The Rewards of Going Green

 Reposted from Meetings & Incentive Travel - click here for link

Green meetings have returned to the spotlight. Both sponsors and program participants continue to place growing importance on green events and incentive-travel strategies.  As a result, many organizations are taking the time and strongly rethinking what it means to be green.

My colleague, Brian Hunt, and I recently attended and presented at the Green Meetings Industry Council (GMIC) Annual Summit this past April.  Our presentation, Green Strategies that Create both Business and Attendee Value, was an open discussion among more than 90 attendees.  Filled with great dialogues and exchanges, many questions came up regarding the difference between green-focused and green-friendly meetings/events and incentive travel integrations.  From those discussions, we offered up three ways to improve green strategy and create awareness within an organization.

• Green in the Absence of Vision, Mission and Values - It’s important for companies to openly communicate green-related positioning, goals and practices.  When an organization lacks "green" identifiers and/or inclusions in its vision, mission and values statements, it’s highly likely that the culture doesn’t perceive the company as either green-friendly or green-focused.  Each organization needs to take a well-positioned stand to ensure it effectively communicates their position and the level of importance green means to them.  In doing so, employees, customers and channel partners are more aligned and help spread the "think more green" movement.

• From a Single to a Triple Bottom Line - To draw forward the values of what green-related strategies can mean, organizations need to evolve beyond standard performance concepts.  In this case, it’s a Triple Bottom Line (TBL) concept that provides stronger strategic direction and a set of performance metrics based on People, Planet and Profit.  When green-related adoptions take place with only one or two of these in mind, we simply miss the mark of achieving the most effective value.  Evaluating across the TBL requires an appreciation of both tangible and intangible values of fiscal, quantitative and qualitative insights.

• ‘Crawl’, ‘Walk’ and ‘Run’ Approaches - Organizations are interested in how green adoptions affect program operations, economics and overall participant experiences.  To more thoroughly understand these areas, we need to consider the progressive steps that help grow our green adoptions from both an organizational sponsor, as well as from a participant’s viewpoint.  Not too fast, not too slow, but at a pace that inspires adoption, provides meaningful experiences and influences future commitments.

Companies can easily assess how green they currently are and establish a benchmark for progress moving forward by asking the following questions:

• Do we integrate green efforts early in the meeting/event or incentive-travel planning process?
• How are we translating our green principles into actionable practices?
• Are our green practices strategic or do they represent standalone tactics?
• Do we work with sponsors, suppliers and vendors that align to our core principles?
• How are we evaluating performance?

Going green requires long-term and unwavering commitment to the Triple Bottom Line – People, Planet and Profit.  Answering simple questions about current green initiatives and setting future benchmarks helps provide direction for future efforts.  As companies progress, it is important to celebrate success, openly promote and advise others, and challenge those within the organization to change for the better.

Together, we all make a greater difference.

Why Independent Dealer Networks Should Consider Incentive Travel

Reposted from Meetings & Incentive Travel - click here for link

True or False?  Incentive Travel Improves Channel Performance

Answer: True. Incentive travel helps organizations achieve targeted business performance goals, but they also represent a sound approach towards establishing and building strong relationships in your independent distributor channel.

Recently, one of our clients asked us to help provide further performance insights into their channel-based incentive travel program. This organization has run an incentive travel program for its dealer network for several years. While it understood the sales volume created by the dealers that earned the trip, it also wanted to understand other ways in which the program created value. Essentially, we wanted to answer the question – how has this long running, annual program provided value from the participants’ viewpoint? Here’s what we found…

Participants firmly perceive the incentive travel program as a strong and effective influencer in helping the organization drive performance through the dealer channel. A common participant response was, “the opportunity to earn the incentive travel award greatly encouraged me to increase my performance efforts.” As for whether the program was creating brand loyalty and advocacy, our findings were best summarized with another participant statement that said, “The program creates loyalty to the company, showing myself and other dealers just how much the organization cares and wants to help us.”

By continuing to establish and nurture dealer relationships through an incentive travel strategy, our client also created and experienced added, long-term value that went beyond short-term measurements. Program participant comments such as “I think the best part (as always) is networking with other distributors” and “[the award program is] a great way to build a long-term bond with other distributors” echoed throughout our findings.

To the dealer, relationship building is viewed as a high-value opportunity. With other channel representatives on the program, participants are continually afforded a setting where they can establish and build relationships with one another. This creates substantial, long-term value, as participants are able to further exchange ideas and insights on best practices, market shifts, challenges and business opportunities.

If you have distributors, sales networks or other channel partners, where are they fitting into the incentive travel mix?

Family Friendly Incentive Travel

So, what’s up with kids and incentive travel programs you ask?  Well, there’s certainly a growing shift towards being more family friendly these days, which is being driven by a variety of factors.  Primarily, these would involve today’s demands at work with leaner and “doing more with less” philosophies, family lifestyles as well as the idea and desire of organizations to create stronger motivational value for participants in order to achieve greater business performance.

If you or anyone within an organization have been thinking about whether or not a "Family Friendly" element within your incentive travel strategy is a worth while idea, consider reading this article - click here

As organizations make family friendly decisions, concerns typically surface regarding potential distractions, objections by participants without children as well as with regard to how they would fund such inclusions. Here are a few short insights to keep in mind:

• Distractions – Typically this surrounds the desire to have an educational, networking or award element within a program. With the right destination selected and good planning, there are a number of ways to have one-on-one time with your participants, and they with their families.
• Participants without Children – Based upon a National Study by Maritz Travel and Maritz Research, we found that nearly 4 out of every 5 incentive travel participants without children believe that kids should be allowed to participate. It seems that they want to celebrate with their colleagues and peers, as well as get to know their families better too.
• Budgets – Whether you’re paying for, subsidizing or creating special buy-in rate options, incentive travel earners are looking for ways to bring their families along and reward them for their support in helping achieve business objectives.

Overall, organizations that don’t’ think family friendly incentive travel programs can play a big role need to think again. Helping create the opportunity to share these rewards and experiences go a long way in building stronger affinity with the organization. While it might not be right for every program, it’s worth the time and effort to do some research and gain a better view of what’s best for your participants and your organization.

The ROI of CRM - Customer Data, Check; Now What?

Okay, so you have the technological foundation laid for CRM, but what’s next? This is a common question corporate executives are left with after spending millions of dollars of development costs associated with the architecture of data bases to bank customer data. No, it’s not as easy as you were probably lead to believe, there’s no green button that puts everything into motion, simply terabytes of data electronically warehoused that are providing no business benefit in their standalone state. So, where do you go from here?

While some organizations have gone with a shoot then aim approach with only results that have shaken the needle, success has been wreaked from those following a disciplined strategy; mining, analyzing and synthesizing the data they hold. Analytics has become the enabling ingredient of CRM solutions. Considering the profile of today’s customer is quite different from just 10 years ago, understanding their differences, likes, dislikes, drivers and other characteristics has become paramount in developing solid business strategies to grow relationships. Why is this important?

-Brand loyalties are weakening and not nearly as strong as they once were

-Consumers are better educated. The advent of the internet provided the perfect outlet for consumers to source from in making their purchase decision(s)

-Promotions have desensitized customers to the point of being numb

-Consumers are more price conscious and demanding value in what they pay, the service they receive and the level of convenience experienced

-Consumers are not as easily put into a segmented class. There are far more segments today than ever

Been caught with your CRM pants down? Still not clear on what all the technology and customer data you’ve successfully centralized provides to your organization? Share your thoughts on how you recommend moving to the next level.