Jay Sachetti joined Jeff O’Brien, partner at Husch Blackwell and Dyanne Ross-Hanson, president of Exit Planning Strategies talked about the market for mergers and acquisitions, exit planning opportunities for companies that don’t end up for sale and how companies can maximize their eventual sale price during an early October panel at the first Upsize on Tap event at Summit Brewing Co. in St. Paul.
When the state Legislature passed a law requiring employers to provide paid leave and safe time for employees, Justin Bieganek started hearing differing details from friends, colleagues and peers.
IN DROVES, Americans are parking the family car this summer, and keeping close to home to enjoy their staycations.
As fuel and food costs continue to skyrocket, a similar stay-at-home phenomenon is happening at some companies as far as their meetings and corporate events. Many have curtailed their plans for off-site meetings, and cut back their participation in trade shows, conventions and other corporate events.
Marnie Ochs-Raleigh, CEO of Roseville-based Web-development company Evolve Systems and a consummate networker, says she attended a meeting with the Minnesota chapter of the American Association of Micro-Businesses (AAM) in May.
“The show was challenged with attendees,” she says, and several breakout sessions were each attended by two to three people.
Professionals who aren’t forgoing in-person networking are nevertheless changing their habits, often looking at online options as a supplement.
This confluence of factors has had an impact on players and planners in the meetings-and-events industry locally and nationally.
A May 2008 MeetingNews Magazine survey of 344 corporate and association meeting planners showed that a majority are now having their budgets slashed. Sixty-six percent of the corporate planners polled said their budgets have already been reduced, and 52.5 percent among association planners.
Attendance has dropped too, according to 40 percent of the corporate planners and 47.5 percent of the association planners surveyed.
On the other hand, venues in the Twin Cities and Minnesota may gain business that would have gone out-of-state, some meeting planners say, as air fares skyrocket and a nearby location looks attractive.
“We have definitely begun to feel the pinch of corporate budgets being tightened, especially in the past few months,” says Jodee McCallum, CEO and director of marketing for Three Sons Signature Cuisine. She and her partners own several well-known local venues, including Blaisdell Manor and St. Anthony Main Event Centre, and run a catering company.
As far as McCallum sees it, planners of corporate events aren?t hosting fewer meetings, but they’re inviting fewer guests.
What’s also being cut back is the feeding of guests; in some cases, a sort of pecking order has been created, where only key corporate personnel are being invited to meetings where food is served, while the rest are invited to shortened meetings that don’t coincide with a meal, she says.
Especially worrisome for her company and others like hers, she says, is the increasing costs for quality ingredients and delivery. To compensate, she’s had to consider adding charges for items and areas she traditionally has kept complimentary.
While her company has offered free delivery within the I-94 loop for the past eight years, McCallum says she?s ?agonizing? over the possibility of eliminating that promotion.
“As we are unwilling to lower the quality of our food by purchasing the less-than-top-notch food ingredients to prepare our meals, we are left with few options,” she says.
Mary Vogel, marketing manager and office manager for Oak Ridge Hotel and Conference Center in Chaska, says she?s been seeing fewer reservations and some cancellations for meetings and events at her venue.
She attributes the drop to high gas prices that have companies thinking twice about flying in executives and employees, or having them traveling long distances by car. “People are tightening their budgets and having meetings in-house, if possible,” says Vogel.
Kathy Gatliff, director of marketing and education for the Midwest Society of Association Executives, based in Roseville, says she hasn’t seen a big change in attendance at her events.
Attendees are “usually budget-conscious anyway, so our goal always has been to offer strong educational programs at a reasonable price,” she says.
She’s actually added a few networking groups this year, including the ?Women?s Leadership Connection? and the ?Young Professionals Group.?
Both have been very successful and well attended, she says, but she has noticed a ?very slight change? in the budgeting practices of her vendors and sponsors.
“I certainly wouldn?t call it a trend yet, but a few have mentioned budgeting issues this year that they didn’t in the past.”
Also, some of the organization?s regulars are participating at a lower level for the Annual Golf Classic, held in June.
“They mentioned that they used to say, We can’t sponsor this year, but we’ll put it in the budget for next year,” she says. “Now they aren’t even saying that.”
Perhaps another casualty of today’s high gas prices is trade-show etiquette. As professionals experience a crunch on their marketing budgets, some may be trying to accomplish more with less, even if their tactics are obnoxious and unfair.
Ochs-Raleigh says she’s observed a spike in the number of trade-show attendees who directly solicit the occupants of booths, rather than pay the fee to exhibit legitimately. At the events she attends, booths cost anywhere from $100 to $600 to rent.
Soliciting booth occupants is a no-no at these events; in many places there are posted signs warning against such infractions.
The damage is two-fold: Booth occupants, as a captive audience, lose out on potential business connections, as they are trapped into listening to their sales pitches; and attendees with questions are stuck waiting in long lines behind them. Consequently, the overall quality of the event suffers.
“It’s very, very irritating,” says Ochs-Raleigh.
An increasing number of professionals may be relying more on online social networking sites to mitigate the costs of business development. They’re using Facebook, LinkedIn, and the new Google-owned site Orkut to find out who knows whom, and then using that information to make new connections.
Also, the websites of many associations and trade shows offer lists of attendees and sponsors, allowing professionals to be more selective and strategic about what events they’ll attend and who they’ll target.
“The interactivity that many websites are now driving is taking the place of having to appear at events and also host them,” says Ochs-Raleigh, who has recently begun using the sites to foment her networking. “Professional introductions are occurring online, followed up by a face-to-face meeting or appointment.”
In the past, Ochs-Raleigh says she applied a more casual approach. ?When I would attend networking events, it would be that I was going with the mindset, I?m bringing a stack of cards and I?m going to meet absolutely everybody that I possibly can,? she says.
Now, because of skyrocketing fuel prices and time constraints, “I need to network with a deliberate, tactical plan.”
The web, she says, can be a launch pad. “It allows us to have a more targeted shotgun approach, rather than the time and expense of a trade show with the hopes that a future customer stops by.”
[contact] Kathy Gatliff, Midwest Society of Association Executives: 651.647.6388; up****@**ae.com; www.msae.com. Jodee McCallum, Three Sons Signature Cuisine: 612.874.0880; jo***@**************en.com; www.threesonssignature.com. Marnie Ochs-Raleigh, Evolve Systems: 651.628.4000; ma****@************ms.com; www.evolve-systems.com. Mary Vogel, Oak Ridge Hotel and Conference Center: 952.368.3100; ma********@***ce.com; oakridge.dolce.com
