a new revenue stream

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.