What to do if your Institutional Clients don’t pay you commensurate with the Corporate Access work you do for them?  This could be the biggest single question facing Sales Heads who we speak to all the time.

First - do you know which those Clients are?  Which means knowing precisely, for each of your Clients, what you have done for them.

Second - were the Clients aware of all that you had done for them?   The best assumption for this question is “no”.

Third - under-payers can then be classified as either a) we don’t value your services the way you think we do,  b) we do value your services and can pay more but you’ve never been the squeaky wheel, or c) we cannot or will not pay any more.

The last may mean dropping the Client - but a) and b) provide a clear path to the sales rep to talk to the Client about modifying the service mix and getting paid more.

Measuring event effectiveness requires an investment of time and resources. Is it worth it? MPI’s annual “EventView 2009 North America Report” concludes that companies that measure event performance are nearly 41% more likely to expect increases in their marketing budget than those that do not. For me, that makes a compelling case for measuring what matters in events.

Here are some of the approaches to measurement that I’ve heard about from our meeting planner clients at MeetMax and those that I’ve learned from my own experience producing events and conferences.

• You Get Partial Credit Just For Asking. Numbers of invitations sent, mentions in the press and in the blogosphere are all indicative of the impact on your company’s brand
• Everyone In. Make sure you are counting all of your attendees, even those that attend remotely.
• Beyond Counting Attendees: Establish metrics that are directly related to your business objectives for the event.
• Quantify the Cost: How much is a qualified sales prospect worth to your company? What does it cost you to generate one meaningful connection with a qualified prospect?
  • Count the number of qualified prospects, based on demographics, at the event
  • Determine the number of qualified prospects with whom your staff (or your sponsors or exhibitors) had a face-to-face dialog?
  • Calculate the cost of a single meaningful interaction, by dividing the total cost by the number of meaningful connections made.
  • Compare the cost of generating that sales prospect to the value of a sales prospect.
• Survey to Measure Perceptions and Satisfaction to Determine Whether Your Event Was Memorable and Met Expectations.
• Track The Long-Term Impact, Including Sales Conversions, Trends And Industry Averages.

Are you using an innovative approach to measuring event effectiveness? Post a comment and share your approach with us.

In today’s business environment, everyone is watching their travel and marketing budgets.  Sponsoring or exhibiting at an event is expensive, and even attending one is a commitment of time and travel expense.  

But imagine, as a sponsor, if prior to an event you could see a list of attendees and other sponsors, choose which ones you’d like to have a private meeting with, and then arrive on the day with a full list of scheduled meetings, complete with attendee contact details and specified locations.  

Imagine also, as an attendee, if you could see a list of all companies and people attending the event, request meetings with those you want to do business with, and come to the conference knowing for sure that you were going to meet them in peace for 30 minutes.

Private, pre-scheduled 1-on-1 business development meetings turn a conference into a business development trip for every participant.   No more chance encounters, no more waiting around hoping to swap cards – instead, scheduled quality time with key business prospects.    And you, the conference organizer, facilitate this relationship building by providing the service to connect and schedule these meetings and providing a room or table for the meeting to take place.  

You have turned your conference into an exciting, must-attend event.  You have created a whole new sponsorship category because sponsors have priority status for these meetings.   And you have elevated your own organization into a key driver of business development.   

Private 1-on-1 meetings have been a vital part of financial conferences for many years – and MeetMax is the registration system of choice for these events.   Increasingly, other industry conferences are realizing their importance.  Those events that get there first will see the biggest benefit, as they become a magnet for all kinds of business development spending.   And those events that do it best, will use MeetMax for their online registration because of its comprehensive, easy-to-use functionality for managing private meetings.

Click  here to schedule a demo, and use that time to ask us about how private meetings work in practice — we have worked on hundreds of events involving private meetings, some of which have had over 1000 pre-scheduled 1-on-1 meetings.

We realize that Corporate Access is a soft-dollar activity for the most part.  (Leaving out the considerable success of Gerson Lehrman, of course).   So invoices will never be sent out looking like this.

That does not mean that banks should forget about Invoicing.  

Institutional  clients are becoming ever more rigorous in  the voting processes they follow - driven by many factors.   A compliance need to justify how they direct commissions.   More sophisticated tools for managing their voting.  A desire perhaps, in these challenging times, to more accurately and generously reward their smaller sellside providers as the bulge bracket banks see their dominance eroded.

So while Institutional Clients develop what amount to sophisticated Purchasing and Accounts Payable departments, not all sellside firms have yet responded by developing equally sophisticated Accounts Receivable procedures.  And yet for any business, improving Accounts Receivable is often the easiest and quickest path to improving the cash flow.

Specifically, banks should be generating and delivering detailed reports for each and every Client that receives any kind of Corporate Access benefit - including Conference meetings, non-deal Roadshows, Company Visits, Conference Calls, Analyst lunches, Analyst Roadshows, Field Trips.   These reports need to be complete, accurate, detailed and timely.   They should be considered as if they were an invoice.  Sample.

Complete - every type of “billable” activity needs to be included.   Imagine if a wireless company didn’t invoice for calls made in Texas, or for those made on Tuesdays.  Activity not counted and reported is revenue left on the table.

Accurate - obvious errors are simply an invitation to a Client to discard the entire report.  The more that is done by hand, by busy salespeople, for example, or by copying and pasting data between systems - the greater the room for error.

Detailed - many Clients need full details on each meeting.  Who was there, was it a 1×1 or a group, where it was, what type of meeting it was, when did it start.   They need this to let the PM attribute the correct number of votes.  Without it, they will give the minimum number, or none at all.   Reports also need to be formatted in a way as to make Client processing as easy as possible.  

Timely - if the reports are not delivered on time, they may not be counted, or votes may be applied with minimal consideration.

These times demand that valuable services that are provided to Clients are fully compensated.  One component of that it to invoice for Corporate Access services - to show how serious you are about getting paid for it.

One brighter spot for smaller sellside firms this year, is that there is a lot of institutional market share up for grabs.   Bear and Lehman and Merrill/BofA have opened up a sizeable chunk of share, and many hedge funds are reassessing their allocations to those  remaining bulge firms.

But smaller sellside firms will need to get organized qujickly if they want to take advantage of this opportunity.

A helpful starting point is to  think like an attorney.   Not litigiously (please) but in tracking billable hours.  That attorney phone call to discuss the project.  Is it free?  That lunch to review progress?    That piece of research?  No, no and no.   Attorneys are ruthless at keeping track of every possible billable minute.  If an associate doesn’t bill 50 hours a week, they are in trouble, and if they don’t track it, it isn’t billable.

Brokerage firms don’t bill for hours but they assuredly bill for activities.  Billable Activities – any and  all activities that a Client might give you a vote for.   These include Corporate access meetings, 1×1s, field trips, client visits, analyst visits, substantive analyst calls, lunches with industry experts, conference calls or video conferences.  What is not billable?  Sales calls, voicemails, emails.   

Which is why CRMs (customer relationship management) systems make such incredibly poor billing systems.   They mix billable and non-billable activities together, and they are also very poor at reporting.  Law firms don’t use their CRMs for billing, and attorneys generally don’t prepare the bills.  They discuss them with clients.  CRMs are one thing, billing systems another.

Likewise, brokerage firms need to track Billable Activities.  Ruthlessly.   And these billable activities need to find their way into a central “billing” system that tracks everything.  And report  it accurately Client by Client.   So that the salespeople can start negotiating their way to a bigger share of commissions - based on hard substantiated facts, and leaving nothing out.   

Many brokerage firms keep different activities in different systems.    Analysts use one tool to monitor phone calls with Clients. Roadshows are kept in another system.  Conferences another.   This is  not an obstacle - it can even be a good thing - and is not an excuse for inaction.   Because these different systems can be ported to a single billing and reporting system - without causing any change at all in how people work.

Investment banking revenues are of course a little slower right now for banks.   But they need to keep their conferences going because it drives their institutional trading business.  So they are looking to improve the economics.

One trend we are seeing come into play is charging non-clients to attend.  For years, banks didn’t mind too much who attended their conferences.   Notionally they were for Clients only, but they didn’t go to much effort to keep non-clients from attending.   Now they are looking to charge non- clients to come - thus making them a profit-center.  Non-clients may still not get 1-on-1 meetings.

We’ve had to do a fair bit of work on MeetMax to accommodate the  need for this.

We read recently of a study done by the Destination Marketing Association International on trends in the meeting industry.  Their research called out a number of factors meeting planners need to be aware of, including:

• A volatile economic environment
• The battle for attention
• Smart and friendly websites
• An electronic culture 
• Going Green

 With corporate budgets tightening, meeting planners are thinking about how to best market their event to get the attention of their prospective attendees.  Strong innovative branding for events, that is reflected in electronic invitations, event websites,  and search engine marketing are all part of a marketing strategy designed to break through and catch the eye of prospective attendees.   Once you have captured their attention, making registration easy and accessible is key.  Increasingly, attendees expect that they will be able to register for an event electronically.  Using online registration can increase your registrations because you can convert their interest to a registration by giving them a means to register as soon as they have decided to attend.

The Going Green trend is good for the environment certainly, but increasingly it is a strategy for reducing the cost of producing an event.  Replace paper forms with online registration forms. Instead of mailing registration credentials, email a barcoded receipt that can be printed and presented at the door.    Replace post-conference surveys with electronic surveys.  Replace hand-outs with document downloads. Just think: iIf you have 200 attendees and you give them each a 20-page conference program, that’s 4000 pages. If you have 12 speakers at an event, and each one brings 75 copies of a 10-page presentation — that’s 9000 pieces of paper.  At $.10 per page, the savings just from switching to document downloads would be $1300.

Ever wonder how many trees it took to produce all the paper distributed at your last conference? Let’s take a look at a typical conference:

• Call for Papers/Presentations: 50 10-page papers submitted, 5 review copies each: 2500 sheets
• Save the Date Post Cards: 2000 cards, 4 to a sheet: 500 sheets
• Conference Invitations: 3 pages, 2000 copies: 6000 sheets

• Conference Materials: 10 presenters, 12 pages per presenter, 200 copies: 24,000 sheets
• Total: 33,000 sheets of paper.

Paper is a significant, if often hidden, line item in your budget.  If it cost $0.25 per sheet to copy/print those 33,000 pages, that’s over $8,000.  And that doesn’t account for the cost of mailing or shipping.   Reducing the amount of paper used is not just good for the environment; it is also good for your bottom line.  And that’s why we see more and more meeting planners looking for ways to “Go Green”.If you are interested in adopting a “Go Green” strategy for your conferences and meetings, what can you do to move towards a paperless event?

• Invite potential speakers to submit their proposals electronically and distribute them to reviewers electronically. Saves 7%.
• Use electronic marketing to get the word out about your event. Saves 20%
• Require that your speakers upload their bios, presentations, hand-outs etc. to a central repository. Saves 70%

What are some of the technology options to explore?

• Marketing: Create a compelling event website and use electronic invitations. Even for closed or invite-only events, you can market effectively online.
• Registration: Online registration for speakers, as well as attendees, using a system that allows them to upload documents for you, and/or your attendees, to download.
• Memory Sticks instead of Conference Books: Here’s where you can get a huge paper savings. Provide document kiosks in the registration area where attendees can download, onto a memory stick, all of the conference materials, organized by speaker or session.

At MeetMax.com, we have the systems and tools you need to reduce the amount of paper you use at an event, and at the same time reduce the overall cost of producing the event. The MeetMax.com online registration system includes electronic event marketing features like conference websites and electronic invitations, and speaker support for uploading materials (and it includes tracking tools for you to see who has or hasn’t uploaded their materials). The MeetMax Conference Kiosk system builds a document library, branded with your corporate and conference identify, for your event that attendees can access on-site to download those materials they want to take home.

Do you ever feel like you are drowning in sticky notes? “Update Sally’s email address.” “Keynote speaker needs hotel.”"Tony P. not coming to dinner.”"10 vegetarian meals.”"Change room for afternoon sessions to Fireside room.”Traditionally, registration is a paper intensive process. Direct mail pieces go out, and registrations come in by mail or by fax. And, then there are the little reminders that you write on a sticky notes from the phone messages waiting for you on voicemail.With an online registration system, you greatly reduce, if not wholly eliminate, all of this paper.

• Using email invitations and event websites to promote your event instead of direct mail saves the paper and the fuel costs for postal delivery.
• Accepting registrations online, or typing phone registrations directly into the online system, eliminates all of the paper coming into your office. And because you have an electronic copy of the registration, you don’t need to have a hardcopy of the record to refer to.
• Instead of printing out reports to provide to your vendors, team members, management or clients, email them reports directly out of the registration system.
  Have your speakers upload presentation materials and other information directly into the registration system and allow your attendees to download the materials they want. No more printing out hardcopies of every presentation for all attendees.
• No more sticky notes! If you use a registration system that is accessible from anywhere, that gives attendees the tools to easily communicate their contact information, preferences and choices to you directly electronically, and that allows you to email information directly to vendors and other stakeholders, what do you need sticky notes for?

An interesting article by Stanley Fish in The New York Times this week about the self-service economy we live in. The article is about getting a cup of coffee - but it  is extremely relevant to those of us working with online software systems. - many of which are self service these days.This is the way we live today - and frankly we all like the control we get from being able to have our hands-on.   But does it always lead to the best solution?  Fish describes the problem:

“A coordination problem (a term of art in economics and management) occurs when you have a task to perform, the task has multiple and shifting components, the time for completion is limited, and your performance is affected by the order and sequence of the actions you take.  And these days, you will face a coordination problem if you want to get a cup of coffee in the United States.“And your real problems begin when you turn, holding your prize, and make your way to where the accessories - things you put in, on and around your coffee - are to be found.  There is a staggering array of them, and the order of their placement seems random in relation to the order of your needs. “And two things add to your pain and trouble. First, it costs a lot, $3 and up. And worst of all, what you’re paying for is the privilege of doing the work that should be done by those who take your money.“The coffee shop experience is just one instance of the growing practice of shifting the burden of labor to the consumer - gas stations, grocery and drug stores, bagel shops (why should I put on my own cream cheese?), airline check-ins, parking lots. It’s insert this, swipe that, choose credit or debit, enter your PIN, push the red button, error, start again.“At least when you go on a “vacation” that involves working on a ranch, the work is something you’ve chosen. But none of us has chosen to take over the jobs of those we pay to serve us.”

It’s an issue we are constantly grappling with for our Clients at MeetMax.  The control and immediacy are what most of them want (and we’ve worked hard to make it happen)…most of the time.   But they do not want it all of the time.For new clients, understaffed clients, rushed clients, clients whose expertise lies away from software systems, clients who do not like administering a software system - then self-service is not the right choice, at that time. We have many clients who want to administer only urgent changes, and the reporting that is important to their event.  They do not want to administer file uploads, graphics - even setting up a new event.  They want us to do it so they can spend their time on menus, signage, facilities, room blocks and the other numerous aspects of a successful event.And it’s hard to argue that’s the wrong decision sometimes.If you want to read the whole article by Stanley Fish