Meetings are effective tools that are easily overlooked. Creating and executing effective meetings is not as easy as it seems. Ineffective management can cause a great deal of confusion and frustration. There is a ton of data that suggests that meetings that are not effectively managed can greatly damage the brand and the organization.
In our previous blog titled ‘Five things you need to do before your next B2B meeting’, we covered the key constituents of an effective meeting. Employing the use of a meeting management app can help meeting managers by greatly reducing manual efforts and can help them concentrate on aspects that actually matter while creating impactful meetings. In this blog, we take you through five key reasons why you need a meeting management app to create productive meeting experiences at trade shows.
Preparation
A meeting with a vague agenda seldom ends up being productive. Particularly at a setting like a trade show that involves considerable expense, it is unwise to step into a meeting without a plan. Attendees stepping into meetings need to be aware of what is going to be discussed so that they are in a place to contribute to the conversation and raise queries that may impact their business. In short, it gets everyone on the same page and ensures that the discussion follows a sequential order and keeps it on track.
A meeting management app ensures that every one of the attendees is kept informed of the agenda well in advance. And it also gives meeting managers the option of adding talking points to the agenda before the meeting starts.
Related: Rediscovering the lost art of productive meetings
Resource management
Meetings at events run on tight schedules. The right people can greatly influence the effectiveness of a meeting. At events and trade shows, for example, there are multiple meetings taking place simultaneously and a great number of these meetings are with high-level decision makers and SMEs. These members are useful resources and more often than not, need to be at multiple places at once. Similarly, meeting spaces need to be managed to ensure that they are used in an optimized manner.
A meeting management app can help schedule their time better and can help meeting managers ensure that they are present for every discussion. Moreover, managing these resources effectively considerably shortens the sales cycle and influences a buying decision.
The timeline
If there’s one thing that most meeting managers hope for, it is that meetings stick to the timeline. In many cases, meetings end up being extremely stressful and end up going a full circle. In an ideal situation, it is best to avoid these situations, but it is never that simple. But what the meeting manager worries about is when a meeting interferes with the schedule of another. Prospects find it extremely inconveniencing to wait long periods of time to get a meeting started. The other alternative to avoid this mishap is to reschedule the meeting to ensure that everyone is present. A meeting scheduling app can be a handy tool to handle such situations. It can be used to alert meeting attendees of any changes in the schedule through in-app notifications.
Subsequent follow-up
More often than not, the sale of a product does not conclude at the event itself. And this is why a follow-up strategy is an absolute necessity. The follow-up process is just as important as the meeting itself. It is expected to remind customers of what was discussed at the meeting and should influence a sales decision. Follow-up meetings are a great way to do this. Once a meeting concludes, the CRM is updated and this lays down the foundation for a follow-up meeting that involves a sales discussion. A meeting management app allows prospects to schedule meetings directly from a CRM instance like Salesforce without the need to send numerous emails. Moreover, employing a meeting management app boosts meeting confirmation rates by 85%.
Attributing meeting ROI
Companies that exhibit at events and trade shows spend a great deal of expense and effort planning and executing meetings. And in a majority of cases, the impact of these meetings is left ambiguous. And when it comes to giving a CMO a clearer and justified picture of returns, the events team is left with nothing more than vanity metrics and figures. And CMOs no longer care about these numbers. Using a meeting management software can provide a clearer picture of returns by attributing the impact of meetings on the sales pipeline. This approach can help event professionals reach out to higher management and influence higher investments for subsequent events.
Related: The basics of building an immaculate event budget
Meetings are the building blocks of successful business relationships. The points discussed above are a few ways in which a meeting management software can help forge new relationships and strengthen existing ones. To learn more about how you can create impactful meeting experiences and build a strong sales pipeline at events and trade shows, reach out to us now. Schedule a quick demo today!
