Dealing with Last-Minute Meetings

You know the routine: Call for a flight the day before you want to travel, and be prepared to open your wallet and shell out the big bucks for your ticket. Now multiply those last-minute fees by the number of meeting attendees, then add in higher costs for the hotel, the catering, the audio/video equipment… and you can kiss your budget – and your beauty rest – goodbye.

Couple that with the fact that the lead time for meetings is getting shorter and shorter (the average for meetings of up to 100 attendees is 90 days or less, according to a Meetings Monitor survey), and meeting planners’ lives are getting more and more hectic.

But planning a meeting with a short lead time doesn’t have to be a huge headache or a drain on your bank account. Here are some strategies to help keep costs – and your sanity – firmly in hand:

• Prioritize. Know what’s most important for this meeting – the destination, the meeting room, the food, the leisure-time activities – and concentrate most of your effort (and budget) there.
• Don’t re-create the wheel. “Have templates in place for processes that are common to most meetings, such as RFPs, regularly negotiated contract items, even attendee name badges,” suggests Gabrielle Konin in Successful Meetings. The more you can leverage off of work you’ve done in the past, the easier your life is going to be.
• Get help. While it’s important for you to serve as the central decision-maker and check-signer, if you’re really under the gun, recruit whomever you can to help you cross all the “t”s and dot all the “i”s. Meeting planning involves a lot of administrative work that can be done by any conscientious soul. Delegate some of these admin tasks to someone else while you save your energy for the big stuff.
• Be flexible. When you don’t have time on your side, you need to be a bit flexible about your expectations and requests, says Melissa Belon, association director of the Illinois Society of Association Executives in MeetingNews. “Instead of coming in Tuesday to Thursday, maybe you meet Sunday to Tuesday,” she says.
• Stay close to home. By keeping close to your home base, you’ll minimize travel costs, be dealing with a familiar locale , and have the advantage of working with service providers you may already know. You can also do a lot of the leg work (or delegate it) without having to hop on a plane, and you won’t have to make a decision about a venue sight unseen.
• Build in down time. After the dust clears and the meeting is over, reward yourself for a job well done. Take a day (or an afternoon) off, get a massage, and put your feet up. After all, you need to recover your strength for the next emergency that’s sure to be heading your way.