 Meeting planners, this post is probably one of the most honest and potentially most controversial posts I've ever done. It's taken me a long time to get ready to launch this post, but it's time to rip off the band-aid. Today we're talking about our event planner bad habits, so stick around if you dare. Hey friends, it's Leanne and you truly are my friends, which is why I felt compelled to do this post about event planner bad habits. To start with, there are so many incredible event professionals out there. A lot of you who are true collaborators and partners with our meeting partners throughout the entire process, and you are completely innocent of all of these bad habits I'm about to outline. And friends, this post is actually not for you. This vlog, however, is for planners like me, those who have fallen short to be true collaborators and partners in the meetings process. But if you find yourself with me in some of these habits, I encourage you to take a step back and see how we can fix some of these habits and that could potentially move our meetings faster or in a better direction with our meeting partners. So let's take this journey together. Bad habit number one, we are bad at communicating changes and updating our partners. And change is inevitable, folks, but we need to do a better job of updating our partners in a timely manner. A potential solution is to have a list of all of our stakeholders for each meeting and when change happens, ensuring that all of those stakeholders are kept in the loop. It could be a plethora of meeting partners or even people internal at our organization that needs to know about these changes. Planner bad habit number two, we are bad at communicating timelines. In fact, we are so bad at this that I did a video about this not too long ago. And if you're watching this in YouTube, you can check out that video right here about communicating timelines better to our partners. We just need to do a better job of it and I'm hopeful that those tips will set you in the right direction. Bad habit number three, they are out there, the fam whores, as I like to call them. These are individuals who attend fams hosted by destinations with absolutely no potential to do business with that destination. And they treat that familiarization trip opportunity as a vacation and it makes us legitimate meeting planners look really bad. Now, friends, I get it sometimes planners and site selection professionals like myself, we need to see a destination without actually having a particular program in hand for that destination. But let's self check ourselves at the door. Let's make sure that there is in fact potential for this destination before we accept an invitation from our partners. And keep in mind that those invitations are coming along every 12 months, every 18 months. So if you miss the opportunity to see a destination now in 12 months time, you might actually have something more concrete at hand. And it would actually make that fam a little bit more beneficial and you'll get more ROI out of it at the time. There is a blog post I wrote about fam best practices for meeting planners. You can find that blog post in the description for this video. Bad habit number four, we are demanding with short turnaround times. I am so guilty of this, but I feel that I'm doing better and this is how I'm fixing it is I'm communicating with my clients, the end users a little bit better about what it means to provide our suppliers and partners with more time to respond to the proposal. The proposals will be more complete. It'll give the partners time to talk to everyone internally and their stakeholders to ensure that they give us more accurate information. So there's a lot of benefit to giving partners more time to respond to that proposal. So doing the education piece I think is the biggest one in ensuring that we give them a little bit more time to respond accordingly. Conversely, bad habit number five is it's a long decision making process. And sometimes it is so drawn out that proposals literally start growing mold. They are so overdue for decision solution for this planners and site selection professionals. Ensure that you have your timelines in hand and ensure that you educate to your end users what it means to make a decision in a timely manner. Sometimes there are financial incentives at hand. So that might be worth sharing as well with our stakeholders to ensure that we get those decisions moved along in a timely manner, not only for ourselves as planners so we can move on to the next phase of planning, but also with respect to our meeting partners. Bad habit number six, the vague lead and the vague RFP. And often planners, sometimes the RFPs are vague because you don't have a lot of information yourself to pass on to the partner to get an accurate proposal. May I suggest then doing an RFI versus an RFP, so RFI being a request for information. This may be a better approach than doing a request for proposal and getting very specific information back when the partner doesn't have specific information to work from in the first place. If you have questions about how RFIs and RFPs can differ and which one is the most beneficial for your meeting program, please reach out to me. My contact information is in the description for this video. Bad habit number seven, the RFP is sent to way too many properties. And boy, have I done this a lot over the years. And I'm really hopeful that my solution for this is to communicate better with my clients about setting the objectives which should pare down the types of properties and the location of the properties that we're looking for. Sending it to more than 10, 15, 20 hotels serves nobody. It's a lot of wasted resources on the part of our meeting partners, hoteliers and destinations. But planners, it gives you decision paralysis. It gives your stakeholders decision paralysis. So let's do more research in the beginning before even sending that lead out to the hotels and make sure that that list only goes to highly qualified properties based on the objectives of our program. Again, I did a blog post about setting objectives and how that drives your destination. You can find that blog post in the description for this video. Planner bad habit number eight and the one that I am the most passionate about changing is when us meeting planners treat our meeting partners and suppliers like crap. This one creates a lot of bad blood and for obvious reasons. When suppliers are treated beneath the planners in terms of their role in the meetings process, it creates a hierarchy and there's little collaboration. But when everyone is on the same level playing field, bringing the same kind of value to the table as the partner, the planner, the supplier, we're all in this together to create a successful meeting. So much ROI comes out of those types of meetings and the meetings that are planned with that respect for one another. Okay, so that is the end of the Band-Aid Ripping Reality Check. Certainly heavier than some of the other content we've created for our meeting planners. If you're looking for that lighter content and looking to put a smile back on your face, I encourage you to go over to our website at conferencesource.net. There you're going to find lots of resources and lots of tips to help you with your event planning. Thanks for sticking with me through to the end of this post and this vlog. I hope you have a fantastic week. Bye for now.