May 21, 2008 by Chris Harrower, CTIS.

I received an email from a blog reader (thanks…always appreciate hearing comments, thoughts, and such!), asking about a phrase I frequently use here. When posting about an upcoming trade show, conference, or convention, I sometimes use the phrase “Back to work”. They asked what I do between shows, if going to shows is “back to work” for me.

It’s a valid question, and raises a short-coming I don’t mean to reflect here. I work every day, so going away is not back to work for me. Sure, I love the shows, and really blossom when I’m in that environment. But I work between the shows as well, so I need to stop using that phrase so much!

I work the phone (followup calls, cold calls, inbound calls from prospective customers), I work email very heavily (I have a number of our best customers who do nearly all their business via email these days), and I write letters, posts, faxes, articles, and anything else I can find to write. As you may be able to tell from this blog, I like to write, and do so as much as I can. For someone who spent many years in radio, you’d think I would prefer speaking…but I nearly always wrote things out when I had something major to say on the air, or at least outlined it, so writing has always been part of what I do.

Actually, I’ve had several people say I should write a book on Group Sales. The Seminar is completely scripted, word for word. I don’t always stick strictly to those exact words, but I wrote the entire thing out. I could easily convert that into a book format, but I wonder if it would hurt the seminar to make it available in book format as well. I like to write, but I LOVE to teach!

When it comes to working with customers, it all comes down to what they want! I teach in the seminar that one question that must be asked of every customer is “how do you want me to contact you?”. And I use that information constantly…if XYZ Tours wants to be contacted via email, that’s how I contact them. If there’s something extremely important or confusing, I will call them, but I take their request to heart, and use their preferred method as much as I can.

So please forgive any confusion…when I go to a trade show, I’m not going “back to work”, and I promise not to use that phrase any more.

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May 15, 2008 by Chris Harrower, CTIS.

Go to any Group Sales convention, trade show, association meeting, or any other gathering of Group Sales folk, and you’ll hear the same question…maybe different interpretations, but the core question is the same:

“Where will the next generation of groups come from?”

We all know that, sadly, the “blue-haired ladies”, and their spouses/friends/significant others are leaving us. It’s a natural attrition that has happened for years…as the older generation passes on, another generation takes their place. Unfortunately, the new generation coming onboard is my generation — Baby Boomers. While “The Greatest Generation” has had no qualms about traveling together on motorcoaches, our generation is not interested. We are the “but we’re still young” generation, and we don’t need buses to travel. We don’t need to be stuck on a bus for that long! We can still fly or drive wherever, and we have no problem with doing that.

So how do we reach them? How do we convince these self sufficient people to hop on a bus with 50 other people and travel together? There are several approaches that are starting to work…and, of course, the price of gas is helping as well. Now it’s getting cheaper to travel on a coach than to drive by yourself.

ABA’s “Save a Penguin” campaign will help…as the word spreads, I think we’ll see an increase of Boomers going by coach, since many of us are environmentally conscious (or at least pretend to be). The more we can help get that word out, the more it’s going to help increase motorcoach business.  Carbon Footprints didn’t even exist a couple of years ago, now more and more people are checking on theirs, and trying to minimize their impact on the environment.

Then there’s “Social Networking”, or Web 2.0 as some call it. Our generation, along with the GenX and GenY generations, are getting more and more active online, and sharing with each other. It used to be that MySpace and Facebook were “just for the kids”, but more and more Boomers are getting pages, and sharing their lives with others. So I’m out there too….I have pages on MySpace, Facebook and LinkedIn, and I’m having a lot of fun with Twitter. I’m still learning how these things work, but if I can be out there in some form, I can tweak it as I find what people are looking to see. And if there’s a social site that I’m not on, post a comment below, and we’ll meet there!

Look for me out there in the Social Sphere, and let’s be friends, or follow each other, or whatever they call it. As my mother always said, “Listen…I couldn’t hurt!”.

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May 6, 2008 by Chris Harrower, CTIS.

Back to work…after a month without any tradeshows, it’s starting to warm up again. I have a Senior Expo tomorrow, then I’m doing the GLAMER (Group Leaders of America) shows in Baltimore and Philadelphia Thursday and Friday.

I don’t think I’ve found many things in the Group Sales World that seem to “polarize” people as much as GLAMER shows do. Either you love ‘em like crazy, or you absolutely despise them. I used to be on the other side of the fence…many years ago, I did the GLAMER show in Philadelphia (had a booth next to the Dutch Apple, actually…amazing how often things come around full circle). I thought the show was hideous, and swore I’d never do them again. Worse than a trick-or-treat show, it was just a mess. The group leaders who attended did not care about anything except what freebies we had, and actually walked away while I was trying to tell them about the Choo Choo Barn. Rude? Oh, yeah.

But Joan Payne, the Dutch Apple’s Group Sales Director at the time (and one of my mentors in the biz) loved GLAMER shows, and did upwards of 6-8 of them every year. She booked business, she made friends, and she did very well with the shows. She and I talked after the show in Philly, and she tried to explain how to work with people like that.

It was the first time I had ever encountered what’s now referred to in Marketingspeech as an “elevator pitch”. Can you sell your property in 30 seconds or less? The name, if you’ve never heard it before, refers to being able to pitch your property in the time it takes for the elevator to get to the ground floor of the hotel where you and your “target” are staying. A booth at GLAMER really required being fluent in your elevator pitch!

Fast forward several years…GLAMER has changed, and so have I. I’ve got a ton more experience, I have my elevator pitch down cold, and GLAMER isn’t a freebies show any longer. No booths, no pop-ups, no displays at all. You sit, and the group leaders have signature cards. In fact, they can’t win any goodies at lunch unless they speak with everyone there. I love signature cards…they guarantee you a “captive audience”. They walk up to your table, hand you their card, and they aren’t going anywhere until you give that card back! They have to listen to you, ’cause you’re holding them up with that card.

Now, don’t be abusive, and don’t hold them an excessive amount of time, but that card guarantees you have time to tell them about your property, and give them your information (not necessarily your swag…you can actually give them brochures, schedules, and other promotional information).

But GLAMER is home to another important Group Sales skill that many of us don’t like to talk about. That’s FOLLOWUP! GLAMER leaders are the type of people who must be “touched” at least 3 times before you can expect anything from them. It doesn’t necessarily have to be phone calls, but I always make that call my last “touch”, and it does work. I will send them out a followup letter about a month after the show (once the CD with all the leads arrives), then give them a call about a month after that. No pressure…”just wanted to see if you received the information I sent you about 2009, and see if I could answer any questions for you”.

So I do four GLAMER shows every year, and I really like them! Actually, I was just doing three, but last year, I missed the Baltimore date due to a personal conflict, so I did Washington, DC instead, and it was amazing! Lots of people who knew nothing about us, but wanted a new place to take their groups. So I’m going back there this August, along with Baltimore, Philadelphia and Harrisburg. And I’m going to think about adding a couple more next year, if these continue to work well.

If you’re not doing GLAMER, and you understand about how to work followup the right way, you might give GLAMER a try again. I know that the suppliers I talk to at the shows do speak very highly of it! Might be worth a shot to boost your traffic! Of course, as with everything in this business, YMMV! If you don’t know what that means, please hire me for the Group Sales Seminar, and I’ll teach you…

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