What can we learn from Personal Shoppers?

By Mark Heymann

With this edition of FocusED looking at meeting planners and their importance to the industry, I took a few minutes to look at some interesting recent research on trends and competitive factors that will shape the global meeting and event industry in the coming year. The research has been done by Meeting Planners International (MPI) and can be found in the organization’s Future Watch 2010 edition. Without focusing on all of the trends and factors that are delineated, and the shifting of selection priorities, two factors that stand out are the importance of participant satisfaction and the strength of professional relationships; although this is not new, it does have added importance in today’s market environment.

For planners, professional relationships ranked #3 overall while suppliers ranked it #1. For years the industry has strived to strengthen relationships by using loyalty programs to increase perception in this area. Meeting planners ranked loyalty programs #5 in importance in the 2009 survey and suppliers listed it as #1 in 2009. But low and behold, it has dropped to #13 and #14, respectively, for this coming year. But if this “tool” is basically taken out of the equation, how can properties/organizations strengthen this key decision area of relationships?

So I got to thinking about this relationship thing to see if maybe there was a new way to look at this critical issue. And what came to me was something developed in a totally different industry but similarly driven by customer service and interpersonal relationships. It is the higher-end clothing market’s personal shopper programs. I recently had the need to buy a birthday present for a friend’s daughter who I really don’t know very well, but wanted to try and make at least some impression. What did I do? I spoke to mom who said “Oh, go over to (name withheld) and see Janet. She is (Name)’s personal shopper.” With this information in hand and wanting to be efficient with my time, I went to a certain store, met Janet and she had it down pat. She knew the exact tastes of this young lady, showed me a couple of outfits, said what she knew would not be liked and convinced me to buy a specific outfit. She wrapped it, I paid for it, and I was done. I got a HUGE smile and thank you for the present. Basically a home run, from her and her mother’s perspective, and it took no time at all. As an aside, efficiency will be a key to suppliers’ success in the coming year according to the research cited above.

The personal shopper model is pretty much how a meeting planner works in representing their clients. The meeting planner determines expectations, needs and projected outcomes for the meetings, then goes in search of the “right” venue; much like my new friend Janet, who has already notified me that some new outfits are due next week, if I am interested in expanding this young lady’s wardrobe. The meeting planner is the “personal shopper” for the meetings that they represent.

That being said, I was led to wonder how this type of relationship, the personal shopper, could be applied to the hotel/meetings business at the supplier level. And clearly, while it is not exactly the same, as the meeting planner is not just buying an outfit, I think there are some parallels that can be drawn. The meeting planner’s decision has an impact on another constituency, namely the participants, while the success of an outfit also impacts a secondary constituency, one’s friends and the perception of those individuals. Ever hear of an outfit that a person loved but everyone else thought was a poor choice? But I digress a bit. What really struck me about the personal shopper was this woman’s complete knowledge of the likes and dislikes of that young lady. I was so fascinated that I asked how she went about garnering this knowledge. And she told me that she spent time with the “buyer,” reviewed what she liked, assessed what would look good (meet her needs) and then kept her records updated as this girl got older, as her needs and buying habits changed.

Well, is this so different from what the industry needs to do regarding its relationship with meeting planners? One thing I think is a key to all of this is that we can no longer talk about what the “industry” should do collectively. Instead, it is all about what each hotel needs to do in regards to strengthening its personal relationships. We have to focus on what each sales person should be doing. We really can’t afford to wait for the next survey results from MPI. We need to have the pulse of the buyer all of the time, 24/7.

While all of the above will be challenging, there is another example that the industry can use to perfect the art of building personal relationships. Think casino hosts. They each have little “black books” in which they keep up to date records on very important guests of the casino. Yes, it is surely a bit different, but what I am suggesting here is a change in perception of the sales person’s role relative to the meeting planner. And with this refinement of role and responsibilities, I believe that an organization will be able to strengthen these professional/personal relationships while yielding a higher percentage of meetings from each of these key sources of meetings business.

Yes, it may well be a paradigm shift in our expectations of what the responsibilities of a sales manager should be, but if the end result is even close to our story about the personal shopper and the proportionate amount of money generated from the young lady’s account, it is probably well worth rethinking this issue.

Until Next Time: Much Success in today’s challenging environment.

Mark Heymann
UniFocus Chairman & CEO