Making yourself accessible

Make yourself accessible - Importance of returning calls and responding to messages
What's more annoying than having to leave a message for some you urgently need to contact
Having that message go unanswered, or how about taking at executive up on her invite to call, only to find out she's about as accessible as Fort Knox? Barriers like these are not only frustrating, but commonplace in professional exchanges. But they can also kill important relationships if they become chronic. Don't underestimate the necessity of being reachable.
We're all busy. Meetings, deadlines and correspondence leave many of barely enough time to breathe, alone to interact with contacts clients. But making time to avail yourself to others is something only you can
"Your time is your own”, so take charge and determine your own priorities. Making yourself accessible should be one of those priorities.
If your goal is to attract business or build working relationships, not returning messages or hibernating behind closed doors won't win you many takers. But, for those times when you're unavailable, you can employ some reliable substitutes to pinch-hit for you.
A capable assistant is one. By all means, utilize him to run interference for you when you're busy. Trained correctly, he can answer callers' queries, schedule your appointments, elicit detailed messages or prioritize urgent calls requiring your immediate attention, says management consultant Alec Mackenzie. This can significantly shorten that daunting pile of message slips.
No assistant? Your answering machine, voice mail, E-mail or beeper can serve as surrogates, but not if you don't retrieve and respond to your messages regularly. If callers know you routinely check in, they'll be more apt to settle for communicating with you this way.
By setting aside a specific time of day to return calls and address correspondence, you can keep them from snowballing. "Many people like to do this right after lunch and again toward the end of the day," since that's when they're at their desks, says Mackenzie.
If you're on the sending - rather than receiving - end of the connecting game, there's a lot you can do to make sure you reach your intended party. Leave detailed messages that explain the purpose of your call, even if the person might already know. Keep your business cards updated to reflect current information. Make good on those invites to "do lunch," dinner or tea. We're all busy enough. Making it hard for someone to get in touch with shouldn't be added to the pile.
A thought to remember every phone call you don’t return or every email you don’t reply to could be a lost opportunity you can never regain.

Charisma Productions Network launching new website: What's the ROI on Your Business Travel?

Charisma Productions Network launching new website: What's the ROI on Your Business Travel?: "Since the days of expense reports coated in road-weary cursive, managers have burrowed through spending data to figure out what business tri..."

What's the ROI on Your Business Travel?

Since the days of expense reports coated in road-weary cursive, managers have burrowed through spending data to figure out what business trips are actually worth. As Christa Manning, director of research at American Express Business Travel puts it: “Measuring ROI is somewhat art and somewhat science.” The science aspect has never been more valuable.
In recent years, companies have mined mountains of credit-card and booking data to scrutinize their staff travel. According to Future Watch 2010, a survey of 1,832 Meeting Professionals International (MPI) members presented by MPI and American Express, roughly 70 percent of organizations reported using benchmarks to track the value of their meetings. Only 7 percent said they didn’t track ROI at all.
“The data is actually becoming the fundamental tool that can be used to support strategic use of travel budgets in the company,” Manning says. “By just collecting the data and sharing it with executives and business line leaders, they can see just how significant travel expenditures are and what impact they are having on the business.
How Travel Generates Revenue
Two other studies released in late 2009 seem to support the correlation between travel and revenue on a macro level. One of them, conducted by Oxford Economics USA for the U.S. Travel Association and the Destination and Travel Foundation, found that a dollar spent on travel returned an average of $12.50 in revenue and $3.80 in profit. Another study, conducted by IHS Global Insight for the National Business Travel Association and partly underwritten by American Express, pegged the increase in sales at closer to $20 per travel dollar spent. Returns varied by industry, but the latter report went so far as to say that the economy could realize an additional $248 billion in profits if all industry sectors increase travel to optimal levels.
“Travel does drive the revenue numbers both ways,” says Manning. Following two years of deep cuts in travel spending, both she and Future Watch respondents are cautiously optimistic that an economic recovery will help stabilize travel budgets this year. Future Watch participants predict smaller budget cuts in 2010, although meeting planners also anticipate an average 21 percent increase in the number of meetings. Manning says that she expects flight prices to creep up in 2010, although she doesn’t expect pre-recession spending to return until 2012.
Whatever executives decide to spend, new techniques for analyzing travel data now allow them to hone budgets in surprisingly precise ways. Craig Fearon, the senior product director at New Jersey’s Cyber Shift, has spent the past 11 years turning the administrative backwater of expense reporting into a fount of cost-saving insight. Many customers who use his firm’s automation software, he says, also use the data it produces to enforce travel policy compliance, analyze the difference between expense reports and corporate card charges, and even capitalize on overlooked savings such as exchange-rate fluctuations or VAT refunds abroad. In many cases, travel managers approach vendor negotiations with specific dollar amounts spent on their companies in the past 12 months.
“Travel expenses have come under the microscope in the last couple of years, especially during this downturn,” Fearon notes. “So we’re seeing clients tinker with data and really push it into other systems,” such as customer relationship management and bookkeeping programs that can link trips to particular projects.
Why face-to-face business meetings are important.
Using Benchmarks
Beyond their own spending, data-driven companies have the ability to compare their travel expenditures with the rest of their industry. American Express Business Travel draws insight from $100 billion in travel transactions to set industry benchmarks for its consulting clients, and Travel GPA, a smaller firm that offers real-time reports on travel spending, uses anonymous data gleaned from more than 32,000 companies. This type of raw, aggregate information can point out hard-to-spot norms in areas such as the hotel tiers most used by a given sector—a touchy subject among travel managers, who are fearful of driving away talent.
“By focusing on performance benchmarking, that helps us get to that point where we can provide a detailed ROI analysis that pinpoints the problem areas by identifying the trips, travelers, markets, suppliers and those areas where savings opportunities were lost,” says Travel GPA chief executive Rock Blanco. Historically, executives have found ROI in travel hard to nail down because prices change so frequently. But a constant stream of data from travel companies now enables services like Blanco’s to calculate, for example, how much a department could have saved by booking flights to a given destination for a Tuesday instead of a Monday. In other instances, Blanco says, the data reveals that departments can save money by abandoning a policy to book flights longer in advance because the rebooking fees far outstrip the savings.
Even companies without a six-figure travel budget to scrutinize have found advantages to treating travel as an investment, rather than an expense. “Everything’s got to pay back six,” says Ted Wright, CEO of Fizz, an Atlanta word-of-mouth marketing company. “What that does is keep things from being willy-nilly.”
For conferences, the corporate policy employs similar logic. You should try to gauge how much attendees can learn from a conference’s advertised offerings. The better the development opportunities, the more people the figures will show up and the more potential customers your team can meet to earn back the cost of the trip. Like a growing number of businesses, you should no longer settles for a good price but instead takes a hard look at the numbers to figure out what travel is worth in terms of sales down the road. “I just say to them, ‘Look, its five grand for me to come out there. What’s my payback on this?’”

Corporate Meeting Facility to Create an Impression

Many companies do not have conference rooms or big spaces to hold corporate meetings. They opt for corporate meeting facilities provided by others for this. A corporate meeting facility is generally a luxurious and impressive space which can be rented by any company to hold their corporate meetings.
Renting a Corporate Meeting Facility
Large or small corporations often require having meetings for their staff for orientation or felicitations or educational purposes or for clients. Many of these companies may not have an adequate corporate meeting space to hold such meetings. Renting is the only option in such cases. Before renting out a space a proper idea regarding the requirement is very important. The size of the gathering and the kind of seating arrangements all depends on the purpose of the meeting. Once a clear picture regarding this is arrived at, a corporate meeting facility can be looked into. In major cities across the United States, there are huge varieties to choose from when it comes to an event space. Many city meeting facilities range from lofts, theaters, screening rooms, auditoriums, convention center and so on. These places could be stand alone or a part of a hotel or a bigger structure.
After identifying a few possible venues, it would be a good idea to visit them along with your chosen corporate meeting production specialist and see for one the space available and also discuss about the facilities provided at the place. Many halls provide digital screens, presentation software and hardware, high speed internet facility, good acoustics and other audio visual facilities which in most cases are far more expensive than having your own corporate meeting production specialist whose expertise can make sure you get the most for your dollar without comprising the quality of your corporate meeting production. In order to receive your best ROI you should always have your corporate meeting production specialist with you on these inspections. This is to make sure that you will not be caught unaware of any back end charges when utilizing there facility. The extent of the facilities required again depends on the type of event being hosted. The location of the conference space is also an important criterion. Easy accessibility and proximity to airports and hotels always helps if people are flying in from outside to participate in the event. Other arrangements that need to be looked into are toilet facilities provided in the space. The cost of the meeting space also needs to be looked into before renting out. Some places are highly expensive while others are relatively cheaper.
Most of the corporate meeting facilities seen these days have well trained staff. They make all the necessary arrangements in consultation with the renters and who also provide valuable assistance during the event. Together with these staff members the event can be made into a grand success. Choosing a place that provides it all from digital media to caterers is always better than going for a place where all the other elements have to be brought in from outside.
Always remember to be sure to consult your corporate meeting production company in order to exceed your corporate meeting expectations and to make sure you get the best ROI for your meeting.