10 Best Practices for the Part-time Meeting Planner

In the beginning, there was the part-time meeting planner.

Back in the early part of the last century, whenever a sales meeting needed to be planned, the director of sales took care of it -- or he handed it off to his administrative assistant. Part-time planners have been around as long as the meetings industry has existed. As the 20th century moved on, and planning evolved into a profession, with associations, certifications, and accepted best practices, part-time planners didn't disappear. Salespeople, human resource directors, marketing professionals, and administrative assistants continued to plan meetings alongside the army of professional meeting planners organizing events all over the world -- and they're still at it today.

Here's what today's part-time planner needs to do to stay effective.


LEVEL 1: PREPARATION
1. Be Ready to Assume the Role    
Administrative professionals, executive assistants, secretaries -- no matter what title they may hold, these professionals provide administrative support in a business setting and their tasks often include planning meetings, events, and conferences.  

"Organizing events is no longer a nice-to-have skill set for assistants -- it's a must-have that businesses expect," says Lucy Brazier, CEO of Marcham Publishing, publisher of Executive Secretary Magazine and an international speaker and conference chair.

Meetings should be viewed as project management opportunities. "An administrative professional can be a great facilitator or huge roadblock to a successful event," says Julie Perrine, founder and CEO of All Things Admin, a company dedicated to developing and providing training, mentoring, and resources for administrative professionals worldwide.

Perrine, who started her career as a secretary and has held a wide range of titles as an administrator, has experienced firsthand the success that can be achieved when effective planning skills are in place. "An administrator's role can make or break the success of the meeting they are helping to coordinate," says Perrine. She adds that these events must be managed like projects, not just tasks.

2. Take Advantage of Educational Programs
Meeting planning associations, as well as industry conferences, are a way to gain education and build a strong network of resources. Not only are there organizations like Meeting Professionals International (MPI), which offers courses like Basics Boot Camp: Meeting Fundamentals, but the International Association of Administrative Professionals and the American Society of Administrative Professionals also provide educational opportunities.
 
3. Stay Current
Industry publications (like Successful Meetings), websites, and blogs provide information and education on the latest meeting planning trends and best practices.


LEVEL 2: DOING THE JOB
4. Customize as Much as Possible
Customized forms, templates, and checklists that Perrine has developed throughout her career have allowed her to be proactive instead of reactive. She has created checklists pertaining to site tours, participant lists, travel/hotel arrangements, meeting rooms, food and beverage, and the agenda. (Visit here for a copy of Perrine's meeting questionnaire.)

A similar punch list has proven to be invaluable to Dr. Robert Hollon, executive director of the Association for Science Teacher Education, where planning the annual conference is one of his many responsibilities. His checklist, he points out, "is integrated with a list of contract must-haves, like clear force majeure clauses, attrition language [when fewer attendees book in the host hotel room block than planned], non-performance statements, and the like. That way when I am negotiating and facilitating our conference, it is less likely that I will miss something."
 
5. Find Tactical Partners
Lindsay Griffiths, director of global relationship management at the International Lawyers Network, an association of more than 5,000 attorneys across 67 countries, plans anywhere from two to four international conferences a year. This is but one of the many hats she wears. Focused on developing a unified message for these independent firms, her other responsibilities include education, marketing, implementing a social media strategy, blogging, recruiting, onboarding new members, and managing collateral materials. By not being afraid to ask for help, Griffiths has excelled as a part-time planner.

"I am very detail-oriented and like to be involved in every aspect of our conferences, but I have learned to leverage that by working with local destination management companies [DMCs]," notes Griffiths. "I leave the actual running of our conferences to these on-site providers. They manage transportation, tours, and other aspects, plus they can get access to things that you wouldn't be able to get on your own."

Convention and visitors bureaus (CVBs) and destination marketing organizations (DMOs) also have helped Griffiths by providing insider information and, more importantly, saving her a great deal of time at no cost. That is a win-win. Instead of making numerous calls to potential hotels, convention centers, and off-site venues, one call to the CVB or DMO will result in RFPs, bids, proposals, and help with negotiation.

This gives Griffiths time to focus on facilitating networking, which is what she considers the most important part of her events. "We build unique cultural experiences into our conferences to help our delegates bond," she says about activities such as spending an afternoon immersed in the Maori culture of New Zealand, cycling through the rice paddies in Vietnam, and learning Thai dancing in Bangkok.

6. Know the Reason and Goals for the Meeting
"Part-time planners who are thrown into the job might not understand how important it is to know why the meeting is happening," says Kristi Casey Sanders, DES, HMCC, director of professional development at MPI. "I've talked to a lot of executive-level part-time planners who don't map their event design to smart objectives because the upper management at their companies never cared about strategy, so they in turn never got into the habit. Now they're in trouble because they can't prove the value of their work or how it has generated revenue or helped achieve organizational objectives. That's a problem because if the C-level doesn't understand that, your meeting is going to be a line item that's easily cut."

 

Sanders advises part-time planners to ask these questions, which she calls "the four Ws":
• Why are we having this meeting?
• What are we trying to achieve?
• What kind of audience behavior or feelings are we trying to inspire?
• What does success look like?

"You must start with that thought process," says Sanders. "When you do, it's very easy to make decisions pertaining to site selection, design, content, room sets, marketing, technology needed, and where to allocate the majority of your budget. Once you have smart objectives, you'll know what kind of success metrics you need to track. You can point to hard statistics that prove what your work is worth and how it contributes to the bottom line, how it achieved organizational objectives. You'll also have a baseline measurement by which you can continue to improve, not to mention give you impressive stats for your LinkedIn resume."
 
7. Prove Return on Investment
"If you focus on the strategy first, it will strengthen your logistics and help you identify what kind of success metrics you need to prove a meeting's ROI," notes Sanders, who recommends the book, Return on Investment in Meetings and Events, by Jack J. Phillips, M. Theresa Breining, and Patricia Pulliam Phillips, for help in learning how to measure the tangible and intangible value of meetings.

Board retreats, sales incentives, training, conferences, conventions -- part-time planners arrange them all. In order to plan such events, it is necessary to rub shoulders with those in the C-suite -- not only facilitating a successful event, but enhancing one's career as well.

Those professionals who have risen to the challenge of planning meetings in addition to their other duties -- and can prove it on a spreadsheet -- often emerge from the process looking like organizational stars.
 
8. Be Smart About Statistics
Numbers are imperative. Let's say you plan a meeting that costs $30,000, but it results in $1.2 million in sales. That program just delivered a benefit-to-cost ratio of 40:1 (anything better than 2:1 is considered good), which means that for every dollar your company invested, it generated $40. Or, you organized a training meeting that resulted in employees' saving hundreds of hours on non-sales tasks; every one of those hours has a dollar value attached to it. If your leadership programs have improved employee retention, you just saved your company a significant amount; it costs companies up to 80 percent of an employee's salary to replace him or her.

There is a lot of tangible and intangible ROI that meetings generate, so it's important to learn how to track success metrics and communicate the results. "Meetings are the engine for greater economic growth, productivity, community, learning, awareness and new ideas," says Sanders. "When you speak as a strategic meeting designer and can articulate success metrics, it gives you an incredibly powerful language to talk to executives in the C-suite and gives you a strategic role to play within the company."


LEVEL 3: ADVANCE YOUR CAREER
9. Develop New Skills
Griffiths' meeting planning role has added other dimensions to her skill sets. "In order to pull off conferences, I've learned to be detail oriented, improve my effectiveness as a public speaker, and to stay calm in the face of crisis -- all skills that have easily transferred to other parts of my job," she says.

Hira Mahmood, corporate relations manager for New York City--based Autonomous Research, provider of research on financial companies, handles the company's client database, organizes the schedules of internal analysts, and assists the sales team. She also organizes meetings, from one-on-ones to large conferences, and her planning role has added value to her career strategy. "I am learning so much about dealing with various investor relations teams and about what it takes to add value and insight for our clients," she says.

 

Fred Bendaña, senior vice president of sales and marketing at CPG Agency, a St. Louis--based experiential marketing and event production agency, works with many corporate executives like Mahmood who, in addition to their day-to-day responsibilities, take on the task of creating meaningful event experiences. Planning a meeting should be looked at as an opportunity, he says. "Many emerging leaders are given this assignment to see how they will perform."
 
10. Promote Your Value
"The only time the lawyers from the 91 law firms that comprise the International Lawyers Network see me is at these gatherings I plan for them," notes Griffiths. "Our conferences have given me access to our C-suite, with whom I have frank and open discussions."

Brazier agrees that organizing meetings and events offers the opportunity to liaise closely with stakeholders. "Every event is a piece of theater, so pull it off and you will earn brownie points all around for your business acumen, creativity, organization skills, and achievement-striving nature."  



Questions or comments? Email [email protected]



This article appears in the February 2017 issue of Successful Meetings.

6. Know the Reason and Goals for the Meeting
"Part-time planners who are thrown into the job might not understand how important it is to know why the meeting is happening," says Kristi Casey Sanders, DES, HMCC, director of professional development at MPI. "I've talked to a lot of executive-level part-time planners who don't map their event design to smart objectives because the upper management at their companies never cared about strategy, so they in turn never got into the habit. Now they're in trouble because they can't prove the value of their work or how it has generated revenue or helped achieve organizational objectives. That's a problem because if the C-level doesn't understand that, your meeting is going to be a line item that's easily cut."

 

Sanders advises part-time planners to ask these questions, which she calls "the four Ws":
• Why are we having this meeting?
• What are we trying to achieve?
• What kind of audience behavior or feelings are we trying to inspire?
• What does success look like?

"You must start with that thought process," says Sanders. "When you do, it's very easy to make decisions pertaining to site selection, design, content, room sets, marketing, technology needed, and where to allocate the majority of your budget. Once you have smart objectives, you'll know what kind of success metrics you need to track. You can point to hard statistics that prove what your work is worth and how it contributes to the bottom line, how it achieved organizational objectives. You'll also have a baseline measurement by which you can continue to improve, not to mention give you impressive stats for your LinkedIn resume."
 
7. Prove Return on Investment
"If you focus on the strategy first, it will strengthen your logistics and help you identify what kind of success metrics you need to prove a meeting's ROI," notes Sanders, who recommends the book, Return on Investment in Meetings and Events, by Jack J. Phillips, M. Theresa Breining, and Patricia Pulliam Phillips, for help in learning how to measure the tangible and intangible value of meetings.

Board retreats, sales incentives, training, conferences, conventions -- part-time planners arrange them all. In order to plan such events, it is necessary to rub shoulders with those in the C-suite -- not only facilitating a successful event, but enhancing one's career as well.

Those professionals who have risen to the challenge of planning meetings in addition to their other duties -- and can prove it on a spreadsheet -- often emerge from the process looking like organizational stars.
 
8. Be Smart About Statistics
Numbers are imperative. Let's say you plan a meeting that costs $30,000, but it results in $1.2 million in sales. That program just delivered a benefit-to-cost ratio of 40:1 (anything better than 2:1 is considered good), which means that for every dollar your company invested, it generated $40. Or, you organized a training meeting that resulted in employees' saving hundreds of hours on non-sales tasks; every one of those hours has a dollar value attached to it. If your leadership programs have improved employee retention, you just saved your company a significant amount; it costs companies up to 80 percent of an employee's salary to replace him or her.

There is a lot of tangible and intangible ROI that meetings generate, so it's important to learn how to track success metrics and communicate the results. "Meetings are the engine for greater economic growth, productivity, community, learning, awareness and new ideas," says Sanders. "When you speak as a strategic meeting designer and can articulate success metrics, it gives you an incredibly powerful language to talk to executives in the C-suite and gives you a strategic role to play within the company."


LEVEL 3: ADVANCE YOUR CAREER
9. Develop New Skills
Griffiths' meeting planning role has added other dimensions to her skill sets. "In order to pull off conferences, I've learned to be detail oriented, improve my effectiveness as a public speaker, and to stay calm in the face of crisis -- all skills that have easily transferred to other parts of my job," she says.

Hira Mahmood, corporate relations manager for New York City--based Autonomous Research, provider of research on financial companies, handles the company's client database, organizes the schedules of internal analysts, and assists the sales team. She also organizes meetings, from one-on-ones to large conferences, and her planning role has added value to her career strategy. "I am learning so much about dealing with various investor relations teams and about what it takes to add value and insight for our clients," she says.

 

Fred Bendaña, senior vice president of sales and marketing at CPG Agency, a St. Louis--based experiential marketing and event production agency, works with many corporate executives like Mahmood who, in addition to their day-to-day responsibilities, take on the task of creating meaningful event experiences. Planning a meeting should be looked at as an opportunity, he says. "Many emerging leaders are given this assignment to see how they will perform."
 
10. Promote Your Value
"The only time the lawyers from the 91 law firms that comprise the International Lawyers Network see me is at these gatherings I plan for them," notes Griffiths. "Our conferences have given me access to our C-suite, with whom I have frank and open discussions."

Brazier agrees that organizing meetings and events offers the opportunity to liaise closely with stakeholders. "Every event is a piece of theater, so pull it off and you will earn brownie points all around for your business acumen, creativity, organization skills, and achievement-striving nature."  



Questions or comments? Email [email protected]



This article appears in the February 2017 issue of Successful Meetings.