 If you're a meeting partner whose market includes corporate meeting planners, then this video and blog post is for you. I'm talking about different types of corporate meeting planners and how best to reach them. So stick around. Hey, it's Leanne from LeanneColderwood.com. We're talking about corporate meeting planners and their personality does tend to differ from those association meeting planners and independent meeting planners and others in the meetings industry. So what is this amazing client we call a corporate meeting planner? Well, by definition, a corporate meeting planner is someone who is employed by a corporation or large organization. So for example, those in the banking industry, law firms, technology firms, oil and gas companies, pharmaceuticals, these are all corporate meeting planners that work under a larger umbrella. Corporate meeting planners are a liability on an organization's bottom line. So they are not the people responsible for creating revenue for their company. For example, a pharmaceutical company, they make their money through pharmaceuticals, not that the work that the meeting planner does. But it doesn't mean as a liability, their role is not important. It is critically important. A lot of their meetings are internal meetings that help staff, staff with training or staff retention type meetings and incentives. They also may be external and client facing meetings where they're inviting clients of the organization in to learn more about the corporation. So the style of their meetings can look twofold, whether internal or external, but getting through to these corporate meeting planners also looks different from any other meeting planner that you might be working with. So we're going to talk today about how to connect to better with these types of planners. As I've mentioned, corporate meeting planners plan a variety of different events, be it internal staff training, internal incentive or even external client facing B2B meetings. All of those meetings, though, do not originate with the corporate meeting planner. They are taking their direction from someone else, be it a departmental manager to a director to even a C-level executive. Those are the individuals who are driving the meeting and requesting help from the corporate meeting planner to execute this meeting. So there's a couple of things already at play for that corporate meeting planner is one, they're not the primary decision maker and two, they're not responsible for creating the immediate goals and objectives. Now a good corporate meeting planner may press their internal client about what the goals and objectives are for the program, but there's a high likelihood they may not get the answers that you then in turn need to put your best foot forward. We can't fault the corporate meeting planner for that, they're doing their best to get you the answers that you need, but sometimes there's just no answers to be found with some of their internal clients. In my opinion, there are two distinct types of corporate meeting planners. There could be a number of subtypes off of these two distinct types, but we're going to lump them all together into these two groups of people and I'm going to outline a few strategies that may work in connecting with them and creating a relationship with them to further your business. The first type of corporate meeting planner is one who actually has the word meeting planner or event planner in their job title. This is someone who probably spends more than 60% of their day planning and executing on meetings and events. They may also have some formal education behind them, whether it's the CMP designation or even a bachelor certificate in meeting and event management. These are people who have gone to school and potentially have chosen corporate events and meetings as a career and that is where they spend a majority of their time. These corporate meeting planners tend to be type A personalities and I did a blog post about type A personalities that you can find here. So they are very busy, they're very organized, but they do tend to be standoffish. Confession, I used to be a corporate meeting planner and probably fit into that role well because I am one of those very standoffish people, especially if and when I first meet you. So these are the planners that we got to work a little bit harder to get to know and again that blog post will have information on how to do that. So building a relationship with them isn't the easiest thing in the world, but here's what happens when you do build a good relationship with an expert corporate meeting planner is they are loyal. If they can go back to the same venue or destination or AV company that works for them, you've made their job easier. So creating a loyal trust built relationship with them is the easiest way to get repeat business in the meetings industry. Creating the attention of these experienced meeting planners isn't impossible, but you do have to do a bit of homework. Research as much as possible on the types of meetings that they plan. It's really difficult to do this with this type of audience because it's not just going to show up on their XYZ corporation website. This is something you got to dig a little deeper, maybe inside of your hotel brand about who that person has been working with in the past. Or you can go to their LinkedIn profile to find out what kind of meetings they've been planning. Even then you might turn up empty and have nothing to go on on the types of meetings that they plan. So now what do you do? This is when you really need to sharpen your pencil and differentiate your product and service. You really need to showcase things that are going to catch their attention. Because chances are they have heard it all before. They've been visited by a number of hotels. They've been prosecuted by a thousand AV firms. So you really need to make your proposal or your introduction stand out from the rest. I have again a number of articles about email tips and tricks that you can read here that outlines how you can best position yourself in an email introduction to a corporate meeting planner. These planners also tend to not be the final decision makers. So you've done all this romancing with them. You've given them all the information and an incredible value based proposition. They're still not the one making the decision at the end of the day. Going around them though is detrimental to the process. They are the gatekeeper. So you can ask for access to the internal client or stakeholder. But you need to ask permission. This isn't something you can just go around them and start asking around because that unfortunately could come back to you and not in a great way. Some things that may not work with the experienced corporate meeting planner are full day FAM trips or full day site visits. Because 60% of their job is meetings and we know how busy meetings are, they need to spend time in the office. So the full day FAMs may be difficult to pull off with this group. But might work better is if you get a group of them together and even offer some kind of educational component to that day. Then they have something they can take back to their corporation as professional development. So try that one, see if that one works with your corporate meeting planners. Another great idea for experienced corporate meeting planners are the after hours activities like receptions and dinners in the evening. Then if you're able to invite a number of them to the same event, then you've created a learning opportunity, even a networking opportunity where they can share best practices. The second type of corporate meeting planner are those who only plan meetings occasionally and the meetings do tend to be smaller in nature. Smaller board meetings, smaller training meetings, those big elaborate events and meetings, they're left to the corporate meeting planning department or potentially even outsourced to an independent meeting planner. But those smaller boardroom meetings, those are things that administrative assistants can take on. You also may deal with someone in human resources or the communications department, marketing departments. There's a plethora of different departments at the corporation who may have someone that's going to help with the meeting. And the meeting planning is only a small part of their job. So trying to get their attention looks very different from those who are experienced and well versed in meeting planning. Getting the attention of an occasional corporate meeting planner has to look different. You need to cut out all the industry lingo. So keep things simple. These are not people who are going to cut their teeth every single day on meetings. So removing the industry lingo and creating something that's easy to understand and easy to digest is going to make you stand out in the proposal and prospecting stages. Similar to experienced corporate meeting planners, you may have to dig for the goals and objectives of the program. And this type of meeting planner may not have the tools at hand to get you the answers that you need. You may need to lead them down a series of open-ended questions to find out what the goals and objectives are for each of their programs. The great thing about occasional corporate meeting planners is they are fun to romance. So keep in mind these are generally administrative assistants who, again, are busy, busy, busy. But these types of administrative assistants, they are not recognized often for the hard work that they do. So given an opportunity to visit your hotel or destination and experience a reception or a dinner, these are fun events for them. And so it's easier to get them out, especially as a group, to your hotel to take a look around because they've worked all week and they love being pampered. So this is where you can really exercise all the strengths of your product and really showcase it to them in a fun and entertaining way. Another great thing about the occasional corporate meeting planner is they can likely refer you to other occasional corporate meeting planners in the corporation. So building a relationship with one planner can tend to lead to relationships with other planners and so on and so forth. Building the relationship with one planner could be the start of many great relationships in that corporation. Those are my tips for the two types of corporate meeting planners that you may see when you're out prospecting and finding business for your organization. There's such a great group of people to work with. They're hardworking people and they're people we need in this industry to keep our industry moving forward because meetings do mean business. If you have any best practices for working with corporate meeting planners, will you share it with me by commenting below this video? Would love to learn from you. As well, if you haven't subscribed yet to my YouTube channel, please do so now. I have videos coming out every week that help you attract more meeting planning business. Thanks for joining me. We'll see you next time. Bye for now.