Case Study: A Leading Telecommunications Provider

Maritz takes pro-active steps to ensure a successful sales meeting after companies merge.

Maritz takes pro-active steps to insure a successful sales meeting after companies merge.

Situation

As the Client began planning their annual sales meeting, rumors of a possible merger with another company began spreading. Having successfully managed these sales meetings in the past Maritz recognized the challenges the potential merger would present. If the merger took place the plans would need to accommodate a much larger sales force. It would be essential to craft and deliver a unified credible message. The logistics of recognizing top performers from two different incentives programs would also need special attention. Waiting until such a merger was finalized would have left little time to restructure the meeting.

Solution

Maritz took pro-active steps to insure the success of the sales meeting. Through their travel-industry connections, they were able to determine the size and scope of the other company’s sales meetings and to create a “site matrix” that reflected the new meeting requirements. Tentative bookings were made for appropriate additional space at the planned Client venue. Maritz’ relationship with its vendors meant they could do this with no risk of cancellation charges to their Client. And once the merger was finalized they successfully negotiated the merged company’s release from their previous venue commitment.

To accommodate the increased size of the new organization, the sales meeting was structured as a two-wave, four-track event. Maritz designed an end-to-end solution by synergistically combining their expertise in travel, event and video production, and communications. Maritz took the lead in creating the agenda and defining the message strategy for all meetings. Due to the merger, winners could not be identified as early as usual so Maritz staffed a call center to facilitate last-minute registration. While the client was focused on the details of the merger, Maritz focused on making the entire sales event, appear seamless to the merged parties.

Results

By the time the merger was finalized accommodations for a much larger event were already secured and the message strategy was well developed. Dedicated teams from Maritz Travel and Maritz Interactions worked closely with the client to solve logistics problems, many of which would only become apparent as the event unfolded. Maritz staff worked around the clock to assure a seamless delivery of event programming and sales recognition.

In a post-event survey, participants declared the sales meeting a success, giving it an overall rating of 9.2 out of 10.