It’s a big commitment
A few years ago an established national association approached me for advice on their annual convention (I regularly provide independent event’s business and management advice for a professional fee). Despite their efforts and apparently a reasonable amount of in-house staff resources it was losing its gloss, attendance and ground to other events, some costing several times as much.
I spoke to their CEO first and was surprised to see how little she knew about the convention despite being a long term organisation fixture. “Please show me your convention business plan” was greeted with we don’t have one. “Show me your convention budget” – well it was part of the association’s overall accounts and was missing a lot of line items. “Show me your convention marketing plan” – we don’t have one. “Do you have any statistics on your conference attendance” – no. I could go on but suffice to say that all I received was a few previous handbooks, registration brochures and some registration statistics from their home grown system. Her final response was “My PA looks after the convention – see her for the detail”.
I spoke to her PA – a very capable, mid 20’s international business and political sciences graduate. She had joined fresh out of university just after the last convention and was determined to get it right this time – hence the call to me. As a footnote she remarked that so few PAs seemed to last more than 12 months.
Her convention brief was very much like mine – “Here is what we have done in the past, it works - don’t break it”. Her “day” job which gave her the most satisfaction was being an indispensible PA to the likeable CEO who was heavily involved in lobbying and big picture stuff. It was busy, intense and rewarding work that involved frequent trips around Australia with her boss, arranging travel, appointments, the CEO’s agenda and importantly picking up the pieces – the minutiae. She also had to service the Board and several sub-committees (monthly minutes etc). In her “spare time” she had responsibility for the convention working with a local chairman from the state where the convention was to be held. That was exciting but tedious.
So we set out to discover what was holding the convention back.
- The extent of the task was totally underestimated by the organisation. The CEO when asked how much time her PA spent on the task responded “I am not sure – it’s not that hard so a few weeks spread over the year I imagine”. I found the PA working 60-80 hours every week to manage both jobs – no wonder there had been so much burn out in that position. As a general rule it takes 2-3 hours per delegate to provide adequate organisation, let alone grow and build an event so the PA had to commit about 1,200 person hours – in reality with all the interruptions and the vagaries of working with a volunteer committee you may as well say it’s a full time job on its own. Interestingly none of the association’s labour or overheads had ever been part of the convention budget resulting in a very over-inflated view of its profitability.
Part of the solution was to delegate specific tasks with other association staff and departments – not easily done in a very traditional organisation that was not used to stepping outside their own comfort zones and was more worried about covering their own backsides. However with that sorted (in theory) the PA’s job should now have been more to coordinate the various staff inputs (until they let her down) and work with the local chairman.
- There was no business plan (BP), no ground rules and no continuity of arrangements from one year to the next. BPs are vital for any large project. At their simplest they form the basis of the brief (what has to happen) for your local volunteer committee to follow. It must clearly define delegated power to allow commitments to be made on behalf of the organisation. It is all too easy for an enthusiastic and well meaning amateur committee or staff member to make decisions that could negatively impact on profit, delegate experience and more.
Part of the solution was to develop a comprehensive document covering all aspects of the annual event. A planning meeting was held and all major stakeholders including some of the previous sponsors and chairmen attended. I facilitated this meeting and we produced a 60 page “manual” that included a long list of Key Performance Indicators (desirable outcomes), operations policies (for consistent use year to year), a time line (when it must happen) and most importantly a clear definition of the associations role, the local organising committee’s role, and expected deliverables. Some of the local committee when faced with written responsibilities subsequently faded away and were replaced with more dedicated “workers”.
- The accounting system did not provide accurate and timely reports – a Profit and Loss (P&L) is a snapshot of income and expenditure at a certain time, not an overall picture of the projected cost and revenue of an event. We facilitated the implementation of new reporting regimen and an Excel budget maintained by both the PA and the accountant. For the first time all inputs (including labour and in-house resources), not just purchases could be tracked simply by giving the PA some training in the accounts system and a limited login to that area to raise purchase orders and process supplier invoices.
Suffice to say that an estimated 1,200 professional hours (and associated overheads such as super, sick pay, long service leave, training etc), all the phone calls, photocopying, courier, print and very much more went against the conference account with startling results – the convention was losing money.
- The convention was not reaching its attendance potential. About 400 people attended (around half of these were members) from a membership of nearly 2,000. All that effort for 10% of the members. We analysed previous attendance lists and found a high level of first time attendance – “Good said the CEO we must be doing something right” – WRONG. The new attendees were looking for suitable continuing education and not getting it so after being burned once at the convention they were inevitably lost as potential members of the association.
We polled previous attendees and members to ask them what they wanted from their convention and what would make it “must attend”. Not surprisingly there was a high dissatisfaction level with content and frequent comments that it was an “old boys club”. It needed a big shake up on all fronts.
We also identified that the convention was only being marketed to members and more recently via email only (with untracked but significant non-delivery rates). The membership department had devolved into a data entry based regime more concerned about collecting annual fees than building membership. The CEO directed them to develop a major new member campaign and develop non-member mailing and email lists that the conference could use. The department lacked those skills and assistance was sought from PR/Publications Department and the Continuing Education Department who quickly put together a convention marketing program that reached almost 100% of their profession – ironically they already had their own “secret” mailing lists to promote their courses and publications to non members. A classic case of the left hand not knowing what the right was doing.
- The program had traditionally been based on the past format and relied on “segments” such as the annual report to members by the CEO (well received but not inspiring), the ubiquitous old farts “Panel”, a couple of paid motivational speakers and about 20-30 other presentations by members (many who had been overexposed at previous events). In a word “boring”.
In our poll (mentioned in point 4) we asked a few simple questions. “Who would you like to hear at the convention” and “What are the top issues that cause you grief at work”. The response was that convention was not delivering what delegates wanted. Eighty percent of respondents said that content and take home skills was the only reason they would attend – not to have drinks with the old boys club and listen to recycled speakers.
The Association and their local committee (which changes every year) were not well equipped to develop such a program – if they were they would have done so. We recommended that a permanent national program committee be established run by the Education Department who already ran a number of popular courses. The committee was established with a membership comprising: a member from each state (to lessen parochial issues); at least one eminent academic from a university that taught the profession; a few international representatives from kindred bodies (mainly from Asian countries); an up and coming “firebrand” young member of the association (representing Gen Y and X); a baby boomer (representing the old guard); and a major sponsor (representing all suppliers). As part of the business plan the program committee was given policies about payment of fees etc., for speakers, the number of speakers required, the need to avoid repetition (keep it fresh) and the ability to poll members. In its first year the volunteer committee collectively spent about 600 hours plus the PA’s support time to develop a winning program. In the next year, once the systems were in place, this reduced to about 200 hours – 15 hours per committee member spread over three main meetings and paper review time.
- Sponsorship and exhibition sales were in the decline. In the past a rehashed appeal letter was sent to previous sponsors who dutifully paid the same amount of money. The problem was that the amount was not growing yet the conventions costs were.
We held a meeting of many of the major sponsors and exhibitors and canvassed their views. They produced a litany of grievances some of which included:
- Give us a new event - different to the usual and better than the competitor’s event
- We need more buyers and referrers – a reference to the same “old” audience
- Give us real benefits – not vague promises and be more consistent in dealing with us (a level playing field and a veiled reference to desperate deals done dirt cheap with some favoured sponsors).
- Give us the opportunity to speak and be part of the program
- Treat us as partners and let us add value – celebrities, entertainment, in exhibition promotions etc.
- Avoid costly freight and handling (they hated the weekend bump-in)
- And make the exhibition the focus of the event outside sessions.
It was clear that sponsorship and exhibition revenue was “expected” rather than earned. We put together a comprehensive strategy, pre-tested it with some of the major sponsors and when it was launched it yielded a 100% increase in support (based mainly on promises about a new convention format and style that had yet to be delivered)
Did it work? It was necessary to present a completely new image and make a lot of promises rather than present the same old event with a few cosmetic changes. This involved:
- Fresh new branding as “the industry convention” with less emphasis on the host association which was not universally well supported.
- The event needed to stake its claim on the turf it rightly should own and make it clear to competitor events it would defend its turf.
- Its own web site (not a part of the Association web site) with a number of on-line web tools
- A comprehensive marketing campaign (print, electronic and other methods) to reach both members and non-members in Australia and the Asia Pacific regions
- A more user driven content program
- A complete dismantling of the ad hoc old boys networking program and a new facilitated networking program.
- In all there were 56 recommendations for change and these were implemented over two years – Rome was not built in a day.
Yes. Let’s put this into perspective – old versus new
OLD |
NEW (results over 2 years) |
Sunday to Tuesday in November |
Polling revealed a desire for mid May to mid June (less professional commitment at that time) and Tuesday to Thursday (delegates hated losing their weekend) which resulted in significant venue, travel, accommodation and bump-in and out cost benefits as well. |
Attracted about 400 delegates (50% members) |
Grown to about 800 with 600 members attending. Greater retention of first time attendees too. |
Attracted $100K in sponsorship |
Grown to $225K with much more potential |
Attracted 20 booths (mostly as part of sponsorship) |
Attracts about 20 paid and 20 sponsor booths and growing. The exhibition now has a real buzz with lots of activity and has become a drawcard for interested non-delegates from the profession. |
Registration fees $700 including the Welcome Reception and Dinner. Too many “discount” categories reflecting lack of confidence in the value of the event. The fees were way below cost meaning the more delegates who came the larger the loss would be. |
Now starts from $900 (member early bird) and the dinner is optional cost. Now only three categories – member, non member and first time attendee. More importantly registration fees cover costs and sponsorship can be used for Association profit and improving the event. |
Difficultly in obtaining suitable venues due to short term lead time |
States previously shied away from hosting the event now have the confidence to do so and venues have been confirmed out to 2014 with the result that better venues have been booked well in advance with better pricing. |
Satisfaction (not polled) |
On-line polling after each event gets a 50-60% response rate (excellent) and drives further changes. The event consistently rates over four on a five point scale. |
Program – rehashed 30 plus speakers in single sessions. |
Exciting and relevant program driven by hot topics and now starting to appeal to special interest groups and sub groups with expansion to approx 90 speakers over three concurrent sessions. |
One PA struggling to manage the event using up more than 1,200 hours on top of her day job. |
PA has become the event manager plus support from three internal departments. Note that due to the growth of the convention size the workload is now in the order of 2,400 hours (in reality 2 people full time) |
Total budget $400,000. Unknown financial outcome “thought they were making a profit” but in reality were hiding about $150K in other Association budget centres so were making a loss. |
Total budget $1M with ROI of about 15% after all costs. |
Inconsistent outcomes driven by different local committees each year and turnover of Association staff managers. |
The Board is considering a three year term for a national convention committee chair (still working with a local committee).
Board is also considering 3-5 year outsourcing contract with a PCO as the PA is going on maternity leave and they wish to keep growing the meeting and they don’t have the facilities to cost effectively deliver the event outside their headquarter state. |
What did my consulting cost? The real question was what did it save them? In the first year they went from a $150K loss to a $50K profit – a $200K turnaround. In the second year they netted over $150K with the potential for even more. My initial brief was for 40 hours consulting time. It ended up at about 200 hours well spent.
If you recognise any of the symptoms in your own meeting or special event please call me on 1300 365 976 or email rays@eventplanners.com.au and mention this article from Famil Club
