The Business of Biking!

This morning I hooked up the kiddie trailer to my bike, piled my two little girls in, and made the trek from the house, down to the "Big Park" so they could swing, slide and play in all of the cool castles and pirate ships. The trip is neither arduous, nor a great distance from my house, but it does require that I develop a strategy, based on the environmental conditions.

We live in an area of Southern California known as the "High Desert". This unique area is positions 2600 feet above the Los Angeles area. It is hot during the summer, cold and snowy during the winter, and susceptible to high winds at every other point of the year. 25-35 mph winds during Spring are par for the course.

My bike, a 21-speed aluminum frame mountain bike, is my vehicle of choice, along with an aluminum/canvas framed trailer for the kiddies. Once on the road, I assess the variables I am faced with. Today, the wind was an off-shore flow (east to west winds) at about 20-25 mph, meaning the winds would be at my back en route to the park, but in my face on the return trip. It is at this point, I implement the strategy that will allow me to deliver the highest quality of service to the two tiny customers huddled and sealed in to their canvas cocoon.

With 21-gears at my disposal, I have the ability to fine-tune my operation to respond to the changes in environmental conditions. With the wind to my back, I shift in to high gears that allow for large powerful pedaling, pushing me forward at a higher speed. and allowing me to bank energy for the return trip. The return trip, now faced with the wind, requires lower, smaller gears, with greater repetition of pedaling and in most cases, pure grit. After 20 minutes of battling winds, towing 50+ pounds of girls, toys and trailer, the last 1/4 of a mile is the hardest.

Once into the garage, I unload my precious cargo and they scream "Thanks Dad" in payment for services rendered. And thus, my goal and more importantly, my customers' satisfaction have been achieved.

Okay, so if the metaphor for business has been lost, let me clear it up.

The business environment is in a constant state of flux. While the vehicle (your business) and goal (customer satisfaction) remain constant, it is the myriad of minor adjustments, and the development and execution of a sound strategy that will, at the end of the day, successfully help you to deliver on the mission of your organization. Businesses, especially in the event industry, do not typically need wide, sweeping changes to the way that business is conducted. Instead, leadership needs to have a clear picture of the goal, and must empower staff to make course corrections as needed.

Eric Tompkins, Owner
Tompkins Event Consultants

5 Step Strategy to Building Your Business

Bruce MacMillian, John Pino, Roger Dow and the rest of the pity party throwing gang, would have you believe that the meetings and events industry is at the mercy of corporate America, and that the Federal government is unfairly targeting you, the events professional, and your business for the bad behavior of the banking and housing industry. Petitions circulate at a frenzied pace through email servers across America while our industry leaders put their heads together to create campaign slogans like "Keep America Meeting" and "Meetings are not the problem." Unfortunately, many in the industry have become so involved in these campaigns that they have abandoned revenue generating activities in order to fight a losing battle. Rather than securing existing customer accounts and building the customer base, professionals are signing petitions and bemoaning legislation that for the most part, effects a small percentage of the meeting and events industry.

So you are saying to yourself "Okay Mr. Know it all, what should we be doing then?"

Innovating. Growing. Searching for opportunities. Educating yourself on the current business climate.

This morning I was reading the Wall Street Journal and stumbled across an article that further confirmed the principles upon which I have been advising my clients. Simply put, recession creates opportunities for entrepreneurs. There are a great number of corporate giants that have been born out of, and grown up because of recession. Maybe you know some of them. Southwest Airlines, Home Depot, Trader Joe's, Charles Schwab. Do any of these ring a bell?

Each of these companies found ways to meet the needs of customers during economic hardships. They identified a need within the market, and found a way to meet the needs of the customer, within the customer's price range. The same approach works within our industry as well. Read my March 15 Blog entitled "Las Vegas Loses, Everyone Else Can Win."

There is a catch though. Business building, especially in this economy will require some discipline and forethought. You and your team must get good and develop a sound strategy for growing the business during the recession. Here's the cool thing though. Entrepreneurs can do it. Corporations can't. Why? They can't move quickly enough and are not flexible enough to get the job done. Las Vegas CVA loses hundreds of meeting and millions of dollars because they are entrenched in a 20 year old business model that is only rewarded during periods of economic upswing. You can succeed because you are entrepreneurial, independent and flexible. Your business model allows you to adapt to the needs of your customer.

Here's how you do it. With a little help from Tim Berry, author of The Plan-As-You-Go Business Plan, I am setting forth your 5 Step Strategy to getting back on track and staying in business.

1. Give Success Definition

• What does success look like to you and your organization? Your definition may be monetary, a quantity of customer, a level of service, or if you are really daring, all of the above.
  

2. Strategize

• Create a strategy designed specifically to meet your definition of success.

3. Measure and Adjust

• Use metrics (data) to regularly and frequently measure progress. Adjust your strategy so that you and your team are always driving toward your definition of success.

4. Put it in Writing

• Commit everything to paper and refer to it often. This will ensure that the team, from top to bottom is on the same page.

5. Adapt

• As Mr Berry writes, "Your business plan will be wrong. All business plans are wrong." You will need to adapt your plan and strategy based on customer response and behaviors.

Here's my parting shot. Our industry leaders are well-intentioned, no matter how misguided. Petitions, letters/phone calls to our congressional leadership, and firing off emails, does not build business. It detracts from the time you and your organization should be investing in building your business. If these guys really want to help, they will stop building a list of talking points and start encouraging meeting planners, event suppliers, hotel operators and others to begin innovating.

Eric Tompkins
Tompkins Event Consultants

Best Practices for Business Improvement

This week I was featured in the Inland Empire Business Press in an article entitled Best Practices for Improving Business. Rather than recreating that article in my blog, I thought I would share the original article through my blog.

Best Practice for Business Improvement

Eric Tompkins
Tompkins Event Consultants

Las Vegas Loses, Everyone Else Can Win

Opportunity abounds in the event services industry, especially for those organizations that act quickly and courageously. With Tier One cities and destinations scrambling to recovery from historic cancellation rates, smaller (less expensive) markets have the opportunity to grab a piece of the pie, previously determined to be out of reach.

Let's cut to the chase.

In the last 90 days, Las Vegas, alone, has lost 340 meetings/events, approximately 112,000 visitors, 237,000 room nights, and nearly $131.6 MILLION dollars.

Their loss may be your gain.

For example, State Farm in February the cancellation of its annual conference in Las Vegas with more than 17,000 attendees for October 2009. The need for this conference has not diminished, but the capability to afford a full-blown Vegas conference is gone. However, with the help of one of the mighty hotel chains, State Farm could regionalize the conference and connect locations through HD video conferencing, allowing for the presentations to be given in real time. By exercising this approach, State Farm would then have the ability to reduce its actual spend on the conference, as the hotel chains are eager to negotiate great deals, greatly reduce transportation costs, and really help out local markets by spreading the conference dollars across markets that are struggling as much if not more than the Vegas giants.

The Automotive Market Research Council canceled its annual conference for March, citing cost-cutting measures as the reason for not meeting. However, the need to meet for AMRC is even greater in 2009 than in previous years. While the 2009 conference may be DOA, has anyone contacted them about the 2010 conference?

Perception is ruling the day. President Barack Obama announced in February that companies "can't go take a trip to Las Vegas....on the taxpayer's dime." In 2009 and 2010 conferences and conventions in Vegas are taboo. That means cities like Kansas City, Oklahoma City, Cleveland, Sacramento, Seattle, Buffalo and many other smaller "less desirable" locations are in play. But the real question is how to access a market, once considered to be untouchable.

We are advising, and working with our clients to attack the markets head on. For example, the city of Auburn Hills, MI, lead by the Detroit Metro CVB, should be leveling a full scale sales plan designed specifically for the AMRC, focusing on these two selling points:

1. Reduced cost
2. Support of local economy

Look, the economy is tough. I realize that. Its not going to get any easier, soon. In fact, for the Meeting & Events industry the conditions under which business has been conducted for the last 10 years, is all but gone. Our world is now more competitive, and requiring a greater degree of accountability. The price of success will come at the cost of greater tenacity in the acquisition of new business, and an unwavering commitment toward the retention of the existing client base.

Organizations that recognize deficiencies in their strategic and tactical support areas, and address those issues through consultants and industry experts from outside of the organizations, will realize immediate success and will gain valuable traction in an already weak market, positioning them ahead of their direct competitors. Organizations seeking home-grown solutions, will eventually correct deficiencies, but will have lost valuable time, resources and monies, as home-grown solutions and implementation typically cannot be fast-tracked on a short turn-around in the same way a consulting firm can. Furthermore, home-grown solutions fail to come with a money back guarantee or on-going support for the provided solution.

As I have been preaching for the last several months to my clients, staff, and now my blog followers, economically challenging times call for a reassesment of the way business is conducted. All organizations, without exception, must elminate wasteful spending and become aggressive in identifying new markets. This includes taking advantage of failing markets, including the Las Vegas CVA.

Eric Tompkins, Owner
Tompkins Event Consultants

Las Vegas CVA Reports Significant Losses

-- Tradeshow Week, 3/10/2009 11:57:00 AM
Las Vegas Convention & Visitors Authority officials are headed to Washington, D.C., for a series of meetings with congressional represeantatives after reporting 340 meetings and conventions have been canceled in Las Vegas. The cancellations resulted in a loss of 111,800 visitors and $131 million in revenues.

The Most Important Meeting

I worked for an organization that was meeting happy. Monday through Friday, my schedule was filled to the brim with meetings. Operations meetings, managers meetings, supervisors meetings, departmental meetings, one-on-one meetings, security meetings, weekly meetings, monthly meetings, and quarterly meetings. There are meetings to dread, meetings to look forward to; well organized meetings, free-flowing meetings and useless meetings.

As the meeting list grows, all of the meetings begin to blur together and eventually the effectiveness of meetings begins to diminish. MEETING OVERLOAD! It is at that point, that we must take stock of our meetings schedule and determine those meetings that are critical to the success of our organization, and our ability to do our jobs.

Ken Blanchard, the author of "The One Minute Manager" writes, "I'm a One Minute Manager. I call myself that because it takes very little time for me to get big results from people."

Organizations faced with economic challenges will lean toward holding longer, more frequent meetings, in an effort to improve the economic situation. However, this approach is counterintiutive to solving economic situations or working solutions, as sales teams, and staff members are no longer working to grow revenue, but are holed up in a conference room discussin Plans of Action, and strategies. Don't misunderstand, it is important to develop a high quality strategy, but if that strategy includes meeting more, the organization will voluntarily reduce its ability to increase capacity and grow revenue. In other words, if the sales staff is involved in daily sales meetings, that is time taken away from the activity of selling.

Instead of increasing the length and frequency of meetings, leadership must improve the quality of the meetings by developing a laser-like focus on the subject at hand. The sales meeting is not the place to discuss operational issues. Rather, sales meetings are to discuss sales strategies, current prospects and prospecting activities and goals. An effective sales meeting should only require one 30 minute meeting per week, and a 5-minute daily update at the start of the business day.

The Sales Team is the driver of the business. This team is the one team that is required to be on point, every day of the week. They serve as the front-line and the initial contact for customers. In some cases, the sales team will be the only in-person contact your customer will have until the day of the event. The Sales Meeting is the most important meeting that an organization can have, and without question, it must be a well-planned and executed meeting. Time wasted in a sales meeting, will ultimately result in the loss of valuable sales time, and eventually dollars.

For many organizations, the concept of an effective sales meeting (or any other type of meeting for that matter) remains elusive. Begin with a simple sales meeting strategy.

1. Set the Goal(s)
2. Identify Problems
3. Hand out praise

Meetings are important and serve a valuable purpose, however meetings are not more important than the business. Even in the meetings and events industry, meetings play a secondary role to the business itself. Remember that time spent on strategy (in meetings) is time not spent building the business. And the most important meeting, is the meeting that creates more business.

Eric Tompkins
Tompkins Event Consultants

Great Customer Service Does Not Come in a Toolbox

Recently one of the chain restaurants closed its doors in my neighborhood, citing the difficult economic conditions as the catalyst for its demise. While the economy may have been the final nail in the coffin for this particular restaurant, I completely disagree with the assessment of their failure to survive. In fact, the recession merely exposed this restaurant's failure to deliver a consistent quality of service and product. Their problem was not the recession, it was the solution.

My experience with this particular chain has been mixed throughout the years, but when I landed in my new neighborhood, I found that this Chili's was a failure, even before the economy took a turn for the worse. With a near empty restaurant, it took nearly 30 minutes for 1 of 4 wait staff to take our order, and when the order arrived, each portion was either undercooked, or overcooked. Nothing was even close to prepared correctly. I attempted to speak with the wait staff, and then management, and was never heard. While they stood in front of me, rather than listening, they provided solution, after solution, after solution, without ever listening to what I was asking for. They piled on desserts, additional food, and in a sorry attempt to curry favor, made a dash out to my car as we were leaving to deliver more, inedible food. My experience with this particular Chili's was not unique.

A bad economy will expose organizations that have failed to fully commit to a culture of high quality customer service.

I have participated in many "customer service" seminars. In almost every case, customer service is taught as something we do, give or deliver. Training is supposed to create a service skill set and provide tools for great customer service, with a focus on body language, attitude and needs fulfillment. This approach to customer service focuses on a series of steps, or processes, designed to manipulate customers into a state of satisfaction. The problem with this approach is that at some point, organizations, team members and management, slip in to a position of non-delivery, or become fatigued on "giving" customer service, and the company sits in the same position, or in a worse position than where it resided just six months prior.

So what is the alternative?

BE GREAT CUSTOMER SERVICE!

An organization that "is" customer service, has a singular purpose of meeting the customer's needs, wants and desires, whether the end result is a sale or not. Sales staff gains understanding of the customer and provides solutions based on what the customer is looking for, rather than the product that the company provides. The goal becomes one of relationship building, rather than profit margin development. When an organization is incapable of meeting the needs of the customer to the fullest, they provide outside solutions, even direction to competitors who can fulfill those needs. By acting in the best interest of the customer, a relationship of trust is developed, which in most cases will result in future business from the customer.

When problems do arise, as in my opening example, the cultured organization will not hurl fixes toward the customer in a desperate attempt to appease. Instead, team members and management will work collaboratively with the customer to develop real solutions that ultimately address a customer's dissatisfaction. Handled correctly, a dissatisfied customer will become a loyal and committed customer as they will recognize your efforts as a commitment to fulfilling his needs, as opposed to making the sale.

This year, hundreds, if not thousands, of businesses will plunge in to the pool of customer service training, in an effort to shore up their declining customer base. In the short term, their toolbox will be filled and the focus will be on the customer, and with each passing day, the focus will slip, ever so slightly, away from the customer, back to the day to day grind of the operation.
But, there will be those few companies that recognize the need to BE customer service.

Customer service will become the culture and infect every corner of the organization, from top to bottom. With an unwavering commitment to service, these organizations will attract and employ the cream of the talent pool, which will only further their success. Their customer-centric focus will be finely-tuned and perfected, resulting in increased profit-margins and long-term success.

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