In the midst of uncertainty and economic calamity, Louann Cashill, CMP, CMM, is one meeting professional who's having “a lot of fun.” Why? Every day she comes to work, she's saving her company money. “This is probably the most exciting time in meeting services history,” says Cashill, meeting services manager, Toyota Motor Sales, U.S.A. Inc., Torrance, Calif. “We are having such a positive impact and getting very positive feedback.”

Cashill has been slowly but successfully getting the word out across the company about the meeting services department and its potential to save meeting sponsors time, money, and risk. In the span of 18 months, the number of meetings for which Cashill's department did the sourcing and contracting increased by 300 percent. “It's huge,” she says. “It's more than we anticipated.”

If You Build It …

If you have a strategic meetings management program — or the beginnings of one — in place, you're hoping for a success story like Cashill's. But without a track record, without a corporate mandate, and without a clear picture of who is planning meetings companywide, how do you achieve compliance with meeting policies?

There are a few issues to be addressed. First, your fellow employees have to know you exist. Second, they have to understand what you do and what you want them to do. And third, they have to be convinced there's something in it for them.

Of course, one way to tackle all three issues is to have executives require anyone planning a meeting to register it with your department. Without that mandate, though, you need to be part detective, part educator, and part politician.

Planner, P.I.

“Once they use our services, they become an advocate,” Cashill says. “It's just finding the audience.” She has found her audience through presentations to executives, webinars, blurbs on the corporate intranet, and a series of one-hour forums (see sidebar, page 19).

Cashill also hasn't waited until Toyota's SMMP is fully in place to start hunting. “We're eating the elephant one piece at a time,” she laughs. “We focused on the area where we would have the biggest impact, and that's hotel sourcing.” With some planners going directly to hotels, others using third parties, and no one coordinating efforts, Toyota was spending far more on meetings than it had to. So Cashill brought in StarCite as a sourcing partner, making it simple for meeting sponsors to fill out a request form online and then to choose “hotel sourcing only” or “full meetings management support.”

Offering the sourcing-only option, Cashill believes, is the key to her success. “We've made progress by saying, ‘You continue doing the meeting planning, and we'll help you if you need us, but let us source the program. Let us negotiate the contract in order to protect you and Toyota.’ There are so many compelling arguments. And to be truthful, I don't know any administrative assistant who enjoys calling around to properties and waiting for return calls. It's a long, arduous process.”

Once a meeting sponsor uses the sourcing process, Cashill continues, a relationship begins. And once they see the value of sourcing hotels and negotiating contracts through the meeting services department, they may ask for planning help as well — and share their experience with colleagues. “We've been able to nail the customer service,” Cashill says. “That's why positive word is starting to spread.”

Cashill knows she's getting the service right because she gives users carefully developed surveys that include space for candid comments. “Having the survey results and the positive responses will help us gain traction in requesting executive endorsement,” she says. “We have a travel policy. Our goal is to implement an enterprisewide meetings policy that would include a process for consolidating hotel sourcing, negotiating, and contracting through the meeting services group.”

And They'll Tell Two Friends …

Meanwhile, at Microsoft in Mountain View, Calif., Vivian Eickhoff, CMM, group events marketing manager, is part of the Microsoft Events Team, a 100-person organization that was centralized in 2000 to manage the company's core strategic events.

There is no mandate for internal business groups to work with her, however, so Eickhoff has had to take charge of crafting a message and getting it out there. “At the beginning, we had to sell ourselves a lot, and explain why people should go through our team,” she says. It was a slow start, but their perseverance has paid off. “Back then, I never would have thought that we would be consulting as much as we are. Now we're getting to pick and choose the meetings we should be doing. We won't do someone's team meeting, for example. We focus on events where the goal fits right into a primary objective for our company.”

Eickhoff notes that there's a ripple effect once internal customers start getting value from a meeting services team and spread the word. For example, in May 2007, she learned that one of the business groups was planning a product launch in Los Angeles in February 2008. She knew that her events team could bring a lot to the table for that meeting; the group leaders were not sure.

“I met with them and explained why we should be a part of it,” Eickhoff says. She gave them specifics: The meeting sponsor was not up to date on partner contracts, for example, but Eickhoff could offer experts in that area. “I also discussed our budget management philosophy — managing the budget end to end and even being able to tie it back to the internal system and account for every penny,” she says. “It was a conversation around partnership and how with this business group's knowledge of the product and my team's knowledge of events, it would be a dynamic partnership for success.”

Ultimately, she says, “they understood that they would still have ownership. And we might have firm suggestions but we were not going to tell them what to do. Often it's a control thing. They have a lot at stake. We get them to understand that we have a lot at stake, too.”

Once she got the green light, the meeting sponsor never looked back. “My greatest satisfaction was one month into the project I got e-mail from the meeting owner saying, ‘This is great.’ Our team really delivered. We changed her perception. Now she tells her colleagues, ‘You have to call the events team.’”

Of course, this success hinged on Eickhoff uncovering plans for the kickoff in time to get involved. “Our company is so large. I wish I always knew when we were about to roll out a new version of a product so we don't miss the opportunity,” she says. “We don't have to sell ourselves as much anymore, but some people still don't know about us. So we are always searching for meetings to pull into our portfolio. Many times we find out about events through word of mouth, so we keep our eyes open to ensure our team is working on the right events and we are helping our company.”