Game Changers in Incentive Travel - Interview

In a recent interview with Te Revesz, who runs a fantastic internet radio weekly talk show - Global Reach from VoiceAmerica, I had the opportunity to talk about how organizations are enhancing employee, customer and channel partner relationships through business events.  Take a listen...



Here's the synopsis:

It’s an exciting time in the incentive travel industry. Companies that abandoned meetings, events and incentives (ME&I) in the economic meltdown have seen those savings outweighed by eroding customer, channel partner and employee engagement. Now they are coming back, but to a new paradigm. My guest, Jim Ruszala of Maritz Travel, is a recognized thought leader and innovator in incentives, loyalty and engagement. He’ll talk about the essentials of building a better ME&I strategy. Innovations in program design that can boost the returns – tangible and intangible – for your incentive investment. How to measure the performance of that investment. Why companies need to include both stakeholders and attendees (guests) when creating ME&I programs. How including families and adding corporate social responsibility elements can both be powerful motivators without busting the budget.

Interested on learning more about Te Revesz and her Global Reach program - click here

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?

A Different Point-of-View: Why Bashing Millennials is Wrong

We've all read our fair share of "generational" articles and, for that matter, probably harbor your own thoughts on the degrees of fact or fiction that apply. This is especially true when it comes to either B2B or B2C marketing for the purposes of promoting relationships through motivational incentive and loyalty based programs. I encourage you to read the article published in Fast Companies titled Why Bashing Millennials Is Wrong - click here.

Here were my thoughts...

Individually, we're all wired a bit differently in terms of our social norms, beliefs and values. There are strong commonalities when we breakdown our population into demographic buckets based upon age (i.e., traditionalists, baby boomers, generation x and generation y, etc.). This is clearly due to key influencers of the time; for instance, the technological explosion that continually shifts attitudes and behaviors in how we work, relate and interact with one another. However, the important point here is that we can't assume or stereotype too much solely based upon simple generational cuts alone. We need to go deeper and focus on what best works for a personal, business or individual perspective; especially when it comes to the areas such as education, communication, motivation and others.

Overall, the focus shouldn't be about millennials in the workplace, but rather more so about how we better engage different people in varying ways to drive performance in the work place. The ability to help individualize work experiences and engagements through areas such as meetings or even motivational efforts to leverage unique talents and skills has and remains a key towards driving a diverse workforce. This is NOT just a millennial issue; it's about "how you engage others" to best achieve both individual as well as business level performance objectives.