Success Story

Overview

This account illustrates how a global pharmaceutical organization hosted a three-day virtual meeting for its U.S. Sales Team, supporting nine different departments in the company with solutions offered by American Meetings, Inc. (AMI.)

The Challenge

Internal sales meetings are crucial to this pharmaceutical organization’s international success. Ordinarily, sales meetings would take place in person; however, as a result of the ongoing impact of COVID-19, the company chose to host their 2022 U.S. sales meeting virtually, for over 600 attendees.

Initially, the organization planned to have 12 hosts across the three-day event. However, as the meeting plan progressed, they decided to include with nearly 50 speakers, all of whom were added during the planning process.

This resulted in a challenge to prepare all the speakers with the right resources to deliver great presentations from their homes. Previous sales conferences have seen presenters take to a traditional stage to deliver their presentation, but a virtual-only sales meeting meant that AMI needed to work closely with their client to ensure that all remote speakers had proper equipment and technical support to keep the meeting running smoothly.

The Solution

This client required a solution with many moving parts to keep 600 virtual attendees engaged throughout the event. The meeting was set up on a 3D virtual environment, the first of its kind for this client’s national operation, alongside a Zoom interface.

The three-day event was comprised of a wide variety of sessions, including 54 Zoom breakout sessions, virtual teambuilding, and 4 general sessions with multiple live webinars. There were also 30 virtual spaces created to keep attendees engaged.

To keep the event running smoothly, AMI sourced an emcee who hosted the event live one day and pre-recorded another. This was especially useful as there were many activities beyond standard webinars including a trivia game, virtual food services, games, the ability to collect badges from different departments, and daily step count challenges to promote the health and wellbeing of attendees.

The sales meeting was a huge team effort from everyone at the client organization collaborating with AMI planners. Presentations and contributions came from nine different departments in the company, which required an abundance of pre-event logistics to ensure everything ran smoothly. This included 27 technical orientation sessions with the speakers and moderators, 9 breakout orientation sessions (one for each department), 29 connectivity tests, and 14 rehearsal sessions.

The hosts and presenters also benefited from using a virtual teleprompter to help them stay on track. This was a new solution for these presenters, who were familiar only with in-person events. To assist with the new virtual setup, there was a five-crew production service team for each general session to keep everything moving according to schedule behind the scenes. AMI provided a production agency to help each presenter set up their equipment, present virtually from home, and create videos that could be used after the event. The team also coached presenters on the most effective ways to present successfully in a virtual environment.

Feedback

The pharmaceutical organization was delighted with the outcome of its first national virtual sales meeting. Attendees loved the platform and, despite not being familiar with Zoom, they rated the meeting environment and platform experience as “above expectations.”

Key stakeholders were also thrilled with the outcome of the meeting. They described the platform as “awesome,” and they particularly appreciated the on-demand post-conference availability of resources which allowed attendees to refer back to important materials. They also liked the virtual booths within the 3D environment and the use of virtual spaces for breakout conversations. The meeting was a great success, and the customer credited AMI for its ability to be responsive and flexible throughout the engagement.