Sales & Marketing Management - May/June 2008 - (Page 28)

TECHNOLOGY TRAINING INCENTIVES TRAVEL/MEETINGS Streamlining business travel? Don’t cut too deeply Focus on efficiency and effectiveness, not ways you can cut corners reduce travel costs, reduce the number of trips.’ But that’s not necessarily the wisest course for companies to take. Conventional wisdom dictates that when sales are down, sales travel should be going up!” Expense aside, even if a company wants to send salespeople on the road more often, they might find it increasingly difficult because the direct result of higher fuel costs might be reduced capacity. It’s an especially difficult problem because cutbacks in capacity might result in several hurdles for business travelers to navigate: greater cost, fewer choices of times and routes, and in some cases, longer trips. “With these new restrictions in place, not only are options reduced but layovers are extended,” Fletcher says. “That could mean an additional overnight—which is a cost to the company as well as the traveler and his or her family— and an increase in unproductive time.” Susan Gurley, executive director for the Alexandria, Va.-based Association of Corporate Travel Executives and the ACTE Global Centre for Research and Education, agrees that cutting back on business travel can have a negative impact on revenue and shouldn’t be the default solution. “The greatest challenge for travel managers is maintaining traveler productivity and program effectiveness at a time when recession typically calls for making cutbacks,” she says. “Indiscriminately traveling less may simply undercut corporate objectives. Improving the booking and back office systems is a traditional approach to cost containment, but often requires an investment in new hardware or software. The time has come to look for a new paradigm. ACTE advocates traveling smarter, not necessarily more often.” One of the first places to look at when stretching those travel dollars is meetings between internal employees. Companies report that as much as 40% of their budget is reserved for internal meetings. Eliminating some of that expense through laptop teleconferencing is enabling many executives to meet with each other without ever leaving their desks, with some companies reporting millions of dollars saved without a drop in productivity. Using virtual meetings for internal staff leaves more of the budget intact for revenue-generating travel. www.salesandmarketing.com www.salesandmarketingmanagement.com O 28 SALES &MARKETING MANAGEMENT istock photo ne quick look at any recent newspaper’s headlines will tell you all that you need to know about travel today. Airlines are going out of business or curtailing their schedules, suffering mightily as the cost of fuel continues to spiral upward. Meanwhile, airplanes are being grounded for unscheduled safety inspections, stranding passengers at the same time they’re raising ticket prices. In the best of times, keeping your sales teams productive on the road is a challenge, but in today’s belttightening world, it’s practically a full-time job in itself. For the most part, the problems managers face today are the same as in previous years. But when combined with the general economic malaise plaguing the U.S. (and thus the global) economy, the ever-increasing pressure on reducing expenses has some managers thinking of scaling back on their teams’ travel. “The global economy is a major concern right now, but the issue directly impacting the corporate traveler is the ever-rising cost of fuel,” says Suzanne Fletcher, director of travel management for Redmond, Wash.based Concur, a provider of on-demand business services that automate employee spend management. “When the economy gets tight, some companies seem to immediately target travel as the place to reduce costs. You have heard it a million times: ‘If you need to MAY/JUNE 2008 http://www.salesandmarketingmanagement.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Sales & Marketing Management - May/June 2008

Sales & Marketing Management - May/June 2008 Contents Editor's Letter Brian Tracy University Smart Sales Sales Strategy Smart Marketing Marketing Strategy Smart Management Management Strategy The Minister of Culture Become a Value Merchant Incentives/Motivation Streamlining Business Travel Book Excerpt The Way I See It

Sales & Marketing Management - May/June 2008

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