Plan Your Meetings

Building a business in a bad economy

Many meeting planners who get laid off decide to go into business for themselves or join third-party planning firms. For them and anyone trying to grow a business during these turbulent times,  Dan Adams, author of “New Product Blueprinting: The Handbook for B2B Organic Growth,” has some choice words of advice.

“If you’re trying to grow your business-to-business company these days using old, costly, inefficient methods, you’re probably doomed to failure,” says Adams. “The good news is, you don’t have to go that route. You’ve probably tightened up other areas of your operation in response to the recession — and you can do the same with your growth efforts.”

Here are Adams’ Top 5 tips for growing your business on a tight budget:

1. Find out what your customers really want — not what you want them to want. “No one can afford to introduce failed products these days,” Adams says. But because most people work on what they’re interested in, not necessarily what people will buy, only 25 percent of new product/service ideas succeed.
2. Conduct customer interviews remotely. (It’s more effective than you think.) Adams suggests using Web conference-based software like Live Meeting, WebEx or GoToMeeting, rather than face-to-face interviews to save on time and travel expenses. “For example, you can have more people ‘from your side’ in remote customer interviews than is comfortable or practical in a face-to-face interview,” Adams points out. Here are some more tips for getting the most out of remote business conversations. http://newproductblueprinting.com/vocviawebcon.
3. Get everyone listening to the voice of the customer. Train everyone you work with to deliver excellent customer service. If everyone on your staff knows what the client wants, then “you’ll develop a reputation … as ‘that supplier who really listens to us,’” Adams says. “That’s how to protect today and position for tomorrow.”
4. Use OPK (other people’s knowledge). “I have a lot of very smart clients, yet many are stuck in the past in important areas,” Adams says. “Why? There are two reasons: First, more work is being required of fewer employees. Most of us want two things out of our jobs — to contribute and to learn — but in today’s pressure cooker, there is little time to learn and apply fresh thinking. Second, useful knowledge is exploding. Each year, mankind generates enough new information to fill half-a-million Libraries of Congress. Who can keep up?” The best way you can keep on top of what’s out there is to search for books on Amazon.com, google subject matter experts who can share information via whitepapers or Web conferences, or tap into local industry associations for benchmarking help and shared learning.
5. Bring your training in-house. Rather than send employees out to attend conferences in the hopes they’ll share what they learned when they’re back in the office, hire a facilitator to do an in-house training that is customized to your needs and your industry. That will not only give everyone a common vocabulary, Adams says, it also will facilitate the application of new knowledge and procedures, and help managers hold people accountable.

“Yes, there is great economic uncertainty now, but we can say with confidence that this downturn — like all others before it — will end,” Adams says. “So while your competitors are completely immersed in hand-wringing, why not focus some percentage of your energy on the eventual upturn? Thinking in new ways may do more for your future growth than spending-as-usual would have.”