4 tips for winning bids for conventions and events

Introduction

It’s no secret that the world of conferences and events is highly competitive. With high numbers of proposals and even higher numbers of competitors in the market, standing out from the crowd has never been more important.

Our exclusive guide will help you revolutionise your convention bureau’s bidding game. Packed with four essential tips and powered by Simpleview’s industry-leading CRM system, this ebook is your shortcut to securing winning event proposals.

Get ready to outshine the competition, captivate clients, and elevate your success.

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Simpleview has allowed us to become more efficient in managing our enquiries and our client accounts. It has enabled us to be more transparent with our partner venues and hotels who can see the status of their enquiries at any time. The system enables us to report and track activity with our partners to help us refine our service and keep working more effectively to generate new business for Liverpool City Region.”

– JENNIFER JENSEN,

Head of Business Tourism Marketing Liverpool

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Say No to Spreadsheets

Top tip no 1 - work with a platform that makes your life so much easier.

All marketeers love a spreadsheet - this reddit post even refers to the strange hyperfixation that so many have with these dry documents filled with columns, rows, and figures. Is it a nerd-thing or just a weird obsession? Certainly, there are many advantages to working with spreadsheets, but — as with so many other things — it’s about using them at the right time, with the right deliverable.

If you’re looking for trends, statistics, or analytics, spreadsheets can only do so much. Perhaps a platform that’s specifically designed for the task at hand is more appropriate?

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Do we dare leave our beloved spreadsheets behind?

When it comes to saving time, gaining complete transparency, and sharing information, surely one platform made for your specific sector makes more sense. Imagine having everything right in front of you — from different modules for different members as well as any inbound enquiries and traces — all in a single system.

That’s one source of truth for your whole team. This is where a CRM designed specifically for convention bureaus is the right choice.

The Extranet is a great tool for keeping track of our partners. I love the fact that they can keep their information current ... the responsibility is on the partner to keep their listing up to date.”

Manager of Partnership Services Visit Anaheim – KELLY GRASS

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Streamline Partner Engagement

Top tip no 2 - give your partners full visibility to create a network of success

There are various elements to creating events and you probably have a number of partners you already work with; you may even be working with your local DMO, as well as with many hotels and entertainment venues — that’s a lot of moving parts.

In creating a partner portal, you can add reports and provide partners with a way to communicate with you via the post board feature. You can track and report member communications and engagement via core or custom reporting and you can automatically monitor and distribute reports to share your overall impact with your network.

Letting your partners login to keep up to date with proposals — instead of relying on email — is yet another gain in efficiency for managing your entire convention centre on one platform.

With a system built for the industry, by the industry, there’s no need to search. That’s because a module for every step of the proposal process allows you to leverage the power of data by understanding what your customer wants, offering them the most relevant experiences in the way they expect and — what’s more — fills in the gaps for them by building connections with partners.

Having a clear view of past, present, and future event operations as well as providing everyone within your network with full visibility — enables you to deliver better outcomes and ultimately, to win more bids.

Enable Cross Collaboration

Top tip no 3 - integrate data and supply chains to succeed in a digital first world

Got team members off sick, on holiday or travelling for work? In situations like these, searching for answers and trying to find out how best to navigate previous prospect engagement feels fruitless and frustrating.

This is where “instant data” can help. With unmatched reporting — using tags and showing the ROI from your own events — this feature allows you to offer your client full insights, just as if their account manager was speaking to them.

Pay careful attention to the features that are built specifically for the services you’re offering, a point that will allow you to take any booking to the next level. You should also be able to distribute and collect online leads and responses securely and efficiently — while also tagging them to the correct trace — in order to track your own ROI.

By incorporating all these key integrations, you can reduce the time and effort needed to manage the entire sales and services cycle for meetings, conventions, exhibitions, and sporting events.

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Once the information is in the CRM, everyone involved knows in real time what they have to do. Instead of having the client response in two days, we have a response in 24 hours.”

Business Intelligence and Information Technology Director

The OFVC Guadalajara – RICARDO GIL

With such a competitive market place, having the ability to speed up your processes — not to mention the facility to make the most of your resources and capitalise on your efficiencies — will help you to create a unified partner, employee, and customer experience on a single industryspecific CRM platform.

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Be Honest,

Or do you regurgitate content simply because it worked before? We’ve experienced the pain of looking for venues only to be told what we were looking for, when in fact, our needs were the complete opposite of those assumed by those responding to our bid. when you receive an RFP, do you really take the time to consider everything the potential client is asking for?

As a custom DMO product, Simpleview CRM is uniquely geared to cater to our type of business.”

– MICHELLE HILL

LEARN MORE Research Consultant | Melbourne Convention Bureau

Use Your Data

Top tip no 4 - Personalised engagement at every touchpoint, a better way to use data

With a creative approach to completing proposals as well as actually thinking about what you could do differently for your prospective client — you might find you have the edge over other venue propositions. Attendance is the paramount concern for your clients and so every event needs to be truly unique. This being the case, content regurgitation just won’t cut it; it’s time to delight customers and guests, encourage loyalty, and increase your competitive advantage.

top tip #

Europe

Stay on top of repeat annual events and proactively reach out to clients to ask if you can bid. This tactic is easily captured within your CRM data, and with a data-driven approach to research efficiency, you can drive growth and provide extraordinary experiences. And don’t forget the support offered by your vendor of choice. After all, knowing you have a CRM Analyst at the end of the phone when you need it is not only worth noting, but a point that can keep you agile. Exceptional service is a key differentiator.

Choosing Simpleview

to provide our CRM and CMS was the right call for us because they truly are the industry experts. Their expertise, top-notch products, wide range of capabilities, and exceptional customer service make them the “best in the biz” when it comes to CRM and CMS options.”

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Senior Communications Manager

Visit Frisco

– WESLEY LUCAS

About Us

Built for the industry, by the industry

Simpleview CRM enables you to manage all aspects of your destination in one convenient place. From partner relationships to marketing automation, from meetings and event sales management to collaborating across departments, Simpleview CRM will help you make the most of every opportunity for your destination.

The first of its kind, our industryspecific customer relationship management (CRM) system is utilised by more destinations than any other platform.

Offering seamless integration with more than 20 programmes, a customisable user interface and endless support, our web-based Simpleview CRM serves more than 500 clients across the globe.

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