Staying True to Your Brand and Other Hard-Won Lessons

After the birth of her first child in 2004, Jennafer Ross founded JR Global Events. With eight years under her belt as an in-house corporate meeting planner in the financial industry, she wasn’t ready to leave the working world, but she was on the road more than she felt comfortable with as the mother of a small child.

“Some friends from MPI (Meeting Professionals International) asked me to help out on some of their programs and it went from there. I was able to pick up long-term clients through referrals from others at MPI and continued to network and grow my business. It was a great opportunity, being at the right place at the right time,” she said.

Many of the lessons Ross has learned over the past six years may prove helpful to travel sellers and other independent planners looking to grow their business and their profits. Here are some of her tips:

Extend profits with pre- and post- packages: “My average group size may be 150-200 persons but my programs are longer than most, eight to nine days on average. The core programs are typically four to five days but then I add on a lot of pre- and post-conference packages,” she said.

Capitalize on city-based options: “I’m seeing a lot more USA-based trips happening. The trend of outbound [international] incentives is not one people are willing to own at this point because of misperceptions and bad press. It’s easy to get to a domestic destination without a lot of out-of-pocket expenses for airfare,” Ross said. The perception is that the programs are fine as long as they’re not ‘resort-based’ but there’s so much happening in big cities, you can still deliver a resort-quality program, even when staying urban, she added.

Don’t ignore abroad-based opportunities: With global hotel prices dipping, “dollars are going to talk,” she said. “If you can take a group to Europe for the same price that it would have cost to go domestically, then sure, we’re going to go overseas. We still have to be budget- and perception-conscious but if I can show a dollar savings at a Ritz Carlton, if I can still prove value, then I don’t care what the perception is, I’m going to sell it,” she said.

Seek recession-based opportunities: Because of corporate cutbacks, Ross said she’s seeing “a lot more outsourcing and a lot more partnership” between corporations and third-party planners. “Meeting management staff is being cut back, but companies are still looking to deliver the same number of programs so they’re looking at third-party meeting managers as extensions of their teams.”

One strategy Ross is pursuing is to submit RFPs (requests for proposals) in conjunction with other suppliers, such as audio-visual (A/V) companies. “Instead of expecting clients to go to five or six different suppliers, I save them time by working with my vendors to submit one comprehensive package.” She said that she leans on her preferred partnerships even more than in the past. “It’s really who you know, and that’s going to hold even truer today.”

Eek out the savings: Ross said she has learned to consider every avenue to save her clients’ money. “You can teach an old dog new tricks. Because of my longer program lengths, I’ve recently learned that for A/V, I should be asking for trade show rates, with only one install and one teardown. I can save my clients half of what they used to use on A/V, even though there’s no trade show involved!”

Using a company that specializes in VAT (Value-Added Tax) recoup, she’s been able to save $60,000-$70,000 for U.K. and Austria-bound clients over the last few years. “It varies from country to country, but there are certain recoupable components, including meeting room rental, and in some cases, food and beverage and lodging expenses,” she said.

Step gingerly when pitching partnerships: Ross said that one of her biggest challenges is making the initial connection with the corporate decision maker and expressing the value of the potential partnership. “I emphasize that I’m not coming in to take over their job… but their company isn’t laying people off because they want to do fewer meetings; it’s because they can’t maintain the overhead [of employing meeting management personnel]. I can offer more reach with less overhead. I need to get in front of decision makers who just laid off their staff without upsetting everyone and still staying conscious of my peers, and it’s a hard line to walk.”

Stay true to yourself: Another challenge for Ross is the fact that many corporate planners, after being laid off, market themselves as independent planners. “It’s taken me six years to say that I’m a successful planner and there’s been a lot of learning along the way, many bumps and bruises. I might be losing a lot of business to newer independent planners who are undercutting me on pricing but don’t necessarily have the experience to do it… I walk away when I sense that clients are nickel-and-diming me. It’s not that I have any problem negotiating, but I won’t take the business just for the sake of taking the business. I won’t dilute my brand,” she said.

Ross said she generally works on an average profit margin of 18% to 20% and prefers to work by charging a management fee “so that when I’m working with suppliers, I can negotiate in the best interest of my client and my bottom line is not affected,” she said.