The most successful meeting industry leaders treat clients and prospects as people who have very different needs, and make widely different contributions to their profits. Your best and your worst clients, balance out to an average value to your business. It is a tremendous mistake to treat them both the same.

The fact is 20 percent of your customers and prospects bring you 80 percent of your profits. Most meeting industry professionals can show people everything that they have available, but seldom have everything their best clients or prospects would like to find.

To maximize market potential recognize these differences and work to meet their needs, as long as they bring in profits. Ask four questions: What kinds of clients and prospects do we want? What types of service do they need? What people are costing us too much to service? What quality improvements will bring added value to the people we would like to do more business with?

Many of us realize that not all clients and prospects are equal, yet they are all being treated equally. In many cases, the best clients and customers receive the least attention. One audio visual company discovered that the marginally qualified buyers rather than the best qualified took the most time and attention to close a deal. Likewise many meeting planners have discovered that clients who were unrealistic and demanding take up a far higher amount of their time and resources and, in the end, were not worth the revenue generated.

Their best customers seldom complained or had a problem understanding the restraints that come with a particular meeting location or the transportation arrangements that would be necessary due to the destination. Their best customers are realistic and work with them to create win-win. They look forward to working with them again and embrace their suggestions for improvements. Often these people are overlooked and almost ignored as those causing the most problems bask in the most service and attention.

One very successful supplier only works with “high end” prospective clients who have a great sense of urgency and know what they want and are willing to pay a reasonable price to get it. “When a client needs to find ‘the right incentive gift’ for their most productive people and has to have it at the event and beautifully packaged within a few weeks they know they can count on me and are a very motivated buyer.”

Many people in the meeting industry are waking up to the truth: it is time to target customers based on the profits they bring. The meeting industry must be prepared to deliver the right properties, products and services to the right clients and prospects, not to everyone. They must add costs to their property, products or services only when it adds value for the right customers.

A dentist with a children’s practice may think he is improving the comfort level of the mothers of his patients by building a bigger waiting room. He is adding cost without value if the mothers would rather run errands in the mall next door. Value added would be giving the mothers beepers, and paging them when an appointment was over.

Once you have identified the client base you want to serve, ask them what they want, what is most important to them and how they want to receive those products or services? The next step is to modify the way you are now doing business in order to deliver exactly what they told you they want in exactly the way they want it.

The level of service quality depends on the customer you want to serve. Nordstrom offers dazzling service for a small target market that is willing to pay for it. Wal-Mart captures the mass market by increasing value without increasing service. Both are successful!

You can only provide great products, properties and service if you know which customers you are going after, and if you know what they want. Ask them what is most important to them and what they would be willing to pay more for. Adding cost, enhancements and improvements to your property, product or service only makes sense if your customer is willing to pay for it.

Superior service and sales depend on assessing the market, choosing the targets, and then customizing your property, product or service to fit their needs. Remember your average buyer or seller means nothing to a successful meeting industry professional because “averages tell you nothing.” It’s the best ones that make your life both fun and profitable!

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