Working with Meeting Planners

By Shirley Frazier
Sweet Survival^®/GiftBasketBusiness.com

Your Web site is a corporate magnet. At this very moment, a meeting planner could be searching your site, looking for corporate giveaways or welcome gifts or hotel room sweets.

You have what she's searching for. Fantastic! It's arranged on a corporate meetings page that you've created for such events.

The meeting planner wants to order, but she has more questions. Have you made it easy for her to contact you through your Web site? This is the option she likes best.

She'd rather complete a form online and click the "submit" button instead of writing down your telephone number, logging offline, picking up the phone, dialing your number, listening to a voice mail message and then leaving her own message. How can you streamline the connection?

A recent search through party and wedding Web sites reveals that the most owners add a contact form on their sites. This form makes contacting you easier and one that meeting planners and similar professionals appreciate.

Busy planners don't always have time to pick up the phone to contact you after seeing something on your site. They consider searching the Web and then picking up the phone for contact as a time waster. They want to search for and contact you in the same place. Anyone who simplifies their jobs wins the account. Let that be you.

Your contact form contains no more than 10 questions or text boxes, set up in the following manner:

1. Name

2. Company

3. Email address

4. What product are you interested in purchasing? (Here you provide a drop-down menu so that the prospect can choose the products.)

5. What is the occasion? (Drop-down menu includes "corporate event," "team meeting," "annual meeting," and "other," with a box to add a new occasion.)

6. When do you need these products? (Again, give the prospect a drop-down menu to choose a timeframe, such as "in 2 weeks," "next month," "in 6 months," etc.)

7. How would you like us to contact you? (Drop-down menu will include "Email me," "Call me at (phone number)," "Fax me at (fax number).")

8. How did you find us? (Search engine, affiliate link, etc.)

9. Other comments. (Provide a scrolling text box.)

Use these questions as a guide to create your contact form. It will, at the least, encourage dialogue and increase your chances to sell baskets and gifts to corporations.

 

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