Perhaps no topic of debate in the meeting industry today is more important than how, precisely, an organization and its meeting planners create what will ultimately become recognized as a successful meetings and events. And, of course, not all meeting hosts or planners will agree on just what constitutes a successful meeting. But there does appear to be a reasonable consensus about the practical considerations that are involved in the process of addressing key issues.

“Building a meeting or an event is like building a house,” says Gregorio Palomino, CDMP, CEP, CMP, the CEO of the San Antonio, Texas-based meeting and event planning firm Cre8ad8. “The first thing you need is a great foundation, because no matter what the finished house is going to look like, the foundation is what will support it.”

When it comes to a meeting, Palomino says, the basic building blocks of the foundation are pretty obvious — your budget, the purpose of your meeting, your dates, your destination, your hotel and all of the other ‘practical’ things that go into planning the meeting. But those are only the things that frame the house, he notes. “Once you have those things as your foundation and framing, then you have to build the actual house,” Palomino says. “And every house — and meeting — is different.”

“Building a meeting or an event is like building a house. The first thing you need is a great foundation, because no matter what the finished house is going to look like, the foundation is what will support it.”
— Gregorio Palomino

After the most fundamental decisions about basic building blocks are made, “that’s when you start looking at all the various choices that really go into determining whether you have a successful event,” Palomino says. “Those decisions involve your content, your speakers, the informational materials you need. Those are the things that are most important. Everything else is really just decoration.”

Most important in the era of ubiquitous strategic meetings management programs and ever-increasing scrutiny of meeting budgets is a clear purpose or objective for the meeting, Palomino says.

But given such broad consensus about the critical importance of a precise goal and strategy, it’s surprising that Palomino sees so many companies fall short of successfully defining those elements. “I’d say that based on my observations, only about 60 to 70 percent of companies really have a clear goal for their meetings,” Palomino says. “And that surprises me, because there is nothing more important than that in terms of building a foundation for your house.”

A Broader Perspective

While she agrees that a clear business purpose for a meeting is a critical factor in its success, Kelly Burns-Gaoiran, the San Francisco-based director of business development at CWT Meetings & Events, a specialized division of global corporate travel management company Carlson Wagonlit, has a broader perspective.

A simple formula for a well-planned event is in keeping with Palomino’s “foundation for the house” analogy.

For Burns-Gaoiran, the essential elements of that foundation are destination and hotel selection; an effective social media platform; the use of mobile technology and apps onsite for an optimal attendee experience; attendee engagement before, during and after the meeting; and stakeholder engagement to ensure consensus that the meeting was indeed successful.

Like most of her peers, she also places enormous value on relevant and effective meeting content.

And her practical considerations apply to all meetings and events, regardless of type or size, she says. “The thing I always say is that an event is never too big or too small to warrant not looking at all of those kinds of details, because it’s all about execution,” she says. “And execution comes down to those basic components of what a successful meeting means. So all of those building blocks have to be in place. Everything has to be right.”

Burns-Gaoiran also views the planning process as an exercise with three distinct phases — pre-event, the onsite experience and post-event follow-up.

But she considers the pre-planning process the most important element of a successful meeting. For her, it is careful pre-planning that serves as her foundation.

“In the pre-event phase, I want to make sure I have defined the meeting properly — its purpose, the business goal, how success will be measured,” Burns-Gaoiran says. “And when it comes to measuring events, I want to know whether we’re judging it based on ROI or ROE. I want to know, in terms of the business goal, what are the real drivers of the event.”

The weakness she often sees in the execution of meetings can be traced back to an inadequately detailed pre-planning process that leads to a faulty foundation for even a modest house. “And a big part of that weakness sometimes,” Burns-Gaoiran says, “is having a weak engagement strategy for attendees or stakeholders, or having the wrong engagement strategy.”

Engaging Attendees

It’s well known and widely accepted today that attendee engagement is arguably the single most important factor in the success of a meeting, after a clear business goal. And the two are very much related.

After the goal of a meeting and the nature of the audience are assessed, an attendee engagement strategy specific to that meeting can be created, Burns-Gaoiran says. “Then you can determine a communication strategy,” she says. “And that strategy and the execution of it will vary from meeting to meeting. It needs to be very precisely planned based on the initial assessments you’ve done.”

A foundational element of the communication strategy that promotes effective attendee engagement includes a technology platform. “And to develop that, you have to address questions such as how is your content going to be presented?” Burns-Gaoiran says. “How is the attendee onsite experience going to be managed? Are you going to have mobile apps? How and why will they be used? Those kinds of considerations and decisions are a very important, because there are so many options out there.”

A Very Simple Formula for Successful Meetings and Events

Jacqueline Bidanec, CMP, the Tampa, Florida-based global account director for independent meeting planning firm HPN Global, has a simple formula for the creation of successful meetings and events.

“The way my clients define a meeting as successful is if they can stay within their budget, and that their attendees walk away happy,” Bidanec says.

And as a result of that simple guideline, Bidanec practices some time-tested and equally simple rules, particularly with respect to happy attendees.

“One thing is food and beverage,” she says. “I always tell my clients to feed their attendees well. Hungry stomachs make for unhappy people. And F&B budgets are one of the things many companies look to cut in their budgets, because they have so little control over room rates. But I tell them to spend the money to give people good meals if you want an attentive and happy attendee.”

For Bidanec, the other most important consideration is carefully crafted and hyperfocused content. “Content is important because an attendee needs to be able to walk away having learned something new, because when they learn something new, they are able to do their jobs better,” she says. “It’s really that simple. And for the kinds of meetings I do, such as sales meetings, learning to do something better means attendees will be putting more money in their wallets as a result of the meeting. So to me, from the perspective of attendees, I can’t think of a better definition of a successful meeting than people learning to do something that will make them more money. And making money always makes for a happy attendee.”

The Stakeholder Challenge

While attendee engagement is typically a fairly straightforward undertaking, stakeholder engagement is considerably more challenging, simply because it is a more complex process.

As a result, Burns-Gaoiran says, a consistent shortcoming in the arena of corporate meetings is weak or nonexistent stakeholder engagement, primarily because it is so complex and often such a daunting process because different groups of stakeholders have entirely different perceptions of what they want and what they expect.

“I see that all the time, Burns-Gaoiran says.

How does she explain that? “It’s more of a problem in bigger companies, because it’s so hard to get people on the same page,” she says. “Marketing sees things one way. Sales sees them another way. Procurement sees them another way. And they all want what they want from their own point of view. That is a consistent issue and challenge when you really are trying to engage all the key stakeholders. So as part of identifying the business purpose of the meeting, you also need to understand whose initiative it is. Is it a marketing initiative? A customer service initiative? An internal communication initiative? Then once you figure that out, you can do a better job of identifying the most important stakeholders and engaging them. But that is always a struggle. It’s not easy. But it’s also critical to a successful meeting.”

Service Excellence

Not surprisingly, another factor that is extremely important to the success of a meeting is excellent service. In fact, it is the little details of a meeting as it unfolds that often help determine the perception of whether an event has been successful. “And the reason those details are so important is that in large part, it’s the service you get onsite that will determine whether your attendees think the meeting has been successful,” Palomino says. “And that’s one of the areas where meeting planners sometimes drop the ball. They don’t pay enough attention to the minute-to-minute level of service their people are getting until something goes wrong.”

Among the things that most often go wrong and impact how a meeting is perceived, Palomino says, is audio-visual services, which are critical to the effective presentation of content. “If something goes wrong during one of your most important presentations, that is obviously going to have an impact on the event,” Palomino says. “So the kinds of things that are directly related to the presentation and distribution of your content at the meeting or after it are very, very important. So that is another place on the “roadmap where you have to make sure nothing can go wrong.”

Snooze Fest or Fun?

While a large majority of meeting planners are well aware of the practical factors that go into the creation of a successful meeting, one that many of them do not want to talk about is the fact that their meetings are boring, Palomino says.

Therefore, he says, no other practical consideration is more important than the excitement level surrounding the meeting beforehand and the level of enthusiasm expressed at the meeting. Somewhat surprisingly, he uses the infamous formula multilevel marketing companies notoriously invoke for their events as a good example of how to generate excitement at a meeting. “Their meetings are fun,” Palomino says. “They’re exciting. They generate a tremendous amount of enthusiasm for their attendees. They get you pumped up. And I think that’s a model that more companies should follow in terms of how they think about their meetings. I hate to say it, but a lot of corporate meetings today are just boring. I’d say more than 90 percent of them are just a snooze fest. There’s nothing exciting about them. But you’re stuck there for six or eight hours a day. To me, there is just no excuse for that in today’s world — not if you want your meetings to be successful and memorable.”

Bidanec concurs wholeheartedly that a successful meeting should be fun. “I stress to clients that they should have a fun agenda,” she says. “We can all sit in a classroom and take notes and then go home with some takeaways. But if the agenda has some fun in it, if there is some humor in the presentations, like a few jokes here and there, that makes the meeting fun and enjoyable. And that contributes to people feeling like it was successful. In other words, to be successful, a meeting has to be memorable. And to be memorable, there has to be some fun in it.”

For her events, such as sales meetings, Bidanec also agrees with Palomino that many companies can learn something valuable from organizations such as multilevel marketers. “Many of my meetings are also ‘rah rah’ sessions,” Bidanec says. “And if people go away from those meetings pumped up and ready to take on the world and make more sales, the company thinks of that as a successful meeting.”

As for Palomino, one of the reasons so many meetings are boring is that the content is boring. “It’s unfortunate but true that the content at so many meetings is just not exciting,” he says. “Everybody talks about how important content is, but then the content they actually present at their meetings is just not compelling. It’s not exciting. It doesn’t motivate people. So again, many companies could learn a positive lesson from MLM companies, because they’re experts at presenting content that gets people excited and motivated.”

In reality, Palomino says, there is some content that by definition is not going to be very exciting. “That’s just the way it is,” he says. “But you can still make the presentation of that content, the delivery of that content, exciting. That’s what so many companies fail to understand and act on. And I really don’t know why that is. It’s not that hard to figure out once you’re aware of the challenge.”

Even if your content is compelling and it addresses the business purpose of your meeting effectively, it should be brief and pointed, Palomino says. The time-honored 60–90 minute keynote speech or CEO presentation is a dinosaur headed toward final extinction, he notes. Today, the TED talk model is becoming more and more universal — presentations that are short and crisp, and which allow for spirited interaction between presenters and attendees.

In the end, Palomino says — and Burns-Gaoiran and Bidanec agree — a meeting only can be deemed a success if the attendees consider it a success.

And the only way to find out if attendees truly consider the meeting a success is to ask — clearly and courageously — in a post-event survey.

“There are a number of technologies available now that allow you to do that and get the answer to that question,” Burns-Gaoiran says. “But to get that answer, you have to do more than just poll your attendees. You really have to listen to what they have to say.”

Palomino corroborates that view. “With the technologies we have today, it’s possible to know with certainty whether your content was absorbed, whether the goal of your meeting was met, what your ROI will be,” he says. “And a growing number of companies now make those efforts. But many still do not. Or they do a very poor job of it. If you really want a roadmap to a successful meeting, you have to be able to look at the map you created after the event and say, ‘We got there. We arrived at our destination in terms of objective and results. We had a successful meeting.’ If you do not do that, you’re just guessing. Or fooling yourself.” C&IT