Plan Profitable Dinner Programs with Smart Planning Techniques
Dinner programs offer a great opportunity for you to bring doctors together as a captive audience. By using smart planning techniques, you can have a productive and rewarding dinner meeting that helps you build relationships with important physicians.
Dinner meetings have several advantages over one-to-one selling. At a meeting, you are able to reach a larger audience in les time than if you saw them individually. You may also have greater access to hard-to-see doctors.
Generally, dinner meetings devote a couple of hours to discussing a specific disease, treatment area, class of products or even a specific product.
However, the meeting does not have to be product specific.
Dinner meetings are usually moderated by a salesperson, a doctor or both. Generally, we see the sales rep’s role as a host or sponsor and prefer to have a physician who is nationally recognized thought leader, moderate the program.
Setting objectives
When planning a dinner program, it is crucial that you set objectives and determine what you want to accomplish. Develop an agenda that outlines the meeting objectives. The agenda should be included with the invitation letters that you will send to your guests.
Once you set your objectives, you need to decide who you want to attend the meeting. Pick doctors who are real champions of your products to be moderators, but be sure that they are well respected in the medical community.
For your guests, select doctors who offer real potential for your products. But be aware that some of these doctors may be in conflict with one another.
Determine your role. How actively do you want to get involved? You are the sponsor, but if the meeting becomes too commercial in nature, your program will lose its credibility. According to the new code: “It would be appropriate for a local field representative in the company’s sales organization to attend a speaker program for purposes of assisting the speaker with logistics and helping to assure that the content of the presentation complies with FDA requirements.”
In addition, remember there are some rules that must be followed. According to the 2008 PhRMA guidelines: “ Speaker programs may include modest meals offered to attendees and should occur in a venue and manner conducive to informational communication.”
You can offer educational items that are designed primarily for the education of patients and healthcare professionals; these items must have a substantial value of $100 or less, and not have value to the healthcare professional outside of his/her responsibility.
Logistics
When selecting the meeting date and location, ask your champion doctors what they prefer. Then, notify all of your guests and presenters by mail and confirm by phone or in person.
Your next step is work on meeting logistics. Hotels and restaurants can work equally well for you. If you choose a restaurant, be sure that they have a private room for you to use. A hotel may be a better choice because they are better equipped to handle LCD projectors screens than most restaurants.
You do not want a room smaller than 30 feet by 30 feet for 12 or 15 doctors. The best set up for the tables is in a U-formation. A small table with coffee, tea, soft drinks and snacks is always a nice touch. You also want a podium in front of the room.
Dinners are preferable to breakfast or lunch, (although it is getting more and more difficult to get physicians to come out for dinner). The best time to serve dinner is usually 6 p.m. to 7 p.m.
Chicken is a good meal selection – most people don’t have a problem with it. Generally, sit down meals are more accepted than buffets.
Calculate the beverage quantity very carefully with your restaurant or hotel contact to ensure that you have an adequate, but not excessive, amount for the number of guests that you have invited. Always offer a wide range of beverages. If guests are driving to the meeting, be especially careful with alcoholic drink selection.
Closing the meeting
When the meeting is drawing to an end, look for certain signals that tell you it is time to close. Keep an eye out for a sudden slow down, or even a speeding up of general conversation. Watch for people nodding or making agreeable sounds.
Close with casual confidence. Thank everyone for attending and pay special thanks to the doctors who were moderators for the meeting.
Follow-up is also an important part of a successful dinner meeting. It’s an opportunity for additional selling and getting the most mileage out of the meeting.