Business Development
Research & Sales Analysis
A large part of the Business Development role is research. We will outline the ways in which we do our research and how we keep track of our leads, sales and confirmed events.
ICCA Database:
ICCA - the International Congress and Convention Association - represents the world's leading suppliers in handling, transporting and accommodating international meetings and events, and comprises over 1,000 member companies and organisations in almost 100 countries worldwide. Since its establishment over 50 years ago, ICCA specialises in the international association meetings sector, offering unrivalled data, communication channels, and business development opportunities.
The association market covers a wide range of meeting types and categories: medical meetings (the largest segment); scientific; other academic; trade organisations; professional bodies; social groupings. In terms of size, budget, duration and complexity there are massive variations between and also within categories. However, some similarities can be identified:
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Almost every ‘specialty’ has an association which holds one or more meetings.
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Most associations have meetings that are repeated at regular intervals. These can be annual, biennial etc.
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The destinations rotate. They rarely return to the same destination within a very short time-span.
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The initiative to host a meeting often comes from the local counterpart, e.g. the national association. If that body is difficult to motivate to organise the meeting, the chances are high that the meeting will be scheduled elsewhere.
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Association meetings have a very long lead-time; it is not unusual to find lead times of 5 years or more.
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It is estimated that a growing minority of about 25-30% of the decision-making processes no longer include an official bidding procedure, but have a “central initiator” who selects the location and venues based on pre-determined and strict criteria.
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It is estimated that there are approximately 24,000 different association meetings organised on a regular basis. The ICCA Association Database has collected information on approximately 80% of them.
How to use the ICCA Database:
"Find Association Meetings" --> New search (search by name if known). Otherwise select "Potential meetings for" --> Advanced (add your criteria and download it as an excel).
Selection Criteria:
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Destination: Dublin / Ireland
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Attendance: between 500 and 3000
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Rotation area (select everything with Europe): must be any of Africa/Europe, Africa/Europe/Middle East, Asia/Europe, E.U. Countries, Europe, Europe/Interamerican, Europe/Japan, Europe/Latin America, Europe/N.America/Asia, Europe/N.America/Japan, Europe/North Africa, Europe/North America, North Europe, Outside North America, World/International
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Destination(s) not visited: later than 22-08-2007
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Recurring destination
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Local reps based in: Ireland
ICCA also provides info about local ambassadors, industry topics etc. to see that click on "ICCA Big Data Search". ICCA Tutorials, helpdesk etc.
Information to be gathered:
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Does the Conference have a Core PCO?
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Which international Association hosting the conference?
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Has the conference been to Ireland before? If so when, where and who hosted it?
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Is it annual/biannual etc.?
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How many delegates approximately.?
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Bid deadline?
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Rotation Area?
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In short, all the info you can get!
Under “Essentials” you will find all the general data. You can click on “Show countries” to see if there is an Irish member association that might be able to bring the conference to Ireland. The link usually will lead you to Irish member contact details. These people should be contacted, as they might become conference ambassadors.
The “Organisation” tab provides info about international organisation, such as the website that should be searched for a bid manual etc.
The “Business Exchange” tab shows important info e.g. about the venue, bidding process etc. provided by former hosts of the conference.
CRM:
SugarCRM is a customer relationship management (CRM) solution we use to save information about conference bids and conferences we won.
Website: crm.abbey.ie
Username: CEBD
Password: S4Xv74
This is what the menu looks like.
At the moment we only use the "Opportunities" tab to add conference from this spread here. Add the details from the spreadsheet, for the "Type" always select "Conference & Events". Once a bid is won, the "Opportunity" can be converted into a "Project".
Search: In order to use the search function use a % before your search word to see all the results including the word. E.g. if you use %radiology, then you will see all the results with Radiology in the name.
Denomination:
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Account - Name of Organisation.
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Contact - Name, Surname
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Opportunity - Year, Name
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Tags: Convention Bureau, Venue, City, Topic/Field, Year.
If you have any problesm with Sugar CRM, call Ray Queeney (infosystems).
Approach:
Go into the n-drive. Conference & Events -> Business Development -> Quotes -> Lead Analysis -> Excel Spreadsheet (2016-2019 Leads Analysis).
Go through the list and insert all Conferences listed there in the CRM database. Don’t make any changes on the spreadsheet. There is a copy also in Leads Analysis folder, work on that. You can highlight which conferences you have already inserted in the conferences or which you couldn’t allocated.
On the CRM website:
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First click on “opportunities” to check if the conference is already saved in there, if not:
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Click on “Accounts” and create a new account. Add in only the name of the organization or company the client of the conference is working for. Search in the outlook folders under “2. Conference Quotes” for the specific conference folders. Look through the emails and check the client for the conference and the organization he or she is working for. You can also check on the n-drive under quotes for more details. Then add in the organizations name the client is working for in the “name” field. Then click on save.
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Click on “Contacts” and create a new contact. Add in the clients name and title (if provided), and add the account name you have created before. Also insert the email address and phone number. Always save!
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Click on “Opportunities” and create a new opportunity. Opportunity is the name of the conference. Always put the year before the name (e.g. 2019 EHLC). Select “Conference & Events” as the “Opportunity Company”. Select PCO type, that is listed on the Excel spreadsheet on the left side (e.g. DCB, CCB, VD< GCB, .. or other). Put in the number of delegates estimated (also check in folders, documents etc). Select if it’s a conference or event. And add the Bid Status. Select the year of opportunity, that means when the conference or event is taking place. Add the bid status and whether the event is international or European and click save.
Bid Status: Excel sheet (column "Stage").
Bid Status: Excel sheet (column "Status").
Confirmed: Conference will definitely take place in Ireland (Dublin)
Confirmed bid: meet with client to bring the event to Ireland (Dublin)
Highlight the conferences you have already added to the CRM database in the spreadsheet. (red: done; blue: couldn’t allocate; green: not sure if allocated correctly – check with Greg)
Ethna Fitzgerald:
We have a Sales Consultant who works with us called Ethna Fitzgerald. Ethna is the former Head of Conferences in University College Dublin and has a number of contacts in UCD and all over Ireland that can help us in attracting conferences. Ethna will ask us regularly to research certain areas and potential conferences in that area in advance of her meeting someone.
Leads Analysis:
We are working towards moving everything relating to our sales over to the CRM which will greatly help our analysis. However we are currently still also capturing everything on a spreadsheet which can be found here.