EVENT AT A GLANCE
	Objective: Introduce C-level credit union executives to the new CMG leadership and direction. Strategy: Create an exclusive, C-level leadership forum focusing on industry issues that pairs CMG executives with credit union leaders. Tactics: Customize the entire event experience through pre-event communications and a survey. Gather the best of the best in the credit union business to prompt discussion of industry issues, and remove CMG staff from roundtable discussions. Results: One hundred percent of attendees now view CMG as a trusted business partner. CMG achieved a nearly 200-percent ROI through business secured as a result of the 2007 Executive Exchange.

hanging technology has revolutionized how the average person lives, as information and commodities are only a mouse click away. What used to be an hour-long trip to the store is now just a few minutes on Amazon.com.

Like shopping, the world of financial services has experienced fast-and-furious customer migration to online services. Taking out a loan or transferring money no longer requires the hassle of visiting your local bank branch. Many people wouldn’t even know where to find it.

This move away from personal customer relationships has hit credit unions hard. Face-to-face interaction and interpersonal bonds have been a staple of many traditionally smaller credit unions. As consumers growingly prefer clicks over conversation for their banking services, loyalty to the personal services provided by credit unions is no longer holding sway over consumers. The number of U.S. credit unions has declined more than 10 percent in the last four years alone, according to the Credit Union National Association.

As an advocate for the credit-union industry, CUNA Mutual Group (CMG) knows the stakes are high to get the industry growing again. A leader in providing financial services to credit unions, including insurance products and lending programs, CMG dedicates millions of dollars toward supporting member credit unions every year.

CMG has been a leader within the credit union industry for more than 70 years and has taken a very proactive role in the industry — and what the future of the industry should be. It believes the credit-union movement needs to reinvigorate itself due to the increased financial competition in the marketplace. The company also knew that how credit unions run their businesses and how they promote themselves must shift accordingly to meet the demands of a more competitive market.
While its customers were grappling with various business issues, CMG was also undergoing a major internal transformation. After changing leadership in 2006, the company began a massive three-year restructuring program to streamline business processes, boost efficiency, and improve customer relations.

Heading into 2007, CMG defined two major objectives for the year: to introduce its new leadership and internal direction to clients, to re-establish itself as an industry leader, and to find a new and energizing means to address credit-union troubles. The best partners for both of these objectives, it knew, were the C-level leaders among its credit-union clientele.

But that leadership was facing its own market challenges. How could CMG gain an audience with these critical business partners in the midst of difficult market conditions? C-level execs are disinclined to attend any kind of conference or event that has even a whiff of selling about it.

The solution, CMG decided, was to create an event focused on collaborative problem-solving, not self promotion. The company teamed with Chicago-based event-planning company Minding Your Business (MYB) and designed an event for industry leadership: The 2007 CUNA Mutual Group Executive Exchange. The primary objective of the three-day C-level event would be to humanize new CMG executives, introduce their vision for the company and the industry, and increase client-retention and business-acquisition rates by focusing on meaningful relationships.

While CMG’s past events, drew large crowds and focused mainly on sales within the industry, the Executive Exchange would be an intimate affair about building leadership for the industry. Credit-union executives would have a rare chance to strategize on industry concerns with top-notch peers, discuss solutions with several prominent business consultants, and get to know the new CMG executives.

To encourage attendee comfort and candor and to assure executives wary of sales campaigns cloaked as seminars that this was truly a one-of-a-kind event, CMG took the unusual step of eliminating anything that looked or felt like a CMG-focused product pitch. Product pushing took a back seat to education and leadership.

Still, with its eye (like everyone’s) on ROI, CMG devised a strategy for later sales rewards. “While there wasn’t a direct sales pitch, there was an approach to maximize personal relationships. CMG executives were strategically paired with executives from selected accounts to help strengthen bonds and identify leaders within the credit-union movement,” notes Max Suzenaar, CEO of MYB.

Strategic Communications

To make the Executive Exchange an event that would appeal to the C-level attendees CMG hoped to attract, the company hand-selected the executive invitees; invitations were non-transferable. Suzenaar likens the brand feel to the American Express Black Card: “You can’t just apply for one, you have to be invited,” he says. “We wanted people to understand the caliber of the entire experience.”

While strategically focusing on key accounts, CMG also wanted leaders “who demonstrated a proactive voice within the credit union industry,” Suzenaar explains. In addition, CMG ensured bigger credit unions didn’t dominate the roster by inviting executives from smaller accounts. “CMG wanted even very, very small credit unions to have a presence there to ensure everyone had a voice,” he says.

The innovative nature of the first-time event and the targeted-attendee profile demanded a comprehensive communications strategy. CMG wanted to establish the Executive Exchange as a unique experience that stood apart from corporate events, and which offered an educational leadership experience unlike anything these executives had seen.

“We had to establish an identity, and build a brand within a brand,” Suzenaar says of the challenges of a communications process to establish a first-time event. “This was a very new concept that had not been done within the industry.”

To make this happen, the communications strategy focused on building a dialogue with invitees to introduce the event concept and address any questions and concerns. CMG also used pre-event communications to tailor the agenda to attendee interests to ensure the Executive Exchange tackled executives’ industry concerns.

With the attendees selected, “the invitation and communications process took a five-tiered approach,” says Amy Hawkins, CMP, an MYB account executive. First, an initial “save-the-date” mailer went out in July 2007 to introduce the event concept and brand. Next, each CMG representative contacted his or her designated executives to reach out personally, answer any initial questions, and to gauge and grow interest in the event. “We wanted to start and maintain a dialogue for the whole experience,” Suzenaar says.

CMG educated sales reps on event details prior to the communications process to ensure they could answer attendee questions, and to gain their buy-in on an event that would bring together many of their top account holders. Internal communications were developed for sales “to clarify what the event was, why it was being held, and what their account holders would experience,” Suzenaar says.

After the personal calls, CMG mailed a formal invitation to each executive and a guest. The mailing of the formal invitations was strategically timed so the invitations would arrive the day the event’s online registration site, which, according to Hawkins, provided details about the educational and general sessions, went live. By the end of this third contact, 75 percent of the targeted executives already had RSVP’d to attend.

Once registered, guests next received an e-mail from their CMG account representative, asking them to complete a pre-event survey. This questionnaire served several purposes: It gauged attendees’ current perceptions of their relationship with CMG, and allowed guests to customize the event experience by providing feedback on industry issues they wanted to explore at planned discussion groups and in speaker presentations. “We let attendees weigh in and create what they wanted the experience to be,” Hawkins says. As Suzenaar adds, the incentive of “dialogue and community building was a motivational structure” that enticed the busy executives to complete the survey.

As the final piece of the communications process, attendees received a confirmation packet with a customized schedule, and a book from keynote speaker Dr. Ram Charan, a former Harvard business professor and world-renowned business consultant.

First-Class Festivities

The CMG Executive Exchange was held Sept. 30 through Oct. 6, 2007. CMG split the week into two identical events, dividing the 88 total attendees into two groups of 44 to provide a more intimate feel that would be conducive to the networking and collaboration CMG hoped to foster. The event began as CMG executives personally welcomed attendees at a meet-and-greet session on day one. The dress code was casual; CEOs mingled in khakis and polo shirts, a feel CMG designed to create a comfortable, candid environment.

The highlights of day two’s events included a three-hour “general session” emceed by Joe Calloway, a best-selling business author and brand consultant to companies such as American Express Co. and IBM Corp. Calloway introduced CMG senior executives, and facilitated a discussion of industry issues with CMG leaders and audience members. “These CMG executives offered extraordinary candor,” Suzenaar says. “They were free with their thoughts and opinions of what was happening in the movement, and welcomed others to engage in spirited conversations.”

One of the topics of discussion was a key issue identified in pre-event surveys: the place of credit unions in a changing marketplace. To address the issue, CMG booked an expert speaker on brand reinvention, Mark King, CEO and president of TaylorMade Golf Company Inc., a subsidiary of the Adidas Group. King helped transform the struggling company from a bargain brand to a high-end industry leader, doubling sales within three years of joining the business. He wrapped up the day-two morning session, delivering a presentation on his experience with industry branding, followed by a Q&A with the audience.

Moving into day three, CMG made a strategic decision that communicated its desire to foster candid conversation among its C-level attendees regarding issues important in the industry. As guests entered the conference room for that day’s first general session, they found CMG staff was not in attendance. In addition, the executive leather chairs previously arranged theater-style now sat in three pods of 15 for small-group discussions of hot-topic issues in the industry.

The decision to remove CMG leadership from group decisions removed any hesitation among participants to speak freely. “We didn’t want the executives to hold back on free discussion of any industry issues that CMG may have a stake in,” Suzenaar says. “This reinforced the primary purpose of the event — that it was a leadership experience and not a ‘customer’ event.”

Calloway again served as the event’s emcee, and introduced scenarios on industry issues like lack of membership value and capturing the youth market, offering several different opinions to invite discussion. Stenographers recorded group discussions, which were compiled after the event on CD and sent to attendees along with a signed book from Calloway, all part of CMG’s effort to encourage an ongoing leadership community.

Resounding Results

Less than a week after the Executive Exchange, CMG sent attendees an e-mail asking them to complete a Web-based post-event survey to measure the event’s impact on opinions of the company, and to gather feedback on the activities.

On the pre-event survey, 90 percent of attendees said they viewed CMG as a trusted business partner, while 56 percent favorably viewed the company’s communication of its product-development plans and vision. Post-event, those numbers climbed to 100 percent and 85 percent, respectively. Pre-event, 67 percent felt CMG worked collaboratively with customers; following the Executive Exchange that figure climbed 23 points to 90 percent. Finally, a glowing 99 percent of respondents felt CMG demonstrated a commitment to the industry that differentiated the company from
its competitors.

“Having the opportunity to get to know CUNA Mutual leadership more personally is valuable in understanding the heart of the organization,” said one respondent regarding the event’s focus on relationships instead of sales.

High praise for the event content also abounded. Ninety-nine percent of attendees felt the Executive Exchange delivered on objectives they hoped to accomplish, while 97 percent indicated that business sessions provided a high level of education. “This was the first forum where I came away with hope for heightened expectations of our industry,” one guest commented. “The peer-to-peer networking with other CEOs was of great value,” said another executive. “It was above and beyond what any CEO could have expected.”

Given the success of the event and CMG’s desire to build an ongoing industry leadership community, the company plans to make the Executive Exchange an annual event. Attendees of the inaugural event indicated they want more peer-to-peer interaction during this year’s sessions, and CMG plans to address that request in an ongoing effort to make the event an attendee-customized experience.

While CMG had intentionally shied away from any selling conversations, its no-sell approach ultimately produced big sales. It actually closed enough business as a result of the Executive Exchange to deliver an ROI of nearly 200 percent. By pairing executives with key accounts and focusing on relationships instead of an overt sell, CMG proved that sometimes conversations and connections produce better results than pushing products and pitching sales.e