I’m so grateful to have spoken with so many of you this year. FICP is tremendously committed to the best possible education offerings for its members, which includes reinforcing messages you heard at their conferences. This is a short reminder that if you’re ready to shed the frustrations of your job, strategy is waiting for you to embrace it.
Strategic events are the most powerful sales and marketing tools companies have. They shorten sales cycles and bring marketing messages to life; nothing else can do that. By harnessing the power of content customized to the audience’s needs, an organization can influence what attendees feel, think, say and do, leading them towards its strategic goals.
Employees either contribute to a company’s bottom line or create expenses, and those who boost profits are celebrated. Events executed around logistics are expenditures, and meetings professionals become the embodiment of the dollars spent. Shifting your focus and efforts towards strategic planning moves you to the “profit-boosting” side of the equation. From there, everything changes: recognition, respect and the removal of many of the obstacles that drain your energy and leave you weary.
Further adding to the brilliance of strategy is that there’s often no additional cost to bring this game-changing feature to your meetings. Your organization is already allocating dollars to its events. By shifting to strategy, executives are more engaged, which means more lead time to book space, fewer rush fees, lower airline ticket prices and more.
The first step in demonstrating the value of this strategic shift is to get your executives’ attention. Create a Strategic Cost Avoidance Report that itemizes costs that could have been avoided or opportunities that were missed due to a lack of timely responses. For instance, shipping rush charges incurred due to a last-minute decision by the CEO’s assistant to send 500 pens to the event that have been sitting in the storage closet for a year. If you do this for the past three years, chances are the numbers will grab attention.
As you’re pulling the data, start creating a support team. Who are allies in the organization who will support your idea? Create a team who can help socialize the plan and potentially help craft the best way to pitch it. The way to do that is to go back to the heart of strategy; WIIFM (what’s in it for me) is the single-most powerful motivator, so make sure you explain how a strategic plan will be to their benefit and you’ll get motivated supporters.
If you’re ready to eliminate challenges and elevate your career, life and the profession, it’s time to Get Strategic.
Watch the FICP Short below for three tips for thinking strategically.
If you’d like to receive a comprehensive checklist of items to search for when creating your Strategic Cost Avoidance Report, just ask. There’s also a host of information available to you on my website (smeplanners.com).
Feel free to reach out to discuss your challenges and explore potential solutions. It’s time for a change. Find me at Christy@lifelivedstrategically.com.
Christy Lamagna
Visionary, Entrepreneur and Strategist
Strategic Meetings & Events