This is the simple art of looking a customer in the eye and asking “How can I serve you better?”  Simple though it may seem, many businesses have forgotten this art.  Sure, they have in-store feedback survey’s, Facebook fan pages where they can ask for feedback, and even more complex methodologies like focus groups and third-party market research.  All of these vehicles serve a purpose and can net invaluable results, but none of them can replace the face-to-face interactions that result in really knowing your customer.

Here are two steps for not only seeking direct customer input, but tracking and utilizing that data:

Build Feedback Into the System – In a previous post, we talked about giving your customers a chance to tell you what they want.  Today’s topic calls for more than just giving them an opportunity, this is about actually asking them leading questions that can inform your current and future business decisions. Brief your employees on the type of data you want to collect, and then train them to ask leading questions in everyday interactions.

For example, every time we stand at the supermarket checkout making small-talk with the employee, there is a missed opportunity for them to ask us for substantial feedback.  Instead of just asking, “did you find everything” (which we are rarely asked), why not tailor the questions to the specific purpose.  If the person at the checkout stand see’s us buying organic bananas, but not organic tomato.  Why not ask the simple question: “If we stocked organic tomato, would you buy them?”  Is this not valuable feedback? This could create a valuable picture not only of individual customers, but of your entire customer base if you consistently ask these type of questions.

Establish a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) System – In order to make use of the feedback you are gathering, you must institute a CRM system that tracks your customer’s input over time and allows you to not only better interact with the individuals, but create a picture of your overall customer base.  These day’s CRM software doesn’t have to be expensive or complicated, but it needs to be comprehensive, and there are a lot of inexpensive solutions that we’ve helped clients institute with great success.  Find what works for you, and start using it religiously.

Knowing who your customers are, what their needs and wants are gives you a leg up on serving them in the short term, and planning for the long term.

After reading that list, if you’re thinking, “how am I going to avoid those words” then it is probably time to re-evaluate your marketing strategy.  By no means should you never ever use these terms, but because they have been so overused they have lost their meaning, and thus their desired affect, for consumers, and therefore you should be very careful before using them in your marketing copy.  There are some businesses that are notorious for saturating the marketplace with these terms; think car dealerships, mattress warehouses, and any company buying ad-time after 3am on local television.  Because of this, consumers have been trained to associate certain terms with certain businesses, and by overusing these terms, you can unintentionally associate yourself as well.

What should you do instead?  Start by writing marketing copy that speaks to your target audience, and establishes your brand as one that connects with the values of your potential customers.  Create positive associations and deliver against them.  Be honest and forthright in your marketing.  Then, when you do want to slip in a free giveaway, or a genuine guarantee, your consumers will believe you and it will have the desired affect on sales.  In other words, be strategic, use these trigger words sparingly (if at all) and instead focus at all times on connecting with your customer.

However old the article, we found the advice solid enough to inform our current naming process, and then got to thinking about how two of the tips , and not just for naming a business/product/program, but in fact for most strategic decisions that a leader makes.  So, our take on the 2 leadership mistakes to AVOID:

1. Decision By Committee – First of all, none of us are an island, and certainly we all have teams, boards, and other groups who should be consulted on important decisions.  In fact, if structured correctly, these allies can provide valuable feedback before making a decision.  The key is to structure their feedback, have a clear process, and don’t let group-think take over. As a leader, you need to take this feedback very seriously, consider input from all sides, and let your structure guide you to utilizing this information to make a better decision.  But at the end of the day, your role is to make sure this input is improving the decision making process and not making it more confusing, or watering it down in any way.
2. Making the Wrong Decision, and Refusing to Change - It’s generally human nature to want to stick by your decisions, no matter what.  Fight this urge, without giving into the temptation to change your mind at the first sign of danger; but once it is clear that your plan has failed and that it is causing more problems than it is solving, don’t be afraid to change your mind.  Once you decide to take a new course, go back and analyze the original decision with a mind to avoiding the wrong turns you took last time.

This value-added approach has become even more crucial in the last year, when even our largest (and most financially secure) clients have been tightening their belts and looking for us to justify our fees in ROI terms.  So, here are two ways we’ve found effective in demonstrating value:

• Use Case Studies To Demonstrate ROI: Don’t just demonstrate you’re expertise on executing the project, be concrete about the ways that you have helped other organizations gain value by purchasing your product and/or services.
• Build ROI Into The Project: We often build measurable ROI into our pitches, by showing ways that our expertise will bring increase revenue (or decrease expense, or both) that will net the client more than our consulting fees.  On a recent pitch, we calculated how our team could streamline operations (reduce expenses) and bring in more customers (increase revenue) and how this bottom line was greater than our consulting fees.

The more we are able to do this in very concrete terms, the more our current and prospective clients are actually willing to up-sell themselves on additional services, because they see the value we bring to their organization.

How are you demonstrating your value to your current and prospective clients?

Update: We just found this post from Seth Goodin titled “Pay for things” where Seth offers this simple equation: if paying for something would provide greater return than doing the work yourself, paying for it is a no brainier.

• Give them opportunities to tell you what they want.

  It is amazing how much people will talk if you simply ask them “what do you want?… and what don’t you want?”  Use every opportunity (website sign-ups, personal interactions, behavioral data) to know what your customers do and don’t want.  Store this information, and use it to make their experience hassle free in the future.

  Think of requests you get regularly by existing customers, and start making it a habit of asking these questions of new customers—it will show that you know your market, and it will allow you to begin meeting their needs immediately (remember, most of us often don’t know what we need until we need it, so anticipate that.)

• Make the experience customizable.

  Consumers are getting very used to having the things they want, they way they want them, and when they want them.  Gone are the days of one-size-fits-all, mass-produced solutions.  And many more businesses than just Wall Mart are guilty of this approach to business, service organizations (hotels, in Chris’s example) consistently seem to think that they can provide a general experience to everyone who walks through their revolving door.  Unfortunately, this couldn’t be farther from the truth.

  A long-time maitre’d at one of our favorite restaurants is fond of saying that as a diner, your are partially responsible for the type of service you get (now, this restaurant is known for it’s excellent service, so there is a baseline that they’ve already achieved).  Instead, he invites diners to tell him what type of experience they are looking for (business, family, romance, etc) and he pays very close attention to the verbal and non-verbal signals.  For his frequent diners, he’s figured out what they want, and under what circumstances, and he no longer has to ask.  But he’ll customize the experience for you, because even though they provide a high level of service across the board, they understand that it should still fit the person and the occasion.

• Give them what they want!…consistently, and without having to be reminded.

  A customer should only have to tell you once they like things done in a certain way,  information presented in a particular format, or even, in Chris’s example, they prefer a certain type of bath products in their hotel room.  Be sure you’re collecting this data, and sharing it across your organization—there is nothing more annoying than having to repeat a request to multiple members of the same firm.

  The maitre’d referenced above is only truly effective because he passes requests onto the waitstaff, bussers, sommelier and everyone else who may stop by the table.  He acts as the central customer information database for this restaurant, making sure that everyone knows exactly how certain patrons want to be treated.

What is your customer engagement and loyalty strategy?

It was a simple little game, that took all of 2 minutes to “complete” before redirecting me to Orbitz hotel site, but it was fun, and distracting enough that we played a second “round.” Great!  Marketing win for Orbitz, right?  After all, they got at least four minutes of brand exposure.  Yes, a win for Orbitz if their goal was just to raise the awareness of their brand—which has pretty high awareness anyway.

But on closer examination—which we only undertook when this transitioned from a fun distraction to a blog post about marketing—it isn’t clear at all that this was a well-executed campaign for Orbitz.  Here is why:

• The campaign seemed to link to both the “OrbitzTLC” program and the Orbitz Hotels program (the shape of each mini-golf hole was the shape of the Orbitz Hotel logo, which looks marginally like a hotel)
• The game may have been intended to raise awareness of the Hotel offerings in particular (most people still associate Orbitz with flights, not hotels)
• Neither OrbitzTLC nor Orbitz Hotels have anything to do with golf.

Orbitz could have made a much larger impression, and probably generated more direct sales, by tying their mini-golf interactive game into actual golf vacations. Here are three things they could have done to maximize this advertisement:

1. Redirect to a page that features special rates on golf destination travel?  Myrtle Beach anyone?
2. Create a real incentive to forward it to your friends.  What about a way to challenge them in order to accrue points that enter one into a chance to win a trip to Myrtle Beach?
3. Redirect those challenges onto a social network (for instance, a Facebook App) so that it could truly be passed around and seen by many more, therefore maximizing the ROI on your development costs and ad buy.

It seems that Orbitz was pretty short-sighted with this one.

Before we offer our own leadership lesson of the Senator, we want to note the passing of this American institution.  Senator Kennedy came to the Senate under less than grand conditions—his family connections—and he certainly had some serious lapses in judgment and ethics, however, over the course of  his career he has made a more profound impact on the public than almost any other individual in post-war America.

This is the lesson we draw from Kennedy’s life: keep fighting.  No matter how much he was criticized, no matter how many times he failed, Senator Kennedy continued to fight for what he believed in.  Unfortunately, he has passed away before seeing one of his major goals come to pass—the enactment of universal health care—but up until the very end, he was working the phones to push his colleagues toward reform.  Now, agree or disagree with his policies, that perseverance is to be admired, and is certainly a leadership trait that we can learn something from.

Most people know about Google Alerts—if you haven’t done so already, we recommend setting up alerts for your company and yourself so that you know when news articles and blog posts include your name, company, and other key terms.

Additionally, PR Week has this great list form a few months back of other monitoring tools that will come in handy.  Among our favorites for saving time while staying on top of the latest news, check out NutshellMail and Addictomatic.

In the mean time, please continue to read as we’ll be resuming our regular posting on communications, marketing, and strategic development, as well as the occasional observations about life, culture, and the changing landscape around us.

Well, our answers have varied depending on the situation, but a lot of what we’ve discussed has shared the theme of: “collaborate more.” Collaborate within your organization–find new ways to connect teams–collaborate with old and new partners–and collaborate with your customers.  Essentially, bring other people into the process and you’ll be amazed at how innovative you are.

Today we ran across a new site to help entrepreneurs collaborate with the public on the funding of their projects.  Check out the croudsourced financing model at http://www.kickstarter.com/

Kickstarter has a great idea, but just think about applying this model to other areas, or creating specialized communities around croudsourcing for specific industries.  These are the type of innovative, out-of-the-box, ideas that we’ve been talking about with others.  What have you been talking about?  Now is the time to innovate, when the economy forces us to think about things in a new way and we truly stretch ourselves to act in new ways.

The unique thing about the site is that they attempt to explain why a certain topic is trending on Twitter.  Check it out, and use this to keep yourself, your brand, and your clients in the loop!

We were reminded of this when we ran across this post on Barcklay’s Visa Black Card, with a $495 annual fee.  The post makes a valid point about whether your firm should evaluate raising prices, even when it seems like everyone else is cutting prices just to get people in the door.  Here’s the point about the Visa Black Card: at a time when credit is tight, when everyone else is having trouble getting the credit they need, you could have the ultimate credit tool…but it’s going to cost you.

Think about it this way, is your firm providing a product or a service that’s more valuable now than ever?  Are you in a position to demonstrate—and we mean, really demonstrate, with hard facts and figures—that you’re capable of creating more value in the midst of the recession.  If so, maybe it’s time to take another look at your current pricing structure.  Consider who your clients are, and if you have an opportunity to build a more robust, higher value, client roster through revising your prices.

Be sure that you can clearly communicate this additional value, but if you do it right, you could be raising your prices—and your profits—even as everyone else is cutting their prices and profits.

Take a look at the video Tom posted, it’s a great example, and it got us thinking: how often do we just get out of the way and provide our customers with an open forum to simply answer the question “why?”  So often, we qualify the questions with structured surveys or focus group questions.  Yes, structure is important, and there are times when we need to to compare answers, to get pacific data-points, and to assess particular items.  Think about how many times your customer-feedback questions include something along the lines of “Please rate your satisfaction from 1 – 5.”

So often, this “structure” has the benefit (both intentionally and unintentionally) of giving us the answers we want and the language we’re already using.  How often have you simply asked “Why do you do business with us?” and then got out of the way and simply let them respond?  What about turning it around, finding people who aren’t doing business with you and simply asking them “Why not?”  No qualifiers, no specifics, simply: “Why not?” and then really listened to their response?

Just imagine the new ways you would have to communicate with your current and potential customers if you started by really listening to them.

We’ve talked a fair amount recently about how to evaluate and use social media tools in your marketing and communications efforts.  But perhaps the most valuable asset of social media isn’t talking, but listening.  Convo Monitor is a website designed to let you do just that: listen to Twitter conversations.

Listening to your customers should always be a primary focus of your communications strategy, and this is a great tool to empower you to listen to your customers in new ways.

We won’t get into the back-and-forth of the issue itself, but suffice it to say that as of Sunday night the tag #amazonfail was the top trending topic on Twitter and this morning blogs everywhere are covering the “controversy” surrounding the Amazon.  Some have pointed out that this is a big problem, for example Darrell Berry over at BigShinyThing (who we admire) pointed out:

Regardless of Amazon’s final response (which needs to be significantly more credible than their efforts so far), plenty damage has been done to their brand, amongst communities which know how to organise, and that understand the strength of collective action. A glimpse of that strength came last night, when, within a few short hours, a word-of-mouth googlebombing campaign successfully dislodged Amazon’sown definition of their precious sales ranking system on Google. 

Now, it’s well worth noting that the Twitter community and even the blogger community represent a small portion of Amazon’s customers, and an even smaller portion of the public at large.  (We bet that if we all called our mothers and asked them about amazonfail they would have no idea what we were talking about–and would probably recommend we seek professional help.)

That said, this developing story is instructive about how the world of communications has changed. A few quick observations from the peanut gallery:

• Don’t forget that in the “everyone-is-a-creator” age, your front-line customer service reps are also often your PR reps.  According to this great rundown in InformationWeek, Sunday’s fervor was started largely when writer Mark Probst noticed his book was de-listed, contacted Amazon, and subsequently blogged about their insufficient response via a Customer Service Rep.  Think about those dealing directly with your customers, are they trained and empowered to deal with customers who might as well also be members of the media?
• There is no such thing as a “day of rest.”  If this story proves nothing else, it proves that even on Sunday—Easter Sunday no less—your PR team has to remain diligent.  Sometime yesterday evening a PR rep for Amazon released a statement saying that it was a “software glitch” and that they would fix it soon.  While this may in fact be the case, it has been greeted as too little, too late.
• A small, vocal minority can quickly turn into a major PR problem; and most of the time, that minority consists of your most loyal customers, so of course it behoves you to keep them happy.  

The sun is just rising over Amazon headquarters in Seattle as we write this, we have no doubt that Amazon will “fix the problem” and in time, their brand will recover.  But in the mean time, it’s instructive for the rest of us to watch this closely and learn our lessons, because it’s a new communications world, and we all have to adapt.

We are involved in quite a bit of design work as a part of delivering integrated communications strategies: print and motion graphic design, staging and scenic design for events, web design for interactive campaigns, and we’ve even dabbled in some industrial design for some product roll-outs. Suffice it to say, from our perspective, design is essential, but we still think the dichotomy of more or less emphasis in a recession means that people are asking the wrong questions. The camps on the budgetary priority of design seem to fall roughly equally between the folks that think design should be the first step of the process informing everything else (think Apple), or the last step (think, well, lots of brands that seem to slap on any old design over the top of their poorly-thought-out strategy).

Our perspective is somewhat different, as we don’t take the first/last approach, we believe in truly integrating design throughout the strategy and execution phases. Because of this, we see the budgetary role of design roughly equating with the rest of the economic downturn. In other words, we’re not advocating for cutting out any more on design than one would on any other aspect of your model; nor are we advocating hiring more designers to really “wow” people in a time of recession (even though this may go against our direct business interests).

Instead, we would propose you ask yourself the following questions:

1. Are you integrating your design into every phase of your conception, development, launch and execution?  In our experience it is almost always more expensive to wait until the last minute to answer questions like: How should this look? What’s the user experience? Are we conveying the right message?
2. Can you iterate earlier designs to save money?  We certainly aren’t advocating that you simply change the date on old graphics, or slap the word “new” on a decidedly old graphic.  (Remember, Google exists, and you’re audience will figure out these tricks very quickly.)  But maybe you can work with your design team to update designs without having to start from scratch.
3. Are you being responsive to customers/constituents so that your design dollars have maximum effectiveness? You could spend all the money in the world on great design, but if you aren’t serving your customers, then all that money is being waisted.  Listen to your customers.  What do they want?  Do they think that the old design was just fine?  If so, don’t feel you need to reinvent the wheel.  If they have problems or complaints, spend your money addressing those and cut out the “nice but not necessary” design elements.

His online campaign strategy, from using social networks to setting up his own and even launching an iPhone application, is currently envied by everyone from the political world to the private sector.  We’ve certainly had plenty of requests from political, nonprofit, and corporate clients alike for “the Obama Special”—meaning they want “whatever it was that made Obama successful online.”

First and foremost, yes, all credit to Obama and his team (many of whom are friends of ours and we think the world of), but let’s be honest, he is a singular candidate at a singular moment in history that we would argue probably can’t be replicated.  In fact, there was an article posted yesterday on Congressional Quarterly’s website talking about hard it has been for Obama and his team to replicate their success online now that they’ve moved from campaigning to governing (read the article here).

But let’s put aside Obama’s singularity and the singularity of this moment in history, and talk a bit more about certain traits of his success and how your communications strategy can leverage these.

• Campaigns are by nature combative:  There is clearly defined opposition that bands people together. Do you have something that is “opposed” to you?  For political candidates this one is easy, but think about it from a nonprofit standpoint, is there someone taking an opposite issue on your cause that you can use to band your followers together?  What about a corporation?  Does someone else make an inferior product that you could use to rally people to your superior offering?  Now, obviously this doesn’t work in all cases (we would argue probably doesn’t work in most cases), but let’s be honest, this is one of the defining aspects of a campaign that helps drive participation.  The problem here of course is that after the opposition is defeated, you need to come up with another compelling reason for your supporters to stick around—which is what Obama is currently facing and why he is always talking about how the “work isn’t over.”n
• Campaigns are goal-oriented situations: There is a very clear and compelling goal for everyone who gets involved: winning. Because so much of what goes on in the digital space is about a long-term conversation (and it should be) it’s sometimes easy to loose a clear goal.  What’s more, the goal of much of your online efforts are to get people to support your cause, or buy your product, which isn’t necessarily compelling. One of the big reasons for Obama’s success was that he empowered millions to feel ownership in the goal—if he won, everybody won!  Can you create ownership in the same way?  If your product succeeds, does everyone succeed?  Of course, you still have the problem discussed above, after the goal is met, is there another one to keep people’s interest?
• Campaigns end: There is a constitutionally defined end date. We humans seem naturally inclined to want a beginning, middle, and end to our stories, and campaigns provide this in a compelling way.  Now, the obvious downside here is essentially the same weakness above, that if you provide an end date, you almost immediately have to provide a new “start date” in order to keep people engaged in the long term.  Yes, end-dates work well in creating urgency and driving a lot of participation quickly, but they’re not long-term strategies unless you have a revolving door of starts and finishes (which almost defeats the purpose).  So ask yourself, are you willing to provide an ending (perhaps in the form of a competition deadline) in order to drive traffic, knowing that once the deadline passes you’ll naturally be giving up a large part of that traffic?  One thing to consider is creating a predictable cycle that engages large numbers at regular intervals (think elections every four years).
• Successful campaigns (i.e. Obama’s) speak to something deeper: They tap into a natural feeling or inclination that people have, they give it a voice and a purpose. The three things above will each work in some strategies and not in others, and they all suffer from some major weekends, but this trait is undeniable in every effort (online and off).  If your product/cause/service/candidate doesn’t resonate with something people already want/believe/need/think, you’re not going anywhere.  The number one thing to remember about Obama’s success is that all of the online gadgets, the great peaches, the grassroots action were simply tools that helped him connect with a very real need that millions in that moment had: the need for change.

His insight is great (seriously, go read it), but we’d like to offer an expansion of this formula: (Possibilities + Function) – Cost = Opportunity.

What we find is that many people haven’t entirely gotten over the “whiz-bang” aspect of social media, especially considering that new tools are always coming out, and seem to renew the “shiny objects” fascination on a fairly regular basis.  Because of that, we can’t emphasis enough the need to put Cost into your evaluation equation as early as possible.

Evaluating the Cost: Much has been written on this topic, and we won’t re-hash all of it, but we do think that it’s important enough to list the elements that should go into your cost analysis:

• Message Discipline – One of the biggest potential costs to engaging in social media is that you give up a fair amount of message discipline by engaging in community conversations about your brand.  Now, it could be argued (and we do argue) that you’ve already given up the ability to control message, so why not jump in and participate.  However, there are real costs involved in terms of your strategic marketing goals and  your brand message, so be sure you weigh these against the opportunities.
• Staff Time – To really engage your audience requires diligence, and lots of time and attention.  How much of your current staff time is going to go to leveraging social media tools?  Will this detract from other duties these people fulfilled before?  Will you need to hire new staff to manage social media, or pick up the responsibilities of current staff that will get shifted to social media?
• Direct Costs – Yes, one of the appeals of social media is that there is a very low cost of entry.  In many instances, the direct costs are $0 (hey, Twitter accounts, Facebook pages, and more are all free).  But to “do it right” we encourage the allocation of real dollars that can be used on social media infrastructure (for example, buy a good camera if you’re going to put your CEO in front of it do video posts) and social media advertising (most “great” viral campaigns aren’t truly viral, they’re helped along with serious advertising and publicity budgets).

Evaluating the Opportunity: This part of the equation can at the same time be the easiest and the hardest. The simplest way to think about it is this: do the opportunities (the possibilities plus the functions, minus the costs) of using social media tools outweigh the potential for finding new customers and engaging current ones through other (read: more traditional) channels?

For many of the people we work with, the answer to the opportunities question is yes.  More importantly, what we find is that conducting a full analysis helps you become confident that you’re making the right decision and helps more people get behind social media.

Newspapers are dieing, magazines are cutting back publication, and publishing houses are cutting down book divisions, yet it seems that in just a few years we’ll all be reading more than ever—sans paper, of course. And if two wireless carriers are getting in on the game, you can place a safe bet that all of these devices will be connected to the internet.

So what does all of this mean?  For content producers, it means that there will be an even greater demand for content—providing you can make it easily accessible.  For companies, there will be more ways to communicate with your current and potential customers.  For marketers, new ad models will need to be developed.

Is your business model flexible enough for increasing changes?  Are there new models that you can be the first to develop?  Now more than ever, flexibility is the name of the game.

Over the last several months, we’ve been involved in several events are operating with 50% to 70% budget cuts over the same event last year.  In all of those cases, the focus from the event planners, sponsors, and senior executives has been on cutting out the frills and delivering more content.  And while we’d argue that the goal of an event should always be to find more ways to deliver content, we understand the impulse now more than ever.

However, those are your goals, the content you want to deliver at the lowest price possible, presumably because it’s what you think your attendees want.  But Luis Suarez recently put up a post from the viewpoint of an attendees that got us thinking.  What else do attendees want?

Yes, they want maximum content, the opportunity to network, be exposed to new ideas, and maybe even have a bit of fun.  But Lois argues that attendees also want to be healthy and comfortable.  So, being in the business of conference logistics, we thought we’d offer an easy set of questions you can ask yourself or your event planner before your next event (and most of these things, if you have a knowledgeable event team, can be done with little or no additional cost). Consider the following:

• How will your attendees be participating? Will they be taking notes?  How about using their laptops?  Will they be trying to juggle both?  (Have you ever tried to balance a laptop, iPhone, and event program on your knees while trying to sit in one of those generic conference-center chairs?)  If this is a serious possibility, what about adding classroom tables (the narrow ones) to your room layouts to make it possible for people to conformable spread out and participate in the event however they’d like.
• How long are you holding them hostage for? Yes, we’ve all heard it: attention spans are ever shorter, and while this is a concern, a good program producer will keep the content moving so people don’t get board.  Rather, think back to the mental image above.  If you’re keeping your attendees trapped in a chair, balancing their different devices, for long periods, they’re going to be less likely to focus on the engaging content you’re delivering.  What about more short breaks (especially if you don’t have room to add tables or more comfortable chairs)?  If you’ve got water-stations at the back of the room, but you don’t give them a chance to get up, what’s the point?  No doubt, there is a balance here, but you can work with your events team to strike the right balance.  (And trust us, conferences attendees are A.D.D., so learn to work with their distraction, not against it.)
• What about the “networking” portions? One of the biggest goals for most attendees is networking, but are you making it easy for them?  As the demand grows for “content” over “fluff” in hard economic times, let’s not forget that a lot of the best “outcomes” of events happens during the portions that are considered “fluffy”: receptions, breaks, even galas and parties.  So, even as you cut back the expensive portions of these elements (the entertainment, the decorations, maybe even the food and drink) remember, these are among the highest priorities for event-attendees. Could you have light snacks and only beer and wine?  Could you forgo the expensive entertainment for a bit of ambiance from a local band. Could you skip on the expense of decorating a boring hotel ballroom and walk down the street to a beautiful restaurant, or spacious winery? (Don’t underestimate the value of getting off site, and it often opens up possibilities for bringing in cheaper food and beverage when you’re not locked into catering contracts.)  Again, there is a balance. Know work with your events team to determine what’s right, but as a starter,