While one-off sales with potential evangelists offer a great way to keep your company moving, growth in your business is also dependent on new deals and the potential sales/connections that they create. Unfortunately, most new deals, especially across expanding customer bases, require extensive meetings that don’t always take place on home soil. This sales-first focus is perhaps the prime reason that business travel now accounts for as much as 12% of all total air travel, but with high expenses increasingly involved in getting from A to B, the vast majority of companies can’t afford to up sticks for all meetings that may or may not come to fruition.
Hence, instead of agreeing to an in-person meeting that requires even a few hours of travel, savvy business managers could benefit from first asking the following crucial questions related to business travel.
With platforms like Zoom playing host to as many as 300 million meeting participants every day throughout 2020, it’s first worth asking whether business travel could be negated in place of digital meetings. After all, taking things online altogether saves you from having to take time out and face the costs of doing so. Even better, with your entire team around you and all resources to hand, you’re far more likely to present a winning pitch that seals a lucrative deal, making this a preferable option in most instances if clients are happy to engage this way.
Some companies will inevitably prefer in-person arrangements, meaning that you’ll also want to think about business continuity in your absence. After all, mistakes and setbacks are most likely when high-end business figures aren’t around to deal with them, meaning that clients may become neglected with sometimes severe reputational damage. Putting a second in charge with a requirement for regular updates is the most reliable way to overcome this. Equally, turning to the right cloud-based management software, or even real-time mail services as offered by companies like PhysicalAddress can help you to keep one eye on what’s happening regardless of where you are. The resulting ability to reply to clients yourself in real-time can certainly make a difference to the impact of your business travel overall, and the ultimate expenses you face as a result.
You should also compare meeting profitability with the expense. After all, potentially hundreds in travel, accommodation, and lost productivity is hardly worth a one-unit sales pitch. Of course, you’re going to want to look at the potential long-term trajectory of a client before you decide against attending a meeting for this reason, but you should certainly approach with caution if these figures don’t add up. Instead, work to ensure at least 25% returns after expenses to even come close to making this pursuit worthwhile.
Business travel is often inevitable, but that doesn’t mean you should dive right in if you can’t find the right answers to these crucial questions!
