Meetings and incentives offer fabulous opportunities for agencies
with the right stuff. Still, this business is not for everyone.
Take a look at your agency and your resources and then decide.
Here are five key characteristics that are vital for success in
the world of meetings and incentives:
1. A consultative approach. Can you work like a business
consultant and help clients analyze their needs? Meetings and
incentive buyers don't buy travel. The meetings buyer wants a
successful event that attracts and excites an audience.
Incentive buyers want great experiences that motivate people to
perform. Using your knowledge of business and your knowledge of
travel, can you help them analyze the audience demographics, goals
and objectives to come up with the right choices?
2. A "full-service" mentality. Meetings and incentive buyers
rarely look for the lowest price. A poorly attended meeting or an
incentive trip that fails to motivate isn't worth the risk. It has
to be right. As a result, meeting and incentive clients want the
"planners" help to ensure success. That means a "full-service"
approach to delivering the event; internal or outsourced on your
part.
Full service to the meetings buyer can mean everything from
ideas on room set-up, food and beverage suggestions, audio/visual
presentations, etc., to the traditional travel components of the
meeting.
To the incentive buyer it can include promotion, rules structure
design and even non-travel awards and recognition tools. If you're
willing to think out of the box and take a full-service approach,
you'll win business and make money. Many of these support services
offer far greater margins than the actual travel components
provide.
3. Patience -- Because meetings and incentives often involve
large numbers of people coming together from many different areas,
the lead-time can be quite long. Though the trend is to shorter
planning cycles, it's still not uncommon to plan six months or a
year out. If you're looking for an immediate cash payback on your
efforts...it's not likely to happen. Your sales efforts today build
for tomorrow.
4. A willingness to learn a whole new business -- Meetings and
incentives are not an extension of group travel. They are a
business product used by associations and business organizations to
improve communications, educate and motivate. Everything from how
you position yourself and your agency to how you sell and market
your services to the services you actually provide are very
different from traditional retail corporate or leisure travel.
You'll work with different buyers than those who buy corporate
travel and you'll work with different suppliers who specialize in
this field. Don't jump in with both feet until you know what you're
doing. Team up with an experienced meeting/incentive planner or
hire one for your agency. Take some classes and do some reading to
learn the nuances of the business.
5. Creativity -- Meetings and incentive buyers want the special
and the unusual. Meeting planners need venues tailored to their
needs that add an element of excitement. Incentive buyers want an
exciting trip that not only motivates in advance...it must also
create wonderful memories of the entire experience.
Travel just happens to be part of the process. It's your fresh
ideas and approaches using your knowledge of travel and your client
that count. Using both internal and external resources, can you
create the unusual and the memorable? It doesn't come from selling
packaged vacation products designed for individual or special
interest group travelers. For the right individual and the right
agency, meetings and incentives are a fabulous business to be in.
Do the self-analysis first and make sure it's right for you before
jumping in with both feet.
Bruce Tepper of Joselyn, Tepper & Associates of
Scottsdale, Ariz., is executive director of the Guild of Meeting
& Incentive Professionals.