Medical Device Link.

Originally Published MX March/April 2004

BUSINESS PLANNING & TECHNOLOGY DEVELOPMENT

Effective planning can make or break a meeting's success—and determine a company's return on investment.

Courtney Harris

Meeting attendees can white-water raft at Copper Mountain Resort. (click to enlarge) Photo courtesy Copper Mountain Resort

For medical technology companies today, planning meetings can lead to a Rubik's cube of options. Whether the meeting is intended for a sales force, senior management team, or a medical advisory board, selecting a site, managing travel logistics, and determining an agenda can amount to a complicated task. And because meetings typically encompass a sizable portion of a company's budget, their level of organization and resulting success can be crucial.

This article will outline the intricacies of meeting planning, from setting an objective and choosing a planner to locating a site and deciding on an incentive. For medtech executives, careful meeting planning can be an essential step toward product sales and revenue growth.

Meeting Goals

Depending on the type of meeting, a medical technology company can hope to achieve a number of goals. A sales force meeting may be held to train or educate field reps or third-party distributors about a new product, while senior management team members may meet to develop business strategies or brainstorm new approaches to emerging market conditions.

For Fox Hollow Technologies Inc. (Redwood City, CA), sales force meetings are often held to teach the company's representatives about a product's clinical capabilities. This can result in scheduling meetings around a live case for the company's plaque excision device, so that representatives can watch a physician use the product in real time.

In conjunction with one of Fox Hollow's recent sales meetings, sales reps spent an entire day on site at the Arizona Heart Hospital, says Leslie Trigg, the company's director of marketing. "We broadcast the live case from the catheter laboratory to the conference room, where each of the sales representatives had the opportunity to ask questions directly to the physicians as they were performing the procedure. We also had a physician moderate in the conference room, to propose questions to the representatives and really get them involved in the case.

"More than just honing the sales representatives' marketing skills, these types of meetings are important to make sure that the representatives have deep clinical knowledge," says Trigg, "because their success in the field will rest on their ability to add value in the lab, and to provide physicians instruction and training on the device."

At the executive level, meetings are ideally designed to challenge participants to come up with new ideas for the company. In today's hurried business climate, however, executive meetings for medical technology companies may wind up being more tactical than strategic.

"I see less brainstorming during executive retreats now," says Teri Louden, president of The Louden Network (San Diego), a healthcare consultant, and a meeting facilitator. "It was a lot easier to think out of the box when the world wasn't operating at hyperspeed due to the explosion of electronic and cellular communications. This makes it even more critical for companies to take time off with management teams to think strategically versus reactively."

Meeting Planners

The planning of meetings and retreats can be divided into two categories: planning the logistics and handling administrative support, and planning the business aspects, including establishing goals and desired outcomes, conducting relevant research to present, setting the business agenda, inviting any outside experts to speak, and facilitating the group discussion and drawing conclusions.

Both types of planning require different skills and expertise, yet each is critical to ensure the overall success of meetings and retreats.

Whom a company chooses to plan its meetings often depends on the size and scope of the meeting. In-house planners may be assistants to CEOs or employees within the company's marketing or sales departments. Larger companies may have full-time meeting planning divisions. Or there is the option of an independent or third-party company, which may be hired to handle different aspects of a meeting, from helping to develop a program's agenda and audio/visual production to travel and accommodation logistics.

For Boston Scientific Corp. (Natick, MA), deciding on a meeting planner "depends on how in-depth the planning is and the expertise that it requires," says Jennifer Hegner, manager of meetings and events for the company's neurovascular division. "We'll use a third-party company when we plan a large holiday party that requires entertainment, catering, and venues that are nontraditional to meeting planning. Whereas for trade show meetings, we have a lot of internal expertise and plan those ourselves."

How a company plans meetings "really depends on what the company's needs are," says Jenny Rutherford, president of Del Sol Productions (Pleasanton, CA), a third-party company that specializes in planning meetings for pharmaceutical, biotechnology, and medical device companies. "Usually small companies don't want to hire an in-house meeting planner because they don't have the quantity of work that would keep that person busy or because they can't afford it. They would rather hire a third-party company to plan one or two important annual meetings.

"However, larger companies use third-party services as well," says Rutherford. "Often the mantra is 'never staff for the peaks'—which means the company is not going to hire eight planners just because they need eight planners once a year. They are going to outsource some of the bigger events and have the in-house planner act as a liaison."

Today, third-party companies are a popular choice because they can offer savings in addition to meeting planning expertise.

"Third-party planners are able to negotiate discounts with most vendors," says Rutherford. "Companies will end up paying retail price, but they'll get the third-party planner's expertise and service—which they generally wouldn't get if they had booked on their own.

"Meetings are expensive, big-budget items," says Rutherford. "It can be important for companies to use an expert to keep costs under control and to come up with fresh ideas."

Although some third-party companies specialize in planning medical meetings, that number is small.

"Most meeting planners are generalists as to the kind of clients they work with," says Rutherford. With Del Sol, "it helps to have a healthcare industry background and understand some of the unique requirements for medical technology meetings, such as how to set up a wet laboratory or live procedure broadcast and provide CME credits to attendees," she says.

"The medical industry is much more heavily regulated than other industries," adds Hegner, citing her experience in the technology industry as an example, "so there are many more guidelines and standards to which a meeting planner must adhere."

The reason that there aren't very many third-party planners that cater specifically to the medical device industry is those meetings have traditionally tended to be small ones, says Marnie Miller Tanner, owner and chief officer of Miller Tanner Associates (MTA; Lebanon, TN), a third-party company that serves pharmaceutical, biotechnology, and medical device companies. "It's growing, though. Medical device companies are being more innovative in their approach to meetings. They have excitement and want partnerships with meeting planning companies that will give them ideas."

At Fox Hollow Technologies, which has worked with MTA, it is important for a third-party company to be able to anticipate needs, creatively solve problems, and pay attention to details, says Trigg. MTA "is good at intuiting what the customer is really about and translating that into macro- and micro-level details about the meeting," she says. "I think they are able to deliver because they really listen and don't apply cookie-cutter templates to all meetings."

Meeting Sites

Members of the Fox Hollow Technologies sales team herd cattle in Arizona during a team-building program planned by Miller Tanner Associates last December. (click to enlarge) Photo courtesy Fox Hollow Technologies

Several factors can determine where a company decides to hold a meeting, including budget, convenience, and reliability. Where some companies decide that new locations provide a stimulating effect, other companies are comfortable returning to tried-and-true sites. Traditional venues include conference centers, hotels, or resorts—and sometimes, a combination of all three. Often, such venues have a meeting planner on-site to assist a company in making its decisions.

Conference Centers. Not all conference centers are alike, according to Geoff Lawson, president of the International Association of Conference Centers North America (IACC; St. Louis). "Conference centers may be owned by corporations for their exclusive use, or they may be affiliated with business schools at universities," says Lawson. "Some centers may be nonresidential and for day purposes only, while others are fully commercial.

"Sometimes when people hear 'conference center,' they think of older, less posh buildings," he says. "But there are resort conference centers, too. At the end of the day, depending on where you are in this country, there are some wonderful facilities."

IACC North America encompasses about 250 properties in the United States and Canada. Lawson says that the organization's most important asset is its universal criteria. The list includes conference room design specifications and skilled conference center staff, among other requirements; new conference centers are checked for compliance with the criteria before being accepted into the association.

"IACC tries to make sure that the meeting room and meeting environment are conducive to the user's needs," says Lawson. "Our primary focus is on the classroom."

Medical technology companies often come together for presentations that update employees about various drugs and research, adds Lawson. "Conference centers are probably the best place for that," he says, "because there is a lot of sitting involved for the listeners, and having ergonomic chairs and other meeting room comforts can help."

Nevertheless, the conference center industry only accounts for about 10% of the meetings that are held annually in North America, says Lawson. "About 90% of meetings go to hotels, convention centers, and other types of meeting venues."

Resorts. While some resorts focus exclusively on rest and relaxation, others may have conference centers with full-time meeting planning staffs. The key for some companies may be to find a resort that offers a balance of learning and recreation.

"Given the increasing evidence of the effect that stress has on health and productivity, I am seeing a growing interest in combining education and exercises that deal with stress management as part of medical executive meetings and retreats," says Louden.

"Medical technology companies tend to go to resorts," says Carol Schmidt, director of conference sales at Copper Mountain Resort (Copper Mountain, CO), citing the resort's market research. "We've found that the industry seems to continue to have money to spend, even during wartime, the downturn of the economy, and post–September 11.

"We've also found medical technology companies to be open to team-building programs and the resort environment in general," she says. "That's important, because you have to have people that are into that type of setting. There could be a company that likes resorts in one division, but another division prefers to be at an airport location."

Schmidt says that it is useful for companies to consider new meeting sites. "Staying at one place for years is great, but you should always look at alternatives," she says, adding that a new location might "add a fresh perspective and regenerate and elevate the enthusiasm for going to that destination and particular meeting."

Depending on the time of year, meeting participants at Copper Mountain can plan on golfing, skiing, or river rafting in their spare time. "There is a whole new perspective that people can gain on their businesses or themselves personally when they are surrounded by majestic mountains and beautiful scenery," says Schmidt. "Even the most unathletic meeting participants can benefit from the serene, back-to-nature atmosphere."

At resorts such as Copper Mountain, space can also be an asset to accommodate different meeting sizes.

"A comfortable size for us is 250 to 300 people, but we can work on both ends of the spectrum," says Schmidt. "We often find that senior-level executives come here for board meetings, and if they are satisfied with the experience, their companies will book a national sales meeting or product launch down the line."

Memorable Meetings

Meeting attendees can white-water raft at Copper Mountain Resort. (click to enlarge) Photo courtesy Copper Mountain Resort

Historically, companies reward the top performers within their sales forces. Often, rewards come in the form of a vacation or other travel incentive. Today there are companies that specialize in organizing such incentives, as well as planning memorable, unconventional meetings.

Incentive programs "get employees motivated and thereby benefit companies," says Rick Dunaj, vice president of global incentive sales for RPMC Inc. (Calabasas, CA). "The return on investment is so incredible that these programs become minimal investments."

RPMC, a marketing and promotions company, plans memorable travel-incentive and team-building programs, many in exotic locations. The company also plans senior-level meetings, and understands that after the entertainment, executives need to get to work.

"Companies do have to conduct their business," says Dunaj. RPMC, which has some pharmaceutical and biotechnology clients, targets companies that want "white-glove service and individual attention," he says. "Everyone who attends one of our meetings or conferences deserves VIP treatment."

Fox Hollow Technologies' Trigg says that memorable meetings go beyond skiing and golf trips. "I try to stay away from conventional activities and the types of things that people can do every day," she says, noting the company's recent team-building program of cattle herding.

"I think it's important to extend your brand into everything that you do," says Trigg. For example, she says, the company's coronary catheter device produces "an enormous 'wow' factor when people see the amount of plaque that's pulled out of the arteries, and we try to convey the sense in cultivating the brand that this is something no one has seen before. So Fox Hollow wants to take this idea of unconventional and memorable and make sure that feeling is infused all the way through its marketing materials, communication with customers, and communication with its own field.

"For me, it's all part of building enthusiasm, momentum, and an organizational culture," says Trigg. "If a company is planning meetings that involve golf or spas—something that everyone's done in a million other sales meetings—you really don't get there in terms of creating that unique organizational culture."

According to Dunaj, creating a "wow" factor in meetings and incentives is essential. In the medical device and pharmaceutical world, "everyone wants to keep up with what everyone else is doing," he says. There are three advantages to offering meetings with excitement, he adds. "A company wants to keep its sales force motivated, retain its top performers, and recruit top performers from other companies," he says.

In the medical technology industry, "there are a lot of companies that are trying to differentiate why their products are better than their competitors'," he says, so the objective of memorable meetings is "to differentiate how their sales force is rewarded—which leads to retaining and attracting top talent."

Copyright ©2004 MX