Today, Eric explores the value event professionals bring to the table and why that matters more than ever in the age of AI.
Stay tuned to learn what you need to know about the client before designing an event, questions you need to ask to position yourself as a strategic partner, and how to maintain your competitive advantage.
Ask Better Questions
When a client gives you a brief, resist the urge to immediately start discussing destinations, rooms, budgets, activities, speakers, themes, or technology. Start by understanding what the client is trying to accomplish, where the face-to-face meeting fits into their strategy, and what people should know, feel, believe, or do differently afterward.
Strategic Partner
You can either work with a client as an order taker who executes what they ask for, or as a strategic partner who helps determine what they actually need. If your value lies only in execution and logistics, you become much easier to replace as AI becomes more capable. Your value comes from helping clients identify what they are truly trying to accomplish.
Identify the Real Challenge
An insurance company asked for an incentive trip, but further questioning revealed that employees from three different generations were working alongside one another rather than together. Eric placed employees from different generations and tenure levels into groups and had them work together to write and perform a song. The activity required them to collaborate and helped change the way they worked together afterward.
What Needs to Change?
When a global medical device company asked Eric to arrange a sales meeting to launch a new product, Eric discovered the new product could allow the company to become the market leader for the first time. The salespeople needed to stop selling as a competitor and start selling as the market leader. Through a role-playing exercise, they developed a new sales playbook to share with the entire sales force. Six months later, the company became the market leader.
Ask Five Essential Questions
Before discussing logistics or event design, Eric recommends asking five questions:
Only once you have those answers should you start designing the meeting.
From Logistics to Strategy
AI can produce creative concepts, destinations, themes, team-building ideas, and sample agendas in seconds. That does not mean AI will replace event professionals. But it does mean your value needs to move from execution to diagnosis, from answering questions to asking better ones, and from logistics to strategy. Instead of simply accepting the treatment a client prescribes, such as an incentive trip, conference, or team-building experience, first diagnose the problem they are actually trying to solve.
Diagnose Before You Design
When you receive a client brief, do not immediately start developing the answer. Identify what information is missing and what questions you still need to ask to understand the client’s real problem. Although AI can speed up execution, your competitive advantage comes from understanding the client deeply enough to identify their underlying issue and ask the questions nobody else thought to ask.
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“Your competitive advantage may not be having the best answer. Your competitive advantage will be to identify the issue that is really underlying in the company.”
Eric Rozenberg
Full transcript of episode 337 of The Business of Meetings podcast, a solo episode with Eric Rozenberg. Lightly edited for readability.
Hello and welcome to a new episode of The Business of Meetings podcast. Today I want to talk about the value that an event professional brings to the table, especially in the age of AI. And I want to start by sharing a concrete example that I experienced some years ago.
There was a big retail company that was preparing an incentive sponsored by three large companies: the leader in FMCG, fast-moving consumer goods, the leader in drinks, and a leader in the cereal industry. And so I had four people in front of me, and I had five slides for their briefing. Actually, the briefing was to prepare an incentive trip and make a proposal for an incentive trip. And I had five slides, and the first two slides were summarizing their briefing, and the three next slides were a list of questions that I wanted to ask them.
So when I was finishing presenting the second slide, I remember Carl, the guy from the drinks company, interrupted me and said, “Eric, we didn’t invite you to tell us what we already know and to repeat our briefing.” And I said, “Thank you very much. That’s a fair point. But my point is the following: I wanted to put everything in context. And the reason I’m doing this is that if you don’t answer the questions I have in the following slides, at the end of the day, you’re not going to leverage the incentive trip. And quite frankly, you’re going to waste a lot of your money. You might as well throw the money through the window, or give it to a charity. Let me explain.” And I went through the three slides of questions.
And guess what? We won the pitch. We won the business. We didn’t win because we had the best event idea. We won because we asked better questions. And from those questions, I actually created a list of questions that I was always using when I was taking a briefing in front of a client, whether it’s an existing client or a prospect. And if you’re interested, just reach out to me on LinkedIn and I will send it to you. But the point is, the quality of the questions is how we were positioned in a very crowded market.
And I think the problem that we have in our industry is that we are too quick to start designing an event. A client called, and he said, we need a sales meeting. We want to organize an incentive trip. We’re bringing 300 people together for an annual conference. And what happens next? We start immediately talking about: where do you want to go, when, how many rooms, what budget, what activities, what speakers, what theme, what technology. And sometimes we don’t even go into the [inaudible] questions. And I’m not saying that those are not important questions. Of course those questions matter, but they come much too early. And quite frankly, by asking them, you’re going to position yourself as a logistician, and you’re going to be put in a box where people, again, don’t value what we’re doing, and we’re going to be complaining that we don’t have a seat at the table, blah, blah, blah.
So the first question should be: what needs to be different because this meeting happened? What is the strategy that you are trying to execute, and where does the face-to-face meeting come into the game when it comes to the execution of the strategy? What should people know? What should people feel? What should people believe? What should people do differently when they leave the face-to-face meeting? And that’s the real brief.
So basically, there are two ways you can operate. The first one is the order taker: tell me what you want and I’ll execute it. The other one, which quite frankly is the one I recommend, and the one through which we were very successful, is the strategic partner: tell me what you’re trying to accomplish, and I will help determine what you actually need. Obviously, you’ll make the decision, because you’re the client, and then I will help you with logistics. But the first thing is: what is it that you’re trying to accomplish? And there’s a major difference between the logistics and the strategic part.
So at the end of the day, ask yourself: are your clients paying you for what you organize, or for what you help them accomplish? And do you think that you can change the way you are selling? Because if the answer is only execution, then I think you have a problem. You have a problem with AI. You have a problem being replaced.
And let me share three stories with you, about what the client initially asked for and what we identified, and helped them identify, that they actually needed.
The first one is a consulting firm, the largest global consulting firm, that was asking us for a retreat. In fact, they didn’t need a retreat first; they needed connection. They had two offices, about 350 people, lots of new hires. And so the goal was for the employees to get to know each other, to collaborate more with each other, within each of the offices as well as between the two offices. At the end of the day, they were doing, you know, the classic retreat: cocktail, name badge, things like that. But those are not creating relationships automatically. What we did is, you know those sticker books, when you were a kid, where you were collecting the soccer stickers, the team, and everybody? We created that sticker book with the 350 participants, and obviously each participant was featured. When they arrived, they received different stickers, including duplicates, and then they had to trade them with one another to complete their book. And the most important point is not how creative the idea was. The most important point is that the design forced the behavior. In other words, people had to approach each other, negotiate. They laughed, they interacted, they built relationships. And guess what? The level of collaboration afterwards was through the roof. People knew each other. They had fun with each other. And so it was an amazing outcome. So if I go back to my example, the lesson is not to ask what activity would be fun, but what behavior are we trying to create?
The second example I want to share with you is an insurance company. They asked for an incentive trip, and then I asked the commercial director, “But do you have any challenges right now?” And he said, “Listen, we’re doing this for 20 years. We have people here that have been here for 20 years. Just put together an amazing experience, and that’s what we need.” Well, guess what? Instead of saying yes and focusing on logistics, we stayed a little bit more and asked some questions. And we found out that not only did they have people that had been there for 20 years, that were blasé, they had seen everything, but you had people that were there for two years, and anything would do. And on the other hand, most important thing, you had three generations of employees that were working really beside each other, rather than together. So what we did: we rented a recording studio. We brought everybody, we created four groups, each with a professional musician. And they had two hours to find a theme, write a song about their experience, and then prepare the song and perform in front of everybody else. Obviously they were recorded, so they were able to perform. But the song wasn’t the product. What we did is that we created groups with people that had 10 years, 20 years tenure in the company, as well as young recruits, and people from the three different generations. And so that was an amazing experience, again, that forced the behavior, in a natural way if you want, of working with each other. And the relationships, the way they operated afterwards, when they went back to their company, was absolutely amazing.
And the third and last example I want to share with you is about a global medical device company. They were launching a new product, and so they asked for a sales meeting, a product launch sales meeting, internally. Well, guess what? They were selecting the top 100 salespeople. But what we found out is, actually, with the new product, they had a shot at becoming number one in their market for the first time ever. So before even thinking about training them on the new product, what was absolutely essential was to train them and create the mind shift that they were no longer selling as the number two, as a competitor. They were not selling as the market leader before — you understand what I’m saying — and what they had to change in their minds is that they were now selling as the market leader. And that was absolutely essential. So what we did, we created a giant speed dating. Half of the salespeople were playing the salespeople, and half of the group were playing the medical staff and the doctors to whom they were going to sell. And then we rotated several times, and then we came back together, we debriefed, and in a time frame of a few hours, we created a new sales playbook for them. And afterwards, they were able to share that with the entire sales force, which was extremely successful. Six months later, they were the market leader.
So at the end of the day, and I can go on and on, I think you get the point. Again, if you want the list of questions, just reach out to me. But if you just want to go straight and apply this yourself today, I would say you need to start with five essential questions, before talking about logistics and talking about an event design.
The first one: why are we bringing these people together? What really does need to happen face to face? Why are we bringing people together?
Second: what business problem are we trying to solve? Not what event are we organizing, but what business problem are we trying to solve?
Third: what needs to be different afterward? Is it the behavior? Is it the knowledge, the relationships, the sales, the culture, the decisions? By the way, you can apply that to any meetings that you’re doing as well with your customer. So, what needs to be different afterward?
Four: what is preventing that from happening today? And that’s where the information becomes usually extremely interesting, and that’s where you can help your client and bring a lot of value.
And five: how will we know that the meeting worked? In other words, how are we going to measure success?
And it’s only then that you can start designing the meeting. Because if you think about what AI is doing today: you can put a client brief into AI, and you can ask, “Give me 20 creative concepts for this incentive program,” and seconds later, you’ll have them. You can ask for destinations: done. Themes: done. Team building concepts: done. Sample agendas: done. So what is the value that you’re bringing in taking a brief and coming back with ideas? What happens when AI can actually do that in 30 seconds?
It does not mean that AI is going to replace event professionals. Absolutely not. It means that we, as event professionals, change the way we are creating value. Your value must absolutely move upstream. It should go from execution to diagnosis, from answering questions to asking better ones, and basically from logistics to strategy. You should stop taking orders. You should start challenging the assumptions of what you’ve been asked.
And if I take the example of a cardiologist: you would not walk into a cardiologist’s office and say, “I’ve done some research. I’d like you to put a stent right here,” and expect the cardiologist to say, “Perfect. Tuesday or Wednesday?” The cardiologist will diagnose first. He or she will ask questions, run tests, look at your history, your symptoms, the context, and then will come to the treatment. Nevertheless, in our industry, clients prescribe the treatment all the time, and we immediately start executing it. We need an incentive trip. We need a conference. We need team building. Okay, maybe. But why? What are you trying to achieve? What are the challenges that you have right now that you’re trying to solve? What problem are you trying to solve with the face-to-face meeting? That’s where our value is coming up. And that’s what is not replaceable by AI.
So at the end of the day, I would say, if you think about my pitch with the five slides, and the impact it had, and the fact that we won that business: at the end of the day, it’s asking the right questions. Yes, AI will make the execution faster. Yes, AI will help, and technology will help, with the logistics. Yes, ideas will become cheaper. But understanding the client deeply enough to identify the real problem and to bring a solution, that’s where you have an amazing added value.
So the next time a client sends you a brief, don’t immediately start working on the answer. Stop, read it again, and ask yourself: what do I not know yet? Because your competitive advantage may not be having the best answer. Your competitive advantage will be to identify the issue that is really underlying in the company. And you should have the courage, and actually the experience, to ask the question that nobody else thought to ask. So stop taking the brief at face value. Diagnose before you design.
I hope this was helpful, and I look forward to seeing you at an industry conference. If there’s any additional question, or you want to have the list of questions I was using, please reach out on LinkedIn. Thank you, and we’ll see you next week on the next episode of The Business of Meetings podcast.
Thank you for tuning in to The Business of Meetings podcast. I hope you found today’s episode valuable. If you enjoy the show, the most important thing you can do is leave a review and share it with your colleagues. It really helps spread the word. I truly appreciate your support. And if you’re ready to take your business to the next level, don’t forget to visit eventbusinessformula.com to learn more about how we are helping event business owners like you. Thanks again for listening, and I’ll see you next week.
