Meeting planners, independent event planners and their hospitality industry partners love to use email, texting, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Google+, YouTube, Instagram, Tumblr, blogs and virtual meetings – how did we ever conduct business before these tools were invented? All of these can be useful communication tools, but are they effective in building and maintaining professional relationships? Are they valuable in helping us improve our results?
Build Relationships
As hospitality industry professionals, it is important for us to improve interactions with our industry partners. In our business we go through good times and challenging times. Let’s make sure we communicate with our industry partners and build relationships that will endure through the market fluctuations. We also need to venture out and meet with potential new hospitality associates to share how our product, service or organization can be of value to the other. The best way to ensure this and get our fair share of the improving business climate, is still driven by personal interaction and making lasting relationships.
Best Practices of Yesterday
If you are like me, you receive between 75 and 200 emails each day; receive approximately 15 phone calls and only a few pieces of physical mail (some days I get one thing addressed to me by name). Since it is so few, I tend to look at and open every piece of mail that I receive. If we are going to rely on email, texting and the latest social media tools why not mix in some of the old techniques and set ourselves apart from other industries? We have a huge opportunity to reach out and allow people to reach out to us with handwritten notes, personal phone calls and in-person meetings. I believe we can combine the new technology available today with our best practices of yesterday. My suggestion is to establish a plan for each month with specific goals for:
Handwritten notes– # of handwritten notes you will send each week
Phone conversations– # of calls you will make each week
Face to Face discussions– # of in-person conversations you will have each week
When you combine the ‘old fashion’ way of doing business with the new technologies, the sky is the limit for us to improve our communications and our professional relationships. After all…we are in the meetings industry.