In my last post, I shared a fun childhood memory about my family going to Disney World. When I took my own family to the theme park, my daughter Lucy was extremely frustrated when her unreasonable parents (that’s me!) forced her to take a picture in front of Cinderella’s castle.
She wanted to know why did we have to do what EVERYONE ELSE was doing?!?! From a very young age, Lucy wanted to chart her own course. She didn’t want to do what everyone else was doing.
Set yourself apart
A great business believes in the same principle: Doing things differently sets you apart. At Groups360, we believe in four things that set us apart from others:
- We hire advisers, not agents.
- We develop and use value-added technology.
- We provide real-time pricing estimates.
- We provide valuable market intelligence supported by data.
We believe these to be key differentiators.
A different view on providing services to event planners
Let’s talk about number one — advisers instead of agents.
We call our people “advisors” because that is what they are. They are experts who help corporate event planners and association meeting professionals make the best decision. They have walked a mile in the shoes of every participant in the meeting planning decision.
They bring to our customers the most diverse set of skills in the industry. They are former hotel sales and catering professionals and former senior executives of the country’s largest convention hotels. We were so convincing to one event planner that she joined our company! These advisors have seen it all.
Second, we set ourselves apart in how we compensate our advisors. Our team is not like many in the industry who “eat what they kill.” No, our team isn’t commission based. They earn a salary and a bonus for great performance.
We think this accomplishes two things for our event planner customers:
- It aligns the interests of our advisors with those of our customers, allowing them to be more objective about when, where, and how you book your next meeting.
- It allows our advisers to work together as a team to find the best solutions.
Finally, our meeting advisors have an ace in the hole. To allow them to offer event planners the greatest aha moments, we arm them with GroupSync, our proprietary venue sourcing application. We also arm them with the best market data to better inform the meeting planner’s buying decision and create a great culture to work within. The results are incredible.
At Groups360, we believe being different is what makes us special. Our approach to helping customers through highly skilled meeting advisors rather than “associates” or “agents” is one of those differences we take pride in. We think our advisory approach is best for our customers, and our customers think so, too.
