The Stretch method by goMICE: connecting relationships for the long term and sustainably
Originating from: Het Ondernemersbelang, March 2021
Entrepreneurs are often consumed by their enthusiasm and drive to make the daily business grow and flourish. Alongside the focus on your service or product, it is often a challenge not to lose sight of your business relationships and employees amidst the hustle and bustle of everyday life. And that is a missed opportunity because, as everyone knows, what you give attention to grows!
Normally, organising events and making business trips plays an important role in relationship management. You meet your clients, celebrate the close of a successful year with your employees, and regularly let business associates experience your new services or products live. How do you ensure that you nevertheless remain top of mind with your associates, nowadays also online, and that they do not switch to the competitor who devotes more time and attention to this? And how do you ensure that your employees remain engaged with internal developments, and not least, with your organisation and with each other?
Relationship management in the time of corona
Corporate events and group travel agency goMICE, has been organising wonderful events and incentive trips for SMEs and corporate enterprises for years, and goMICE will continue to do so. Even before the pandemic, however, they noticed that an opportunity is often missed by limiting the point of contact to that single, specific moment. Because by starting to involve, enthuse and inform your customers or employees earlier, you build your relationship over a longer period leading up to and following the event or incentive trip. Prompted by this specific need of many clients, goMICE the stretch method developed.
Diewertje Reekers, Manager Event Marketing at goMICE: “Relationship management is crucial for the growth and success of businesses. Before the pandemic, a great deal of time, attention and budget was devoted to live events, as well as group and incentive travel, to strengthen bonds or deliver a message with impact. Nowadays, this presents an extra challenge, but fortunately, in many cases, it can be addressed by using well-directed online or hybrid events. And, of course, we hope that we will soon return to meeting each other live once again. With our newly developed Stretch method, we also assist in setting up a tailored and well-thought-out communication process that enables you to build long-term relationships.”
Building long-term connections for a higher return
The Stretch method, developed by goMICE, ensures that as an entrepreneur you stay in touch with your business relations over the long term through the use of, as they call them, “touch moments”. This allows you to make your presence felt regularly before and after a trip or event, warm up your relations, inform them and involve them on the lead-up to your meeting, as well as keeping the connection warm afterwards.
Diewertje Reekers: “Whenever we receive a request for the organisation of an incentive trip or event, we always start by mapping out the objectives, the target audience and the message that needs to be conveyed. Using our stretch method, we “stretch” this out, if desired, across a broader timeframe before and after the business meeting. In this regard, it does not matter whether the meeting takes place live or online.".
In some cases, a client chooses to tackle this piece of strategic communication themselves, but there are also many organisations that do not have this expertise in-house or cannot free anyone up for it. In this case, we take care of the development of a concept or the communication plan and its possible implementation. We house this within the Stretch method, which supports effectively building contact with relations. Whether this is with a client, colleagues or other stakeholders. We believe in long-term and sustainable connecting and see that this also has a positive effect on the ultimate ROI of the event or trip. goMICE is and remains the trusted partner for organising corporate meetings, events and incentive trips at home and abroad. With the addition of the Stretch method, we ensure an even higher return.
Sustainable connecting and organising
goMICE operates as a corporate travel and events agency under the wing of the globally operating business travel organisation Uniglobe Alliance Travel. As a result, the topic of sustainability is also an important facet that they incorporate into the organisation of business travel and events.
Diewertje Reekers: “In addition to helping build sustainable relationships, we also ensure sustainable travel and meetings. We do this by calculating in advance and, if desired, fully offsetting CO2 emissions. This allows our clients to meet their contacts both at home and abroad in a socially responsible way with a reduced footprint. In addition, we deploy various digital tools and apps throughout a process that can replace many offline communication channels. Think, for example, of inviting, informing, engaging and activating participants. If we do use offline resources, we make use of sustainable solutions. Because sometimes you simply want to stimulate or surprise someone in an unmistakable way and this works better with a lovely give-away or an invitation through the letterbox. But all of this is entirely possible by making smart and sustainable choices.”.
Have a no-obligation brainstorming session with a professional
Do you want to know how you too can connect with your relationships in a long-term and sustainable way? goMICE is offering companies the opportunity to schedule a free online sparring session with one of the goMICE professionals until 1 May 2021. During this sparring session, you can present your challenge regarding a corporate group trip or event to one of the goMICE professionals. goMICE will brainstorm with you, with no obligation, about the right approach and how you might be able to add even more value through the use of the goMICE Stretch method. Click here to schedule a free sparring session.
Read here the original source article in Hét Ondernemersbelang.