Motivation Show attendees will get their first look at the SMM Toolkit being developed by the National Business Travel Association’s Groups and Meetings Committee during a session to be held Wednesday, October 13, from 2 to 3:15 p.m. The session will be led by Corporate Meetings & Incentives Editor Barbara Scofidio, a member of the toolkit committee and feature fellow committee members Lesley Brasesco, managing director, sales innovation, Hilton Worldwide; Lisa English, CMP, CMM, marketing manager, strategic meetings management, Cvent; and Lynda Garvey, SMMC, subject matter specialist, meetings, American Express Business Travel.

Barbara Scofidio

The committee will share templates from the toolkit that attendees can take back to their own companies. For example, there’s a tool to help build a business plan for an SMM, another to begin registering a company’s meetings, and a document that one meeting manager used to compare meeting cards against each other.

The toolkit project began in 2009, when committee members decided that one of the main reasons why so few companies have embraced SMM is the lack of hands-on resources to help them get started. “Smaller companies often face many challenges to implementing SMM: from identifying the company's meeting spend, to persuading administrative assistants to relinquish their meetings, to creating a mandate from senior management,” says Garvey, who is leading the effort. “We recognized these barriers to implementation and created the toolkit in response.”

The project is a work in progress, with additional tools still to be compiled in the areas of data analysis/reporting and technology. Visit MeetingsNet.com for a collection of SMM articles and info and the NBTA Web site for an executive summary on SMM created by the Groups and Meetings Committee.