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we hired The GRA Group to produce and mail out monthly flyers, featuring products and incentive promotions.
John Rich, President of The GRA Group, told me, “If you plan to run a travel promotion, be sure that you can handle the business.” Our sales to our traveling customers have increased an average of 92% every year. The cost to take everyone on the trip (including customers, sponsors, Teche Electric owners, sales staff, etc.) has averaged 17% of the traveling customers GP growth. One of the best problems with running a successful travel promotion is determining what next great destination will best capture the emotions of your customers.
Would you, as a business owner give up 17% of your GP growth knowing that you would have to go to an exotic location with your best customers? Would you give up 17% of the GP growth if you could grow your business 92%? We build great relations with our customers on every trip, coming back as best of friends. Those relations help our customers focus more on running their business rather than beating us down on price on every item (which they still do, but more as a sport than a routine). We spend more time on running our business and less time negotiating which helps our bottom line. One other note, you cannot underestimate the value of involving the wives in the travel promo. They are a key part of building relations on the trip, and remembering relations between trips (ie: reminding their husbands which supply house to deal with).
The GRA Group has enabled Teche Electric to reach and at times surpass our goals and expectations. It is a pleasure to work with them.
Bruin Hays
President Teche Electric Supply
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Case Study: Electrical Distributor Client achieves significant savings by outsourcing travel planning.
Situation: A westcoast electrical company was experiencing difficulties with their incentive travel program both in cost overruns and inaccurate goal setting for their customers. The programs were running over budget due to poor cost estimates and supplier penalties. This resulted in a $100,000 over budget expense for their trip to Hawaii. In addition, they were concerned about the rates they were paying hotels and destination management companies. The company concluded that it might be in their best interest to explore outsourcing their travel planning activity. After an internal ROI analysis, the westcoast electrical company decided to look at the possibility of outsourcing their business to a third party.
Solution: The westcoast electrical company asked The GRA Group to review their incentive planning activity. After an indepth analysis, The GRA Group was able to demonstrate that by outsourcing their business, the company could save close to $125,000 on their annual incentive program. The GRA Group was able to quantify these savings in our proposal. The GRA Group analysis outlined the potential savings that could be gained through proper negotiations with the hotel, accurate budgeting of line item costs, and improved payment and attrition terms with hotels. In addition, this freed up the westcoast company marketing department to handle other sales and marketing needs thereby providing additional savings to their organization.
Results: The GRA Group was awarded the business. The westcoast electrical company was able to improve their objective setting for the incentive program for their customers. This year’s program came in under budget and below the cost of past programs. The client’s marketing and sales department was freed up to handle other duties. The GRA Group has been awarded the program for the second year and a great relationship has been established.
The GRA Group helps bring Smiles to Customers on a recent Alaska Cruise Vacation!
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