When Tomas Weisz invited his customers to Cleveland for a client meeting more than a decade ago, barely enough people showed up to fill a small conference room at a local hotel.
Only 15 people accepted his invitation that first year to learn more about the TMW tracking software they used to run their businesses.
Today, however, with a dozen client meetings under his belt, Weisz says those days are gone. Last month, more than 400 TMW customers converged on downtown Cleveland for what has become an annual event for Weisz — the TMW User Group.
Between roundtable discussions and product meetings, his customers also get a taste of life on the North Coast through a host of social events in the evenings that include a dinner at the Cleveland Metroparks Zoo and a cruise along the Cleveland Waterfront. It is, undoubtedly, a lot of fun, and also living proof of the viability of Weisz’s strategy for staying connected with his clients.
“One thing about our business is all of our clients are all over the place,” explains Weisz, CEO of TMW Systems, a Beachwood-based company that creates the tracking software that keeps a large chunk of the nation’s trucking industry on the road and on time. “Trucking companies tend to be outside the big metropolitan areas. People come here to work and say they want to travel. We say you’ll travel, but you’re not going to London or France, you’re going to go to places like Big Moose, Ontario.”
Weisz discovered while doing business with this geographically diverse base of clients that many of them had tweaked the TMW software system to fit their individual needs. What surprised him most was that his tracking system was being used to create efficiencies that Weisz’s own staff didn’t expect.
It didn’t take him long to realize that he needed to find a way to share that information with all his clients.
Creating an annual user group meeting is a labor-intensive endeavor for the TMW staff, but it has proved to be the best way for Weisz to build customer loyalty while also finding new ways to improve his product. But calling together your best clients for an intensive four days of work and fun can be a challenging experience. Weisz understands that.
And for others who may consider a similar undertaking, he has plenty of advice.
Plan year round
Roughly 75 percent of Weisz’s staff spends the 30 days prior to the annual meeting handling tasks related to the event. However, there is never really a down time the entire year, a time when at least someone within the company is not working to prepare the next user group.
The event is usually scheduled for the end of September or beginning of October. By November, client evaluations are compiled and work begins on planning for the following year. However, Weisz says the only time he really feels the crunch from the workload that goes into each event is in the month leading up to it.
“The biggest problem is being able to give everybody enough time to prepare for their classes, prepare for their user group, and that’s fine,” he says. “Taking a month off and having three-fourths of the staff involved in the planning is a significant investment and it’s not something we immediately recoup.”
Originally, Weisz planned to have his user meetings twice a year before he realized the intensive labor would take too much time and energy from his staff. Still, if he was going to unveil new products at the annual meeting, he needed a mechanism in place to allow for debate on possible upgrades and changes during the course of the year.
The solution he devised was the formation of a steering committee for each of the trucking lines TMW serves, like bulk carriers or flatbed trucks, for example, composed of clients in each of the sectors who could commit to meeting on a quarterly basis.
“This is kind of like the Oscar night for us,” explains Weisz of the planning that goes into the event. “At the user group, we report on what the steering committees did in the last year and then we talk about what we’re going to do the next year and about new products that are coming out.”
Develop valued-added benefits
TMW operates in a market with such tight profit margins that Weisz knew from the start the company would not be able to afford to pay for their customers’ trips to Cleveland for the user group.
Instead, he decided early on to create a line-up of speakers and events that speaks for itself. He tries to create an event that his clients see as a business trip that is worth the $895 price tag.
“We only wanted to do it if people saw value in it,” says Weisz, who adds that 400 people attended this year’s event. “And the way that they recognize value is by saying, ‘I’m going to come here and pay for it.’ Fortunately, we’ve been able to generate a value for them.”
This theory worked from the start, but along the way, Weisz also decided he wanted the annual gathering to be a valuable place for networking and striking deals. Initially, Qualcomm approached him about sending representatives, who could use the event to find new clients and showcase their products. Today, more than three dozen suppliers to the trucking industry attend the user group, creating a “mini trade show” environment.
Meanwhile, Weisz says it is not uncommon for CEOs of trucking companies to cut partnership deals with industry colleagues they meet during the user group.
“It all started with this idea of really exchanging information,” he says. “People sometimes form partnerships after the meeting. It’s kind of a big family and everybody kind of understands each other’s business because there are a lot of similarities in the way various customer run their business.”
Create champions for the cause
The biggest obstacle to successfully pulling off an annual client meeting is convincing people it’s a worthwhile investment of both their time and money, especially during the first year of the event.
Fifteen years ago, Weisz picked up the phone and lobbied the CEOs of the trucking companies he worked with to send someone. Today, the repeat interest in the event — Weisz estimates nearly 60 percent of the companies who attended his first user group still make the trip — sells itself, for the most part.
When asked to offer a bit of advice to CEOs in similar industries contemplating their own annual meetings, Weisz suggests finding an ambassador of sorts outside the company who understands the value of the event and will rally others in the industry to attend.
“Pick a guy from your customer base who would be a great champion for you, so you could not only share the work but add credibility to it and give it to you from your customers’ point of view,” says Weisz. “Pick somebody and name them chairman of the event, even if you have to assign some staff members to the person.”
That is also the way Weisz found members for the steering committees that he keeps populated by the relationships he has built with clients at the annual user group. Because, as Weisz says, it is having a drink after a user session or standing next to someone in the buffet line at dinner that often provides the good old-fashioned networking opportunities necessary to keep each of TMW’s steering committees fresh and fully staffed.
“We all try to encourage people we think would be good for it,” explains Weisz. “All the real work gets done in the smoke-filled rooms, except they’re not smoke-filled anymore.” How to reach: TMW Systems Inc, (216) 831-6606
Jim Vickers ([email protected]) is an associate editor at SBN.
