the meeting planner

Marti Fox
The Protocol of Communication
Fall 2011

MARTI FOX, CTC, CMP, CMM is president of GlobalGoals, Inc., an independent planning firm based in Dallas, Texas and was recently named Planner of the Year by the Meeting Professionals International Dallas-Fort Worth Chapter.

MPG :   How did you get started in the meetings industry?
marti: I was a frustrated elementary school teacher whose passion, besides teaching, was travel. I started as a travel agent. The meetings side evolved because my corporate clients were asking for help with their meetings and travel award incentives. Over the years, I worked for third party companies. The company I was working with began getting into mega projects, multi-thousand person conferences, that were not in line with my passion so, in 2001, I decided to do my own thing and started GlobalGoals.

Tell us what comes to your mind when you think of the word “trust?”
Trust is probably the most important asset in a business relationship. We are not an island. Planners have a circle of vendors and suppliers, industry partners who support our efforts to bring together the perfect program for our clients.

You also have to trust your suppliers to not only provide a high level of service but to respect the protocol of communication. I was recently talking with an industry friend about a vendor who chose to communicate directly with the end-user client. The vendor didn’t like the answer they were getting from the planner which was, “we’re just not ready to talk about that yet.” Of course, this caused a flurry of conversations, wasted time and justifying decisions.

I belong to a consortium of independent planners here in Dallas. We’re all friendly competitors. We have to trust that when we are consulting with our clients on projects that both the client and their intellectual property is fully protected. When we are sharing information at our consortium’s meetings, there is a huge trust factor that allows us to talk openly and honestly about possible solutions and know that our conversations will stay within the confines of the room.

What are the hot topics?
Certainly, technology is moving very fast.

I recently attended a DFWAE meeting about social media and, honestly, have been sort of “ho-hum” about the whole thing. I’ve heard lots of social media talks that just aren’t practical. This presenter actually said, “We’ve tried a lot of things and we’ve had a lot of failures.” The set-up and follow-up commitment plus the financial commitment requires you to dedicate time, resources and people to make them work.

One other “hot topic” is getting our industry organizations to provide the time for us to simply talk with our peers. MPIDFW recently did a roundtable meeting where you picked the table and topic, and sat down and shared ideas with your colleagues. It was a huge success. It wasn’t listening to a speaker, it was learning from your peers.

What are your thoughts on face-to-face meetings?
First of all, they are not on the way out.

Five years ago there was a scare that the gen-x and gen-y were not going to want face-to-face. What I’m seeing is that they will only give you one chance. There is a wide variety of conferences and educational opportunities for them to attend and, if your meeting does not meet their needs, they will pursue another organization within their discipline. As we develop our programs, we need to get them involved with the planning so it will fulfill their needs.

What advice would you like to share with the hotel community on how they can best support meeting planners?
There has been a trend to shrink hotel sales teams and to consolidate into regional and national teams with little or no sales staff at the hotel level. From my limited experience and from comments I’ve heard, it is not welcomed.

One reason, because you aren’t allowed to go directly to the sales person at the facility, is the time factor to get answers. The turn-around time is too long and it seems like they don’t know “who’s on first.” If you aren’t going to have sales people on property, there should be access to someone on property, whether it’s a CSM or someone of that level, who normally gets involved after the sale but who you could contact with your questions for clarification and get answers within 24 hours.

I don’t know how the hotels feel about this issue. They have probably done it because of economics, but, from the planners’ perspective, the “streamlining” hasn’t streamlined anything.

What advice do you have for other meeting planners?
Understand your client’s overall goal for the meeting and clearly define the top ten items on their “want and wish” list. I think it starts with good communication. Clients have a huge wish list. Some are more flexible but some are not. By having them define what is most important to them helps you, the planner, to be more efficient and, ultimately, get them what they want. If you have a list that is prioritized, then you can be talking from the very beginning to all the parties about what’s important to making that meeting a success.

Use your network and always ask for advice and recommendations. Sending out an email about a property that you haven’t used before and asking about their experiences, the plusses and minuses, will save an entire day of investigating.

Look to the future. What does this industry look like to you?
I believe that meetings will get shorter and will contain more of what I call “networking with a purpose.”

Expos may be smaller but not dramatically. We have already seen expo vendors doing more pop-ups instead of large, expensive displays. We are seeing fewer handouts in the green movement and a lot fewer booth gifts because of the cost and regulations. There will also be more last minute decisions to hold meetings and last minute decisions to attend meetings.

Any closing thoughts?
Our relationships and our networks are our most important assets. Good communication, honesty and trust are so important to getting the best for everyone.    

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