If you're confident that you know what your qualifiers want in an incentive program, you can skip this article.

But if you suspect that your conferences could be more competitive, attract more qualifiers, and drive more sales, keep reading.

In late 2005, Brian Lauber, CMO, OneAmerica Financial Partners, undertook a total review of the company's incentive programs, a multiphase process that lasted a year and, in at least one way, is ongoing. “We evaluated our meeting planning vendors,” he explains. “Then we reviewed the different incentive programs we were running for each of our companies. Finally, we surveyed producers and sales reps and assessed their preferences for future meetings.” He wanted to find ways to boost consistency, save money, and get the answer to that age-old question: Are our incentive conferences worth the investment?

He got all that — and more.

Your Customers' Money

OneAmerica is a network of five companies offering products in the areas of life insurance, retirement services, and employee benefits. Based in Indianapolis, OneAmerica is a mutual insurance company, meaning that executives are answerable to customers. Lauber says that he began with that premise as he and other senior executives considered the company's investment in incentive programs. “Every dollar we spend is our customers' money,” he says. “We have to spend it wisely.”

At the same time, Lauber notes that OneAmerica is “a distribution-driven company.” As President and CEO Dayton Molendorp said in his 2006 letter to policy-holders, in order to grow “we will aggressively market and promote our products and people, and we will continue to hone our operations to be as efficient and productive as possible.”

To hit those goals — increasing market share and reining in costs — the company's first order of business for meetings was to consolidate its incentive programs and share management of them with one incentive company. As companies had joined the OneAmerica family, they had brought with them various travel vendors and employees who did pieces of meeting management. “They were all doing their own thing,” Lauber says. “We needed a better way to manage meetings. We needed to raise the standard.”

Some of the employees became part of an expanded meeting team at OneAmerica, led by Kathy Wampler, manager, meetings and events services. As Lauber oversaw the process of combining the disparate conferences, Wampler began researching incentive houses.

In the end, OneAmerica streamlined its trips into two incentive programs, each run on an 18-month qualification schedule and each rewarding a different level of distribution partner. The “entry level” trip has 600 to 700 attendees (including spouses and guests), while the program for top performers involves 40 qualifiers and guests.

Wampler's research, along with the experience OneAmerica had running a program with St. Louis-based Maritz in October 2005, led to the selection of the incentive giant in early 2006 as OneAmerica's meeting management partner.

Working with Maritz

Wampler and her five-person meeting management team handle more than just incentives. On the company's annual roster of 150 to 200 meetings are business conferences, divisional meetings, and events connected to OneAmerica's title sponsorship of the Indianapolis Mini-Marathon and the Andretti Green IndyCar Series racing team.

Wampler is the primary liaison with Maritz for the company's two incentive programs and its national education conference. Diane Dikeman, assistant vice president, strategic marketing, oversees the department. “We have a dedicated Maritz team that works with us,” Dikeman explains, both in the planning stages and on site at conferences.

“We partner on site selection. Maritz suggests key sites that have worked well for other companies, we come up with some suggestions, and then Maritz comes back with three finalists.” Dikeman appreciates that the company's huge presence in the industry gives it great negotiating leverage. “Maritz has strong relationships and a strong reputation,” she says. “Not only do they have a lot of knowledge but buying power as well, which equates to greater value for us.” Ultimately, the site selection decision is OneAmerica's. “They secure the contracts with our approval,” Dikeman says.

The decision to hire Maritz was based on “the level of support we needed,” according to Lauber. “We wanted to find a partner who could add value, and who could help us make better business decisions in terms of working with our producers.” Relationship-building with producers is a primary business goal, he says. “If we are doing the best for our producers, our policyholders benefit.”