For those of you who suffer with a little anxiety before traveling, these tips might be helpful.
Business meetings are supposed to better the company and its employees, yet they are notorious for wasting company time and money. How does one conduct a meeting that leads to productivity?
In this short video, a narrator gives us good advice for conducting productive meetings and provides many practical tips—among them is setting an agenda, delivering information, and time for questions and answers. If your meeting doesn’t clearly fall into one of those categories, you may need to give it more thought.
To help make sure your next meeting is a success, call us at Meeting Services Unlimited, Inc. We handle all sorts of events, from small but important meetings to enormous conventions. Contact us today.
We’ve compiled a list of resources, articles, and websites to answer any questions you may have after reading our recent blogs.
- Here are some tips to help you hire the perfect event planner.
- Worried about the state of your business’s finances? Get back in the black with this article from Forbes.com
- Negotiating a hotel contract can be a long, difficult process. Take a look at these negotiation tips from Exhibitor Magazine to streamline the process.
- Are you trying to plan a convention, but are unsure of where to begin? Take a look at this article from AllBusiness.com for a step-by-step guide.
- Looking for some help for your next meeting? The professionals at Meeting Services Unlimited are experienced in all aspects of meeting and convention planning. Contact us today!
A bit of good news for business travelers: http://www.meetings-conventions.com/article_ektid41830.aspx
We always love hearing feedback from our clients – especially when it is so positive!
“I appreciate your long standing friendship and business relationship. Michigan and others have always held you and your firm in high regard and appreciate all that you and your staff have done to benefit our organizations.” – Dave Lowe, Pro Image Communications.
Too many great conventions have been overlooked due to a lack of public awareness. With so many other details of your event to execute, it’s important you don’t forget to spread the word. Here are a few ways a professional event promoter can help you catch the attention of your potential attendees:
- Design evocative announcements
Event promotion is much like advertising—the goal is to catch the eye of passers by and persuade them to attend your convention. A professional promoter has plenty of experience creating eye catching announcements and can work with you to ensure the layout aesthetic is professional and directly correlates with the subject and mood of your event.
- Spread the word through various media
Mass communication has been one of the defining factors of the 21st century—a fact that every good event promoter is aware of. By spreading the word of your event through Facebook, Twitter, and other social media, a promoter can guarantee a huge number of attendees. Of course, a good promoter is sure to have printed materials professionally designed and printed, in order to gain the attention of your attendees who haven’t hopped on the technology bandwagon.
- Provide professional invitations
To get the word out to special guests—speakers, potential clients, partners—a team of promoters can also coordinate professional invitations. Whether you want a personal phone call, a fancy letter, a well-designed e-mail notification, or all three, hiring a professional promoter is a great way to ensure the right people know about your upcoming event.
If you’d like to focus on other aspects of event planning, contact Meeting Services Unlimited to hire a professional event promoter. Are you overwhelmed by the prospect of planning and managing every aspect of your convention? At Meeting Services Unlimited, our experts will help you with as much or as little planning and management as you require. Give us a call today at (317) 841-7171.
We’ve compiled a list of resources, articles, and websites to answer any questions you may have after reading our recent blogs.
- Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr—it’s hard to keep all of the social media straight. Learn how to harness the power of social media with this guide from The Case Foundation.
- If you’re planning an event for a lot of people, then you might consider hiring a caterer to feed them all. This article from About.com explains how hiring a caterer can benefit your event.
- Want an easy way to coordinate the schedules of a large number of people? Check out Doodle, the easy online scheduling tool.
- Nervous about your big presentation? Get some great tips with this guide from LifeHack.org.
- Looking for some help for your next meeting? The professionals at Meeting Services Unlimited are experienced in all aspects of meeting and convention planning. Contact us today!
Check out some more tips to make you more travel saavy.
By Debbie Locklear
Reports indicate that organizations invest billions of dollars on meetings and meeting-related activities but very little on training to help spend that money wisely. Hence, hundreds of thousands of meetings are organized each year by people who do not have enough spare time to study new ideas and techniques that will make their meetings more cost efficient and effective.
A meeting is a business tool, and to be effective, it must offer concise, lively, accurate, organized information in an atmosphere that’s conducive to the meeting’s objective. Many organizations have a difficult time accepting the fact that their meetings are not as productive as they might think, despite their huge investment.
Individuals who devote only part time to planning can certainly handle the responsibilities-when given the proper training. Unfortunately, there is a lack of training in the meeting-planning industry, preventing many meetings from reaching the level of professionalism and effectiveness that is inherently possible.
The heart of the matter is that the difficulties and problems of planning and managing meetings are almost universally underestimated. Meeting planning is a profession that requires certain skills and past experience.
There is an art and science involved in developing and operating a successful meeting. A professional planning consultant is a synthesizer of information, creating result-oriented meetings based on a clear understanding of meeting dynamics and the systematic planning process.
The top priority of a professional meeting planner is to avoid the traditional approaches to meeting planning that are often wasteful, erratic and produce ineffective results. A planner’s role is to provide expert assistance in every phase of meeting planning, making sure that even the smallest details haven’t been overlooked.
Some of the benefits to hiring a professional meeting planner could include:
- Negotiating skills used in obtaining exceptional services and facilities at fair prices
- Valuable time saved, allowing freedom to concentrate on other important aspects of the meeting
- Ability to produce more creative events
- Unlimited sources for meeting-related information
- Looking after the clients’ best interests.
Consideration should be given to determining how much time should be spent on actually planning a meeting. Those organizations that have done this view meetings as an investment in dollars as well as an individual’s time. In order to maximize their investment of time and money, many of these companies have developed a department specifically for meeting planning.
As more independent planners open their doors, a word of caution: Thoroughly investigate the companies that are under consideration.
To do this, review the following checklist:
- Check several references.
- Find out the type projects they have arranged.
- What organizations do they belong to?
- Do they attend continuing education meeting in the planning industry?
- Find out if meeting planning is a fulltime career or a part-time venture.
Based on this information, an evaluation of a company’s ability to produce successful meetings will be easy to make.
Hiring a professional meeting planner will allow an organization to draw from years of experience to access their needs realistically and fine-tune a meeting to best suit financial and programming objectives.
Remember one fact, however: A meeting is only as good as the attention paid to the smallest detail.
By Debbie Locklear
The key to pulling off a successful meeting hinges on a number of elements. However, the primary item for success is advanced meeting planning.
Projects that have been organized with short lead-time will typically reflect some of the same characteristics. The most notable one, due to the meeting planner racing around in all directions, develops an ineffectual performance and potentially can alter the effectiveness and profitability of a meeting.
To maximize your organization’s investment in a meeting, advance preparation is a necessity for producing the results desired.
Meeting planners, when given the time to do a thorough and accurate job, should clearly define the purpose and objective of the meeting. This first step permits the planner to develop a meeting that will generate positive responses from the attendees.
Through advanced meeting planning, more time is available to investigate a variety of options, such as locations, special activities, theme development, meeting format and production. The meeting planner won’t have to settle for something merely because it’s their only remaining option.
Negotiating for the best services and facilities at fair prices is possible when there’s as much time as possible available. Whenever the options are limited due to availability, negotiations will generally not be too favorable for the planner.
The goal of any professional meeting planner is to create original events to compliment the meeting’s objective. With plenty of advanced planning, a planner has the opportunity to be creative. Nothing quite inspires a meeting planner like the ability and freedom to produce a meeting that is so unique in design that it stimulates enthusiasm in the participants.
Promotional plans can be useless without the proper amount of lead-time. If the goal is to generate attendance at the meeting, time is required to promote it properly. The promotional plan should include a pre-attendee analysis (ask attendees what it will take to get them to the meeting), a date saver (a method to announce the date of the meeting), a teaser (a mailer that generates interest) and the registration brochure.
While developing a meeting requires time, it is worth the investment. There is a universal law that applies to meeting planning as well as other situations: You get in return what you put in.
Professional meeting planners suggest the following minimum time schedule for planning exceptional meetings:
One-day meeting – promotion needed – 8 months
One-day meeting – in-house attendance – 6 months
Two-day meeting – promotion needed – 10 months
Two-day meeting – with activities – 12 months
Three-day meeting and up with activities – 18 months
In short, maximize your meeting planning efforts by planning in advance. You will save money, but also produce a higher quality meeting, generate attendance and avoid the tension created when the planning process is accelerated.