I recently spoke with Lisa Messina (MPI Southern California Chapter), vice president of sales for Caesars Entertainment, who discussed overcoming roadblocks to increase adoption of a training program developed alongside the Event Design Collective (EDC).
Messina explained that the sales team had been wanting to go deeper with their clients, to get to conversations about stakeholder needs and participant outcomes. But in the business of sales goals and processing contracts, it was hard for the team to make the leap.
“Some of our team were thinking, ‘I’m already a successful salesperson, so why do I need to shift my approach?’ so it was critical that we positioned this training properly,” Messina said.
She said that in addition to having support from Michael Massari (MPI Sacramento/Sierra Nevada Chapter), chief sales officer for Caesars Entertainment, the sales team embraced the training after they understood that it was about building clients for life, not just the next sale. It would help them understand their clients’ future needs.
Additionally, there was some skepticism from the hotel operational team. Messina knew it was critical that the operations team did the training—in addition to sales—so they could align the event implementation with the design process. But her big learning came in her assumption that they already understood the “why” behind the training before starting it. After some slow starts, they now start each training with background and positioning for the project to explain the why before starting the curriculum. Leadership needed to explain to operations how this training would make their lives easier in the long run, saving them time and design changes. Once they laid this groundwork, internal adoption came quickly.
Michael Pinchera, MPI senior editor and graduate of one of the 2019 Caesars EDC programs, shared a similar evolution: “After three days of active education, I walked out of this experience—my Exiting Behavior—wowed and converted from skeptic to evangelist.”
Photo by Kelly Sikkema, Unsplash
