Booking meeting space: proposals not worth proposing

It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.

- Mark Twain

I'm trying to book meeting space for a public workshop, Getting Started as a Supervisor, and I am having a heck of a time. I've contacted hotels from two completing companies in Los Angeles and Orange County and the results have been unimpressive. For an industry that is supposedly in need of business, their sales people sure have a funny way of showing it!

I'm referring two these to companies as "Hotel A" and "Hotel B" in my blog because this is an active process. By now, I've rounded up proposals from 9 of the 12 hotels I contacted. (That's right, I received no response from 3 hotels, all representing "Hotel A".) Unfortunately, only 3 of the 9 proposals I received addressed all the needs I outlined in my original request. Here's a graphical breakdown:

Some of the responses I did receive have just been plain dumb. Here are some examples:

****

Cheryl C from Hotel B sent an incomplete proposal. I emailed to ask her for the additional information, including pricing and menus for food. She responded with another email that only answered one of my questions.

Cyrena W. from Hotel A sent an incomplete proposal for the wrong kind of room. Since the proposal came one day later than expected, I decided not to consider Cyrena's property and emailed her to let her know. She responded with another email that still didn't answer any of my questions:

Good Morning Mr. Toister,

Thank you for your e-mail and interest in [Hotel A]. My apologies for responding in a matter not meeting your expectations and for any inconvenience this may have caused you. We very much appreciate your interest in [Hotel A] and would be pleased to welcome your business. If you would like to provide me with some specific details outlining the program you are interested in hosting this September, I would be more than happy to find the appropriate information for you and place a courtesy hold on any meeting space.

Once again, Mr. Toister, thank you for your interest in [Hotel A] and I would welcome the opportunity to exceed your expectations. Please do not hesitate to contact me should you have any questions or requests.

Warm Regards,

Cyrena

Debbie H. from Hotel A emailed a proposal two days later than expected.The quote was very high, so I emailed her to let her know I had received several more competitive quotes and was not considering her hotel. Here was her response:

Hi Jeff,

If you would like to share with me the rates, I can see if we are able to meet the quote that you are getting elsewhere. Just let me know.

Debbie

****My response to Debbie:

Hi Debbie,

Does that mean your original quote was not your best offer? In that case, please forward your best quote to me.

Price is not the only consideration, though it is important. I’m also looking at the quality of the facility, the level of service I experience, and how well I think the venue will work for my event. For that reason, I will not share pricing between competitors, but I am happy to consider a lower quote. (Your original quote was significantly higher than others I have in hand.)

Thank you,

Jeff

Will it get better? Well, it's no surprise that the front runners in the process are the two hotels (1 from Hotel A and 1 from Hotel B) that have reasonably competent sales people. In both cases, the sales person called me within one business day to confirm my needs and then promptly emailed a proposal. They have also been very prompt and courteous in their follow-up communication. Next week, I'll visit these properties and hopefully decide upon one location in Orange County and one in Los Angeles.

Wish me luck... I'll need it.

Booking meeting space: Can't a trainer get a quote?

I'm two days into finding meeting space for my public workshops and I'm already encountering a disturbing trend. In today's economic climate you'd expect hotels showing an extra bit of hustle to try to bring in some extra business. Right? Quite the contrary it seems. Calling clients and submitting proposals doesn't seem to be part of the sales plan for some of the hotels I've contacted.

Both Hotel A and Hotel B (names withheld because it is an active sales process) promise a one business day response time when you submit a request for proposal on their websites. Here are the actual results:

If customer service is defined by the extent you meet the customers expectations, then receiving a proposal within one day equals good service. This means Hotel A delivered poor service (i.e. fell short of expectations) in 6 out of 7 instances.

Hotel B fared a little better, but several of their emails missed key details from my request for proposal. This required me to email back and forth several times and one hotel was eventually excluded from my search because the sales person didn't answer my questions after emailing three times.

Only two salespeople performed at a very good level. One person from Hotel A and one from Hotel B called me to confirm my requirements and then promptly emailed a proposal that directly addressed my needs. 

Stay tuned...

Booking meeting space - will service win or lose the deal?

This September, Toister Performance Solutions will be piloting a public supervisory skills workshop called Getting Started as a Supervisor. Hosting a public workshop requires me to find suitable meeting space in my three pilot locations: Los Angeles, Orange County, and San Diego. Over the next two weeks, I'll provide detailed analysis of the type of service I receive from each venue I contact.  I will highlight the winners (and losers) and describe why they won (or lost) my business. No punches will be pulled, but I also won't be playing favorites. Finally, the names of each venue will be omitted since this is an active sales process.

The Competition

The primary competitors are two major hotel chains with a large presence in all three of my target markets. I am considering a few additional venues in San Diego since that is my home market and I have a few personal contacts here.

Getting Started

I started my search on Saturday, April 18. First, I emailed a couple of my personal contacts to ask if they'd like to bid on the event. Next, I went to the websites for the two hotel chains (let's call them A & B for this post).  Each site allowed me to browse through properties in the area and submit a Request For Proposal (RFP) online. However, there were also some big differences in how they approached this.

Hotel A

Their website allowed you to enter some basic information about your event, but you had to complete a separate RFP application for each hotel. That quickly got annoying, especially since I sent the information to 9 hotels. 

Hotel B

Their website was similar in function to Hotel A's, but they first asked you for your event information and then suggested hotels that might be a good fit.  You could pull up more information about individuals properties and ultimately select which hotels received your RFP. They also had handy calculators, diagrams, and examples that were embedded into the RFP form, so you could make sure you were making the appropriate request even if you didn't have much experience planning this type of event.

Advantage: Hotel B.

Stay Tuned

Both hotels' websites told me to expect to hear from a salesperson within one business day.  I'll let you know tomorrow (Tuesday, April 21) how many properties I hear from and how well they did.

Banish "black box" decision making

There's a lot of definitions for "black box". My definition is a decision-making process that's widely used in many companies today:

Black Box Decision Making: Sequester yourself and your team in a conference room, shut the doors, shut the windows, forget the facts, hide the data, cut the phone line, disable the internet, and turnoff all cell phones. Stay in the moment and ignore your objectives.  Better yet, don't waste time setting any objectives at all, just react. Agendas, action plans, project charters, sponsor sign-offs, and the like are also equally useless and should be disregarded, minimized, or avoided completely.  

Do not invite customers, vendors, other departments, or anyone else who may have insight into the discussion. Avoid sampling, analysis, or piloting at all costs.  Be sure to use words like "I think", "I believe", "I heard", and "I hope" when making a point or proposing a course of action. Try to forget what happened the last time you faced a similar decision or what was decided when you had the same meeting to discuss the same issue last week. 

Be sure to write two emails once a black box decision is made. The first email graciously accepts all the credit for an outstanding decision.  The second email places the blame for a series of egregious errors on colleagues, counterparts, or co-workers.  Save both emails as "drafts" until someone higher up tells you whether they like or dislike the outcome of your black box decision. Send the appropriate email along with a meeting request to start the whole process all over again.

Banishing Black Box Decision Making. Companies that want true performance avoid black box decision making like the plaque. They start by clarifying what they want and then carefully plan a course of action to get there. Jim Womack recently wrote an article for the Lean Enterprise Institute that stressed the need to clarify your purpose before making major changes. You can also check out this great case study on Inc. where a trio of entrepreneurs receive feedback on their marketing plan for a new energy drink and then used their clear vision to decide which advice to follow. Toister Performance Solutions even offers a duo of assessments to help you improve organizational performance by setting clear targets and establishing an action plan to get there.

Three performance myths, part 2: training equals performance

Tony Bingham, CEO of ASTD (the American Society for Training and Development), addressed a group of us yesterday at an informal luncheon. It was a 'town-hall' style meeting to discuss the role of training professionals in the current economy. One of the central themes was very enlightening: many executives and even training professionals are still looking at 'training' as an event-based activity that will magically produce better performance. When this inevitably doesn't happen, the credibility of the training program naturally comes into question.

There are three major problems with this approach, and it is up to us workplace learning and performance professional to engage senior leaders to fix it before these executives are forced to make budget cuts.

Problem #1: Measurement.  The goal of training programs is typically some level of increased performance. Unfortunately, training is still widely measured by number of participants, learner satisfaction, and cost. Training should be evaluated by it's ability to help increase performance, improved business results, and return on investment.

Problem #2: Commitment. Many managers are guilty of sending their employees off to training to 'be fixed'. They should be playing an active role in their employees' development, both before and after the training takes place.

Problem #3: Support. A training class can be equated to planting a seed in a garden. Without water, sun, and nutrients, that seed will never produce vegetables. Training is the same way. Learners need support, coaching, and opportunities to practice once they've attended a class to make learning stick.

Three performance myths, part 1: the myth of experience

I am currently in Alexandria, Virginia working on a project for a training industry association, the American Society for Training and Development. There are training and development experts from around the country here, so naturally our dinner conversations turn to learning and performance. An interesting topic tonight was the myth of experience.

Experience feels like a safe bet when predicting someone's future performance. We rely on it when hiring employees, justifying promotions, and even choosing vendors. But experience can be seriously misleading. To quote one of my colleagues, "You can have twenty years of leadership experience, but you might have been doing it badly for those twenty years."

A much better predictor of future performance is what someone knows and what someone can do. This is harder to assess, but infinitely more valuable.