FEATURESTORY

Finding the 'R' In Off-Site ROI

by Paul Nolan

Hanging the "Gone Fishing" sign out is an unconventional way to impress prospects, but to Anne Hamilton-Chehab, vice president of resort sales and services at Walt Disney World Resort, that's precisely the point.

Ask Hamilton-Chehab what Walt Disney World can do to make your next off-site sales meeting a success and she'll tell you how the Disney Institute put together a two-day bass fishing tournament last November that paired 50 meeting and event planners with some of the world's most elite professional anglers. The participants spent two mornings on the Disney chain of lakes with their championship angler hosts, and afternoons were spent in management sessions that translated lessons learned on the water into leadership skills that could be applied to business.

The Disney Institute can't promise world-class anglers for your next sales meeting, but that sort of ingenuity will produce positive results.

"Those are the kind of things that we do to keep us on edge, to keep us trying different things and suggesting different things for our customers," Hamilton-Chehab says. "You're bringing everyone together in a sales meeting to give them the vision, the mission and the goal. You can have great content, great education and great speakers, but if you don't have something special in the evening or you don't have a message that fully integrates with the theme, then you didn't come full circle on the ROI opportunity," she says.

Winds of Change

Return on investment has always been a fuzzy concept with off-site meetings, but that's changing. Today's tight budgets result in every expense being scrutinized for value.

"For the longest time, measuring a meeting's success was simply not an objective," says Mark Oedekoven, director of analytics for BI, a Minneapolis-based performance improvement company. "The whole thing was viewed as a cost of doing business or an extra perk provided to top performers."

Companies began taking their off-site meeting expenditures more seriously before the economic crunch of 2001, but that downturn, and the ensuing two years of layoffs and lean budgets, spawned even more focus on spending, particularly in travel and entertainment. A slight but steady rebound in the overall economy has some companies already reverting to lackadaisical cost control, Oedekoven says. Most, however, continue to look for ways to cut budgets and scrutinize every dollar that goes out the door.

Oedekoven says an ROI assessment often is viewed as an expensive add-on, but should be embedded in the didn't come full circle on the ROI opportunity,"

There's still a "rah-rah" aspect to bringing everybody together, but sales meetings are being designed with specific objectives and key measuring points, says JJ Jeska, owner of MSP Resources, a Minneapolis meeting and event planner. Jeska pushes her clients to pinpoint an "aha moment" for every meeting. "They have to learn something new that connects to future success. It can be a message that's simple and to-the-point, but it's no longer cookie-cutter."

"All of the pieces existed for gauging ROI in the past," says Oedekoven, "I just don't think there was a desire to do it." The good news is that plenty of tools and proven tactics exist for sales managers to prove the value of their off-site meetings so they don't have to lose them.

 

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