 Chances are you've spent quite a bit of time putting together the perfect proposal for your clients and now there's radio silence and you're wondering if you can get an update. We're gonna talk about some best practice tips and tricks for getting better updates from your meeting planner clients. Today we're talking about proposals but before we dive in on following up on proposals we've sent, I just wanted to introduce Mandy. This is my neighbor's dog here, Mandy. She's taking a bit of a nap but she's staying with us for the month so you might see a little bit more of Mandy. She's adorable and she's been sleeping here in the office with us all day and yeah, she's just been such a nice little blessing to our little family this month so and is getting along well with the chickens which is really important but we're not here to talk about chickens, we're here to talk about proposals which can be stinkers in and of themselves especially when your planners don't get back to you with answers in a timely manner. Planners are busy people and there's a multitude of reasons why they're not getting back to you and first and foremost I don't think you should take it personally. Chances are they are being inundated with requests for updates so hopefully what these tips and tricks will do will enable your particular update or your particular request for an update to be pushed to the top of the pile so I'm gonna list off a few dos and don'ts when following up on a proposal and if you do try these and you do see a better response, right? I would love for you to let me know so please email me, I'm gonna have my email in the blog post below here and you can let me know if these tips and tricks worked for you. First, let's talk about some don'ts when you're following up with a proposal. Most proposals have a timeline or a due date attached to them so whether that proposal came through Sevent or Meeting Broker or even through the email itself from the meeting planner, chances are that there was a due date attached. My advice is to not follow up with the planner until after that due date has passed. They're likely tending to other priorities which is why they had a due date to begin with and chances are they haven't had a chance to even review the first proposal. Now for those of you that follow my blog and my blog regularly, you know one of my pet peeves for meeting suppliers is when we minimize our position to that of just being a supplier and not being a partner in the process and often I will get requests for updates where the email says just following up. Those three words just following up. Friends, can I encourage you to get rid of those words out of your vocabulary just following up. You shouldn't just be doing anything. Everything you do is very strategic in the meeting process and I really want you to consider yourself a partner in the process and not merely a supplier and when you use the word just you've minimized your role and minimized your expertise. So please let's get rid of the word just following up. Your follow up is important and an update is important and it's part of the process. Also don't assume that the planner has read your proposal in detail, especially if there are parts of your proposal that are with limitations. So it fell outside of the parameters of the actual proposal itself. It could be something like you didn't have enough guest rooms to house the entire block or perhaps your ballroom was literally just a little bit too small and couldn't do all 600 people but could maybe do 580. Make sure that you put that in the update because there's a good chance the planner didn't pick up on those tiny limitations when they first read the proposal. So make sure that you readjust, readdress those. Also don't ask for an update every few days. If you have time to ask for an update every few days perhaps you and I should connect on some other strategic projects that we can work on this summer but only look to get an update maybe once a week from the planner. Again, the planner is quite a busy person so answering emails every few days is gonna come off as a little bit annoying if it happens for too long. The other thing that planners don't take kindly to is when they're being bullied into a decision. And sometimes we'll see meeting suppliers bully us with unrealistic timelines or literally being asked to make a decision or we'll lose the space especially if the bullying is dishonest. Unfortunately I've seen that quite a bit where a meeting supplier will impose a strict deadline the deadline passes and yet the proposal is still valid. So it's created anxiety and stress in my life and in my client's life where none really needed to exist. Which brings us to some dos when following up on your proposals. Do reread the initial RFP before you hit send on your email. You might find some cool tips in there or some tidbits about the program that you can now put into your email and acknowledge the business that that planner or program has had with your organization before. Perhaps they've worked with a different department or a different seller. Make sure you acknowledge that and start building that trust relationship and that knowledge based relationship with that background information. Also provide realistic timelines. Again, these aren't bullish timelines these are realistic timelines and be honest about the time that you need to update your team and hopefully the planner will be able to get back to you in a timely manner. Now if all these other dos have failed and you can't find any more nuggets and tidbits about their organization or their program to show that you're really listening to their needs you can provide value in so many other ways. So when your follow up provide value that would benefit the planner in their day to day activities as a meeting planner. Perhaps it's a link to a blog post that you think might showcase some value for them or taking your own expertise or your organization's expertise provide them value that they can use as a meeting planner to better their program or their career. So there's a multitude of ways that you can provide value outside of your organization's direct services and you can pass those on to the planner. And finally, when you're following up on a proposal please ask for a call to action. If the planner isn't clear on what it is you're asking and how you're asking they're going to stumble through how to respond to your follow up. So have a clear and concise call to action something easy that the planner can respond to and chances are you can get those answers quite quickly and you're able to update your team at the organization. I hope these tips have helped but there's probably things that you've experienced that also work when following up with planners and I would love to hear from you. Will you do me a favor? Please comment on the video below on strategies that you've used with meeting planners to get updates in a timely manner and I will make sure to get that information out on a future blog post or blog. Thanks for watching. I hope you have a great week. Bye for now.