How World-Class President's Club Events Empower Top Performers

Omar Fouad: Hello, and thanks for tuning in. This is Omar Fouad with the Alexander Group. And today’s topic is the President’s Club. We’re going to dive into how to set up a world-class event that drives performance uplift and has a positive return on investment. And I’m pleased to introduce our special guest today, Jeremy Whiteman. Jeremy is senior director, Sales Operations and Commercial Excellence for Resideo’s Product and Solutions segment. For those that don’t know Resideo, it’s a leading manufacturer and developer and distributor of technology-driven sensing and control products and solutions for residential and commercial end markets. Their solutions and services can be found in over 150 million residential and commercial spaces globally, with tens of millions of new devices sold annually. You may know Resideo by some of their trusted, well-established brand names, including First Alert and Honeywell Home. I know personally, I have one of each of those in my home as well. And Jeremy’s been in sales ops for the last 13 plus years, and at Resideo for the last eight years. His responsibilities span a broad array of strategic and execution activities, of which President’s Club all things lands in your lap. Welcome, Jeremy, and thanks for joining us.

Jeremy Whiteman: Thank you Omar, appreciate that. Glad to be here and excited to talk about one of my favorite sales comp programs.

Omar Fouad: Absolutely. And, um, you know, President’s Club has a few different names out there. Some of them call it Winner’s Circle, Chairman’s Club, but really, it’s that recognition program for high-performing sellers. And so today, uh, we’ll touch on why even do a President’s club. Uh, for those out there who may be thinking about doing one and haven’t done one yet. Uh, how do you set up the eligibility criteria for folks to earn their spot in the program? A key part of any President’s Club is forecasting the budget and getting approvals, as well as planning and executing the event. Uh, so, Jeremy, I know you’ve led the strategy, planning and execution for Presidents Club at Resideo for a number of years now. What are some of the memorable destinations that you’ve gone?

Jeremy Whiteman: Let’s see, we’ve been all over. We’ve done some of the traditional, you know, Southern Florida, we’ve done Southern California, but two of them really stand out that we’ve done. One is Key West. Key West is just plain fun if you’ve been there. You know what I mean? I think our attendees, uh, had an absolute blast the week that we were in Key West. And then, uh, just this past year, we hosted President’s Club in Park City, Utah. When we first announced Utah, there was a lot of reactions, like Utah, like, hold on, I’m used to going somewhere tropical. I’m used to going to the beach. Uh, so we had mixed reviews. But executing the event in Park City, where there’s a level of, um, how do I say it? Just a whole tier of exclusivity and a level of service that you would not expect. So it was a fantastic event. So Park City, Utah really jumps out as does Key West.

Omar Fouad: Those are definitely gorgeous destinations. Curious what does President’s Club look like at Resideo? How long is it? What are some of the activities they do?

Jeremy Whiteman: Sure. For us a typical event is going to be four nights and three days. We start with arrival day where everybody’s flying in and coming in, and then we do a welcome event that evening. Usually more informal, because people are arriving at different times. But our welcome evening will usually have music, entertainment, some kind of gift experience. First full day, we usually do a business general session with reviews of the business overviews of the business. Uh, keynote speaker, we like to bring in and then we talk about the different businesses. Maybe we’ll do some idea sessions, some workshopping, that kind of stuff. We’ll do an activity that afternoon. And then the end of the first day is our formal night. That’s the black tie night. That’s the awards night. That’s where once again, we recognize our winners on stage. And then the next two nights we really focus on the big three, which is rest, relaxation and recognition. So we offer a variety of different activities. We offer some downtime, a lot of networking time. And then the end of the third full day is usually our grand finale. And based on where we are, that may look like a dinner cruise. That may be something more formal, that may be something casual. But our grand finale there is how we culminate that last night. So that’s kind of the general flow of what our events look like.

Omar Fouad: It sounds like a great trip. I’d love to sign up myself. One thing I think as revenue leaders, we set up these amazing destinations, action-packed itineraries for our sellers, and we get the motivation we want out of them. But then at the same time, we also have different parts of the organization that look over and maybe get a little scrutiny. Um, you know, as you think about our first topic here, why even do a President’s club? What are some of the objectives at Resideo for the program?

Jeremy Whiteman: Yeah, that’s a fair question. So for us, the Presidents Club really represents our ongoing tradition of recognizing excellence in performance. So that is our what is Presidents Club or why in one sentence that’s really what it means for us. So our goal, offer an event at a highly sought after destination or highly sought after resort tier and really enable rest, relaxation and recognition. We want those sellers who’ve achieved those exceptional results to feel like they’re really recognized and to have their plus one, their guest or their spouse also feel that too. So for us, we want both of those individuals to feel like, wow, my contributions to the success last year, my personal success last year are being recognized at a whole other level. Beyond the commission check, beyond the thank you from your sales manager. But wow, this this company is really thanking me for what I did. So that’s kind of the why for us.

Omar Fouad: That makes a lot of sense. And actually the research backs that up. I was reading a recent research report, and if you think about your sales group in three buckets, kind of your underperformers, your average performers and your high performers, we all know sales compensation can drive a lot of motivation in underperformers to get in the money. Your average performers to hit their goal and start getting the accelerators. But once you’ve, you know, kind of done that, been there. What keeps you motivated throughout the year and make sure you keep that gas on the pedal. It’s interesting. These recognition programs are very high motivators for your top sellers to keep going throughout the fiscal year, and also a good retention tool. So definitely research-backed and aligns with a lot of your objectives at Resideo. But I guess one of the things that a lot of the leaders I talked to say, well, you know, I know why I need it but when times get a little lean, that’s when it gets a little bit tough. Uh, have you had to try to defend the program and some of the leaner years that you might have gone through?

Jeremy Whiteman: Yeah. Understandably so. Right every dollar of op-ex should always be scrutinized, should be used as efficiently as possible. And yeah, down years where overall business performance or overall business unit performance hasn’t been what we were expecting, it can be kind of tough and the optics of it can be difficult. But what I always remind people of is that the President’s Club is celebrating the individual contributors’ performance. Right. The overall business might not have hit the targets that we wanted, but within our organization, within our go-to-market sellers, we’ve got those who have absolutely outperformed. So we’re still going to recognize them even if overall business performance is down.

Omar Fouad: Yeah. And that’s the key thing there is as you as organizations are doing President’s Club and executing it. That consistency of the program to drive that individual motivation is kind of one of the key reasons to do it. And in fact, you’re not alone. At Residio, one of our recent AGI surveys, 63.5% of responding companies have a President’;s club trip. So you know your sellers as they’re evaluating other offers and where to go. They’re going to be looking at that as well, especially the high performers. Uh, which kind of leads us a lot into this second topic here. When we think about eligibility, you know, what are some of the considerations or even guiding principles, uh, that you guys use when thinking about, you know, who can even be part of that President’s Club trip?

Jeremy Whiteman: Yeah. From a guiding principle standpoint, it’s really easy. It’s simplicity and transparency. Right. And yes, I just said simplicity in a sales comp program, I get it. But for us we want the criteria to be very basic. So our guiding principles are simplicity and transparency. And then the way that manifests itself in the actual eligibility criteria is three main bullets. One, you’ve got to be here all year. So new hires, partial-year hires, all that stuff. We’re glad that they’re on board. We’re glad that they’re here. But you know what? If you’ve only carried your target for three months, four months, five months, that doesn’t cut it. We want a full year. So that’s number one. Number two is as simple as you must exceed all of your objectives. So if you’re comped on revenue, if you’re comped on margin, if you’re comped on new logo acquisition, if you’re comped on renewals, whatever it is, you’ve got to exceed that. And then third, and this is one that’s I think a little bit unique to us is you must embrace the Resideo values. So Resideo has an internal set of values that we talk about all the time. And so you can’t just have been here all year. You can’t just meet your number. But then you also have to do all of the values internally that we expect from our employees.

Omar Fouad: Yeah, I think that’s excellent. And as we help some of our clients develop these programs, a lot of the eligibility considerations we lean into as you need objective and measurable criteria to do this, right. You know, if you’re developing some of the guiding principles, you want to make sure you have a fair opportunity for everybody to achieve. You also want to make sure that it rewards results, not popularity, right? We need to motivate not just high performers, but extraordinary performance. And you need to clearly communicate and justify that across the sales force. And a lot of times the supporting organizations. So having them, like you said, simple, transparent that definitely, uh, checks the box there. And, um, you know, a lot of our organizations, they use the President’s Club as an opportunity to throw in some of the extra of what it means to be part of this, uh, company. And, you know, not just an extraordinary performer, but a lot of times a leader within the sales organization. You may not have the title, but people look up to those top performers, those that are crushing it on the leaderboard. Right? And so I’ve seen some organizations that put in some non-quota-based measures like, you know, balanced portfolio. If you have multiple products, you know the sales comp plan might reward total revenue or orders. But the President’s Club is an area where maybe we want to lean in and say you also have to hit certain new product goal or selling multiple things across the category, maybe even, you know, as we’re trying to enter new markets or industries, use President’s Club for that. Have you guys debated some of those additional eligibility criteria over time?

Jeremy Whiteman: We have quite a bit. We don’t formalize it into our criteria. You know, like I said, we just keep it to the three. But we absolutely look at that. If I’ve got two reps that are both at 120%, but maybe I have already a lot of representation from that team or that particular business unit, then I’m going to go a layer deeper on that analytics and say, all right, well, who had the most new logos this year? Who brought in the most competitive conversions? Or you know what, we launched this product midway through the year. Who drove the most adoption in their territory for that product? So a lot of times for us, we use that as a way to evaluate beyond just top line performance, beyond your tenure and then beyond your did you embrace the values? So then we look at all those other metrics. Yeah, it’s a nice way that we can differentiate and substantiate a nomination versus another nomination.

Omar Fouad: Yeah. And that ultimately makes it a pretty exclusive award. Uh, and, you know, I think most of the organizations we work with, actually, a recent survey had 52% of the companies say, you know, they allow up to a maximum of 10% of the sellers achieving that club status. And we recommend that 5 to 10% target range, of course, depending on your sales force and some of the factors there. Um, for you, Jeremy, over the years, what’s roughly been the, uh, the participation.

Jeremy Whiteman: Yeah, we land in that as well. Probably a little bit on the smaller side. So 5 to 7%. Um, you know, as a broad number. And then it’s an interesting thing when you look at the invites and how you want to allocate those, depending on your organization and how you go to market and what kind of different teams you have, what kind of different business units you have. That 5 to 7% is where we land overall, but then we try to take that and divide it between our different go-to-market teams. So not only geo from, you know, the Americas versus the region, but from our different lines of business and our different sales teams. So one team might be slightly higher indexed because they’ve had a better year and better performance overall. So I might pull more from that team. And another team might have underperformed or another geo might have underperformed, and we might go slightly below that 5% and then give a few of those seats to a different region that’s performing better.

Omar Fouad: Yeah. And getting the broad reach across all those sales functions. One question I get a lot is, you know, the core sales role. Right. That seller out there holding the bag, that’s kind of an easier one to develop the eligibility criteria on. But what about the application engineers that are spanning and really kind of really contributing to the success of the org are those type of roles eligible and what kind of criteria do you do for them?

Jeremy Whiteman: Yeah, we typically will do uh, 1 to 4 seats for non-sales. So some kind of functional support. We just call them functional roles generically. And the bar for those nominations is really high because like you said this is a sales comp program. This is a sales president’s club. But we also recognize that it’s not just the sales team’s efforts that get the success and meet the objectives. So, you know, we’ve had legal representation, we’ve had customer care representation. And the bar is really high, though for those individuals we have to be able to see in their nomination their direct contribution. And what do they do to land this new customer? What did they do to drive excellence throughout the year? So it’s interesting, our nomination form for sellers, it’s very controlled. Right were they hear all year? Did they meet their objectives? What kind of deals did they win, what kind of competitive conversions. But for a non-sales for a functional support role, it’s kind of like a free text field. Like tell us why. Paint the picture tell us why. And then we’ll take that and we’ll go vet that with the sales leaders. Hey is everybody in this area in sales. Do they know this person and customer care? Did this person do all these things? And if the response is absolutely, I could not have gotten my number this year without support from that individual, then that’s kind of our litmus test. But so yeah, we do. It’s only a few people and it’s a very high bar to bring a non-sales person to President’s Club for us.

Omar Fouad: Yeah it makes a lot of sense. We want to kind of lean into that guiding principle of making it an exclusive award for sure. Um, another topic there is what do you do for your own sales leadership, right? They got some of their reps going, their team going. How do you guys set up eligibility criteria to see who’s going to join them?

Jeremy Whiteman: Yeah, that’s that’s a challenging one. And sometimes we’ll use our sales leaders as part of the executive host group. But then sometimes we will flat-out make our sales leaders a winner. You know, we try to aim more at the individual sellers. But boy, if you’ve got a sales leader where you know, their entire team has made their number or their entire segment has year-over-year growth, that far exceeded what we were hoping for, then we will take one of our individual slots and say, you know what? That sales leader is worth it. So not every year, but we’ve certainly used it for our sales leaders when their performance warrants it.

Omar Fouad: Yeah. And I see this as an area where you can get a little bit more creative on how you set up criteria and really communicate what it means to be a good corporate citizen. And so I have a few clients that use the management layer as an opportunity in the Presidents Club program of, did you get a certain amount of your salespeople over the quota? Right. You know, you hit your numbers. One thing you could have maybe just had a couple out of the, you know, 6 to 8, ten people who report to you that help you ride that number. But are you leaning in as a manager? Are you coaching your team? Are you getting, you know, more than half of your sellers above quota? And that’s really what kind of propelled you into the team. So I think, uh, that makes a lot of sense and, and really kind of reinforcing what it means to be a manager. Right. And that coaching piece leaning into new strategic objectives like maybe the new product growth or balanced portfolios, more at the manager level. And you can kind of balance out some of the criteria but also adhere to I love what you said earlier that simplicity, right. Because we just need to know what’s that target. So I can march right towards it and earn it.

Jeremy Whiteman: Yeah. In addition to those he things that you said. Another thing that we look for is cross-collaboration. So whether it’s just basic pure cross selling or whether it’s, well, you know, I might be a territory, my team might be a territory role, but have I reached across the aisle and worked with the National Accounts Group, made sure that I’ve got coordination there, or have I reached across to like our brand ambassador group that’s out in the stores? And so, you know, not only are the balance performance across their direct reports and the overall performance, but what are they doing within the organization to support the other groups? That’s also key for us, for managers.

Omar Fouad: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Why don’t we jump to the next topic here around the budget? Those budget conversations, a lot of them are actually, uh, in them at that fall time of year. And, you know, you just got back from maybe Labor Day or holiday, and now you’re jumping right into spreadsheets. For Resideo, where does that President’s club budget reside? Who needs to approve that? How do you kind of lean into making sure everybody is aligned to get that across the threshold?

Jeremy Whiteman: Yeah, we keep our Presidents Club budget in an independent, dedicated cost center that we put up at the executive level. So for us, it doesn’t sit with each of the managers, with each of the units. We keep it insulated at a high level up at the executive tier. Um, every year we go through the justification, you know, was the program worth it? Is the program driving the benefits that we want? Um, do the sellers that attend? Are they happy? Are their spouses elbowing their colleagues here going, hey, get on that next year. I want that next year. So we make sure that return is there. We put it in the budget, we keep it up at that high level. And I tell you, I’ve done this a couple of different ways at different organizations, and I can’t recommend enough doing it this way and keeping it separate from everything. You don’t want this budget to fluctuate quarter to quarter based on business performance, right? You might have a quarter where you miss expectations, and maybe you’ve got a haircut on different expenses. And if you if you can insulate Presidents Club and just leave it alone and set it for the year, then you can go through the gyrations of planning and looking at resorts and looking at properties, looking at the experience and and really protecting that attendee experience. So, boy, if I can give any advice, it’s keep it separate, keep it at a high level and insulate it from business performance.

Omar Fouad: Yeah. That is critical because what you don’t want to do is provide uncertainty, right. If one year you have a great program and then the budget cuts next year, then it actually becomes demotivating, you know, why didn’t they make it one year and the next? Um, you know, in a recent survey we asked, you know, what is that budget that they use for President’s Club. And over three-quarters or about three-quarters of respondents, 74%, they said it’s in that, uh, 1 to 5% of sales compensation expense and even more so that 1 to 2% was the most selected answer as that budgeted for President’s Club. So not the total sales expense, but of that sales comp compensation expense budget. Um, you know, as I think about great sales ops leaders like yourself, you also are driving a lot of that cross-functional collaboration. And, um, what are some of the things that, as you think about working with your finance friends on getting the budget here, what are some considerations or just kind of understanding things like maybe it’s expense accrual or tax treatment, what are some of the things that help you make sure that they’re accounting for it correctly. And there’s no surprises. You know mid to late year?

Jeremy Whiteman: Yeah. You’ve got to work closely with finance on this program. For a bunch of reasons. You just mentioned and we talked about making sure that the expense is protected in there. But um, we also need to make sure that it’s being accrued for properly. Right. Is this a prepaid expense going on the balance sheet. So all the funds are there when it’s time to actually pay for the program. So making sure that every quarter, every month during close and whatnot that that accruals just set up and it’s happening. Um, you mentioned the tax department. That’s a really big one. So here and at other organizations that I’ve worked at, it’s a key part of the program. Sit down with your tax department. Make sure they understand the program overall. Make sure they understand the agenda. You know, how much time are we requiring of the attendees to be in things like mandatory business meetings or the networking sessions or the ideation sessions or the leadership connection sessions? And at some point, your tax department will say, okay, this is basically a business meeting. There’s no tax implication or depending on your itinerary and your agenda, they may say, hold on, this is now into that bonus territory. We need to tax this as income. So staying close with the tax department to evaluate the program, staying close to finance to make sure the funds are protected and there and the accruals. Yeah. So it’s not something we just do in isolation. It’s something that we’ve got to make sure that we’re closely tied off with that department.

Omar Fouad: Yeah, it’s a critical detail. How tax treatment is handled both internally at the organization, but also for your sellers. You know, for some of the folks that might not have done a present club trip and thinking about doing it. Uh, if you do, if your organization does determine that this is more of a bonus type program, that’s part of their W2 that actually can impact the sellers and they end up with a tax bill or they’re paying a bunch out of pocket. So I have some organizations that when they do consider it kind of bonus type money, they also offset tax responsibilities with the extra kind of increase into their salary. So that the seller doesn’t feel like they’re having to pay to be part of the celebration there.

Jeremy Whiteman: Exactly. You know, one of our guiding principles, when we build the program, when we plan the program, when we execute the program, it’s all about the attendee experience. And that’s everything from literally when they land at the local airport, like we literally greet them at the airport all the way through when they get in the US, their W-2 at year end to make sure there isn’t a surprise there. So yeah, if possible, then we’ve got to gross it up to take care of them. But that overriding principle of the attendee experience is going to dictate everything from, like I said, the here’s your flower lei when you arrive in Hawaii on day one all the way through, your W-2 has no surprises come January or February.

Omar Fouad: Yeah, and I think that’s kind of a critical point we’ve talked already about, you know, why you even have a President’s club to the eligibility getting that documented and ready to go. And now you’ve got budget secured and you might think that great. Now we’re ready to, you know, book some flights and get going. But there’s still a lot to do here. And I think that planning piece, I want to make sure people understand that this is now where a lot of the work starts for you guys at Resideo Jeremy, when you do this, how many months before the event do you even start planning for it?

Jeremy Whiteman: Gosh, for us, we start about 15 months ahead of time, and if I had my way, it’d be more like 18 to 24 months. But really, we start 15 months ish before, um, really before this year’s event is even executed. We’ll start working on next year’s. And it’s a long process. And, you know, it starts with general location targets. Are we aiming for Caribbean? Are we aiming for southern Florida? Are we aiming for somewhere in Europe? Um, you know, so we start with general targets and then we start to look at different resorts, and then we start to look at, okay, what would that experience look like? So if we have a geographic area and we have a rough couple of ideas on resorts, what would our activities look like? Um, so then we kind of go from there into our first round of executive alignment. So that’s maybe at that, you know, 12 to 14 month mark. We’ve maybe done a site visit. We kind of have a good idea of what this thing would look like. So we give a framework to our a couple of leaders, the presidents of our business units because the end of the day, their name is on the program.

Jeremy Whiteman: So yeah, somewhere in that 12 to 14-month mark is where we get their buy in. And they say Great Park City, Utah. I’m in the level of resort and property you guys are showing me the experiences you guys are showing me. Great. So we get sign off then and, um, you know, we drive a calm strategy around the announcement. But yeah, to your point, once it’s out there, the work really starts with planning all the details. And that’s where I’m blessed. Here at Resideo, I’ve got a phenomenal partner who is in the event planning side of things. And Omar, she drives every detail you could think of. I jokingly said it, but literally right the lays when you get off the plane in Hawaii to the gift that’s in your room, to the color palette for the evening function, that will go with the dress code that’s been provided. It is a phenomenal amount of work.

Omar Fouad: Absolutely. And, um, do you guys also invite spouses of those who comment or plus ones?

Jeremy Whiteman: We do. We have a very robust FAQ document, which is for me a pro tip. If I can tell anybody out there, build out a very exhaustive FAQ, but we spell out what the plus one policy is for a lot of people, that means their spouse. For other people, it might mean a friend, a neighbor, a family member. But we have, uh, a plus one policy. We have 21 years of age, but yes, we do we and part of that’s our motivation we want. Yeah. If it’s the spouse, like, again, we want your spouse to have a phenomenal experience for a whole bunch of different reasons. Right. Maybe that’s a motivator when you’re working late nights or you’ve got to do yet another sales trip, your spouse might understand a little bit more. Your spouse might have the motivation for you. Yeah, go on that trip. Go get that PO. Go get that new customer. Right. I want to go to Hawaii next year. I want to go to Florida next year. So we do we encourage the plus ones. Um, but build a strong FAQ document around it.

Omar Fouad: Yeah. And that’s very common. We see that in a lot of Presidents Club programs. Is that plus one. But that puts a lot more pressure too on planning. They’re not just thinking about employees, but they’re thinking about, you know, employees plus one. And uh, you mentioned a little bit, you know, the all the people it takes to get this going. Um, can you tell us a little bit about is this people on your staff that are kind of dedicated to this or using outside vendors? Probably a mix thereof.

Jeremy Whiteman: Yeah, we definitely augment with external staff and depending on the event and the year and the location, that might look like a couple different things. It might look like a travel partner. So some augmented staff around everything from airport arrival greeting to a host desk on a property to the gift experience. So we’ll use a travel partner. Um, we’ve used local DMC’s or destination management companies. I mentioned, Park City, Utah was one this past year, and we had a great local vendor there that helped us coordinate the different activities locally as well as transportation. You know, in a ski mountain town village, you’ve got fewer options. So having a DMC locally to work with is really important. Um, and all the way the tech side. So if we use an event app or event website for registration, um, we’ll use a different partner for that as well.

Omar Fouad: Yeah. So you’ve got staff partners, you’ve got DMC local partners. You mentioned you have some keynote speakers. How do you secure those type of roles?

Jeremy Whiteman: That’s one of the funnest parts of my job. Uh, that’s something that I personally have responsibility for. And I’ve hired and brought in keynotes one of a couple different ways. I’ll work with talent agencies that the big speaker bureaus out there that represent a number of them. But I tell you, I’m a big reader. And, uh, you know what? If I read a book that’s that touches the right inspirational note or I think would be applicable to all attendees, the plus ones and the colleagues. I’ll go to the back of the book jacket and just email them, and I can’t tell you, I think 4 or 5 in the last couple of years, I’ve just literally finished the book and went, wow, that’s I think, a message that would resonate really well with presidents club, and I email them up and you’d be surprised how many of them are just willing to talk to you and email right back. And then, you know, I share a little bit about the event. And then we brought in some really cool ones over the last couple of years.

Omar Fouad: That’s awesome. Yeah. And it makes it a lot of fun right? It just adds to that whole motivation appeal to the event. Um, yeah. And, I guess we, you know, we’ve talked about 15 months beforehand, a lot of the things and the vendors that have to get up and going. But you also mentioned strategy on, uh, just the communications of the program. Um, can you share a little bit about, you know, what’s what’s some of the pieces of that communications plan?

Jeremy Whiteman: Sure. So keeping in mind our guiding principles, have this fantastic attendee experience, right? That’s what we’re going for. So we typically announce that our sales kick off very early in the year who’s winning. Right. We want to start there. And you’re brought on stage. It’s the handshake. It’s the award. It’s recognition in front of your peers. So to me that’s kind of the very first comms. And then we follow that up with a series of communications all the way up to the week before we go. So announce at the sales kickoff, congratulations. You’ve won. Here’s a reminder on the dates and the location. And then a couple weeks after that, we’ll start with a congrats and next steps where we outline. Here’s what it’s going to look like between now and when we actually go. Then we’ll send out it’s time to register. So a curated site just for the event that’s got right images and all that good stuff for that year’s event. And that’s where the attendee gets to go up and register themselves and put their plus one in there. They get to select from their activities, then they get a confirmation email from that. Then we’ll give a download the app a couple of weeks out. So here’s the app. Here’s how you download it. So you’re going to know right where you go. And then the last thing we do is a note before you go. So that last week right before when you’re probably doing your final packing, you’re probably doing your final outfit selection. We remind them of the dress code, remind them of the local weather, remind them of the itinerary, the agenda, what it all looks like. So we want it to be a very seamless attendee experience. So even across all those different comms pieces.

Omar Fouad: Yeah. And I think a critical, um, persona that we don’t want to forget on the comms piece is actually that plus one. The spouse. When I was a seller, we used to get a postcard in the mail to our home address. And that way, you know, a lot of times that spouse is the one picking that up. And it happened a few times throughout the year, one when it was first announced. And to your point earlier. Right? That’s a great way for them to say, okay, I get your job as stressful. You got to get on the airplane and hit the road, windshield time all the time. But yeah, get out there and make that extra trip. Get that extra sale because I want to go to Park City, Utah or wherever we’re at this year. Uh, and then another time, depending on your business, I have a lot of clients that have some cyclicality. So, you know, at that busy season, that’s also a great time to send out that postcard, because that can be stressful on the home front. And for them to remind that, hey, there’s an opportunity out there, I get it. He’s not only he or she is not only just trying to get the paycheck and get the accelerators on the comp plan, but they’re also trying to get this award trip. So, uh, motivation internally with your sellers, but also a huge good persona to think about in that comp plan is that, uh, that spouse or plus one partner.

Jeremy Whiteman: Part of our strategy and communications is we get that partner, that plus one email up front, and then we’ve got dedicated comms just to them. So say very similar to your situation, but we do it by not allowing a at residual domain for that plus one’s email.

Omar Fouad: Straight to the source. I love it. Um, well we’ve got everything improved a year and a half of planning. We’re finally now ready to do the big event, but still, a lot of on-site coordination has to happen. Uh, what’s, uh, Jeremy, in your  different presidents club trips? What does that on-site support team look like?

Jeremy Whiteman: Yeah. So the event manager that I was mentioning earlier, she’ll get there a couple days before and she’ll stay a couple days after, and I don’t know how she does it. She’s amazing, but she does not sleep. And and you know, every, every delayed flight or everybody I had to, you know, lost luggage, you name it, she takes care of it. Um, but our, our on site experience, you know, I kind of walk through the agenda earlier, but a couple of things I didn’t mention. One is that we keep a host desk just about every single day. Or a hospitality suite just about every single day. So if any of our attendees ever have issues, or if they’ve got some downtime or they don’t want to maybe just be in their room or be in the resort somewhere, they’ve got a place to go and a place to be. So that’s a big part of it. Uh, we leverage that app throughout the event. So we’ll push, you know, reminders about where a meal location might be or if we’ve got a, let’s say, a happy hour that we’re going to do, we’ll have a pop up in that app to remind everybody, come on down. We’re going to be at, you know, this terrace or this ballroom dress code looks like this. Um, and then another part too, is depending on where the event is, we’re going to leverage things that are on property or adjacent to, you know, I mentioned Key West and how fun that was. And, you know, the resort and the property that we used was not far from Duval Street and kind of the main drag. And so we reminded people while you’re there and part of it, yes, be a part of the event, be a part of all of our different activities. But hey, if you need to get off property for a little bit, here’s another option for you.

Omar Fouad: Yeah, and I think that’s one thing that a lot of people struggle with, with putting together the agenda on site, is this is a great opportunity to get some of your high performers in the room with senior leadership, you know, give them the opportunity to network a little bit internally, but at the same time they have their plus one. It’s not, you know, 100% work all the time. How do you guys, you know, think about that balance that you’re trying to create that experience not just for the employee, but that plus one and making sure that they’re they’re the ones pushing them again to come next year and not say that that was just a boring work trip. I don’t want to go again.

Jeremy Whiteman: Sure. It’s a fine line, right? We want everyone to feel rest and relaxation, but also be engaged. You know, you’re there to network. You’re there to be recognized. So in that exhaustive FAQ I was mentioning earlier, we outline like, yes, you are here. This is a Resideo event. We expect participation in the different things on the agenda. You get to select them. And if you want to have an afternoon of downtime you can select that by all means. But I think you also have to be careful. Um, this is rare, but we’ve had situations where, you know, maybe somebody looks at the activities offered and says, well, boy, you don’t have this and I’m really into this, so I’m going to go book a tour on my own. So we’ve had to very carefully word expectations around staying here and staying within the program and being part of it and being engaged. And hey, we encourage you to do that local stuff, but that might need to be before or after the event, come on in a day early or stay afterwards, if that’s what something that you really want to do locally. So yeah, balancing that rest, relaxation but activity and making sure they’re engaged but then not going off on their own because then you’ve got liability you need to deal with.

Omar Fouad: So yeah, I guess um, what are some of the activities that have done really well that, you know, had all your criteria? Rest, relaxation, recognition included the spouse and maybe ones that, you know, fell flat, great on paper. But once we got out there, it was like, yeah, this didn’t land too well.

Jeremy Whiteman: Yeah. The traditional ones are always really fun around ocean-based properties. Right. So the snorkel tours, the catamaran tours, the sunset cruise, like you can’t go wrong there. The spa treatments are always one that usually the plus ones select right away, and those usually get filled up. Um, you know, golf has been hit or miss for us, just kind of depending on the attendees that year. I don’t know if I can think of any that fell flat, but I’ll tell you a funny quick story. We did one in Laguna Beach one year. And the Griffith Observatory there. Um, we didn’t account for LA traffic. And so the, uh, what was to be about a three-hour afternoon excursion ended up being almost a six-hour excursion. And, uh, those folks came back midway through the evening function. And, uh, so here’s my advice. Make sure you make sure you account for local traffic with all the different activities and excursions.

Omar Fouad: Yeah. Uh, I live in New York City, but LA is one place where I always buffer extra time in for the airport. Because that traffic man. It’ll add a few minutes or a few hours for sure. Um, well, I guess that kind of leads into what do you expect from some of your leaders, whether sales managers that kind of earn their way there, they’re still part of the leadership committee. But you also mentioned some other non-sales folks that come to the event.

Jeremy Whiteman: Yeah. For me, this is one that I feel very strongly about. And for our executive hosts or for our leaders, you know, I do a couple of different things. I brief them all before the trip and say, hey, you guys are executive hosts. We’ll curate your agenda, make sure you have plenty of time to interact, network, but also you and your plus one take advantage of the opportunities there. You know we as basic as it is, I say things like, you know, during happy hours, we want you guys to mingle during dinners, please, you know, take the opportunity to sit with different folks at different tables, not just the team that you support. So we really expect our leaders to go out and be that ambassador of the rest, relaxation and recognition. They’ve got the opportunity to thank every single person there. We also lean on them for emceeing during our Business General Sessions. We have our two business presidents go through a review of their business during the formal awards night, we expect our executive hosts to get up on stage. And, you know, when they recognize the individuals from their area, they’ve got to say, hey, this is Omar. Omar covers this territory. He was 125% the plan this year. He crushed these three competitive conversions. So we expect them to play a lot of different roles. They’re there. They’re having fun by all means. But we also I meet with them afterwards. I book a prep session before our awards night. I book a prep session with them before our general session to make sure they understand this is the way that you’re going to be here, and this is what we expect from you.

Omar Fouad: Yeah. That’s fantastic. As you think about, you know, everything on a leader’s mind, having those quick prep sessions to reinforce some of the values and expectations, as well as if you have some new people, maybe, you know, some new leadership that is their first event, uh, having the opportunity for them to, to have a space to share that and ultimately live up to those expectations is wonderful. I guess the last thing on the event, once it’s done, how do you, uh, do you guys consider anything of, you know, keeping that momentum alive post-event or is it kind of, hey, it’s done and you’re already planning the next one?

Jeremy Whiteman: A little bit of both. You know, we do a lot in terms of trying to generate the goodwill. We internally on our intranet site, of course, we post photos and we do a quick recap for everybody else on the business to see it. Um, we send out a post-event email, post-event communication that has the link to all the photos taken, as well as a post-event survey. And for us, you know, it’s not long. It’s about 15 questions. It’s, you know, 15 minutes max, but it’s, you know, how do you find the experience and anything you want to provide us in terms of feedback. But our number one question there is, did I feel recognized for my performance? Did this event make me feel recognized for my performance? So we always look at that one. So yeah, we, um, send the thank you emails. We send the post-event survey, we send the post-event photos, we do some internal advertising to make sure that everybody in the organization knows about it.

Omar Fouad: Yeah, that, uh, sharing how the event went and some of the pictures that can be a great motivational driver for those that didn’t make it and say, man, I want to be part of that next year. And I also have some clients that have built out that intranet site, like you said, and created a Hall of fame. You know, who’s been going multiple years. And, you know, people get really proud about that as they should. It’s a great award to be earning. And, uh, a few, a few clients of mine even have, uh, a desktop type of recognition award. Did you go three times? Are you a three-timer? Are you a five-timer? Uh, and that’s something to be very proud of as well. And again, you’re spending a lot of money on these events. It is definitely in your motivation, but a great retention tool for folks to be proud of the effort and the contribution they’ve had for the company.

Jeremy Whiteman: Yeah, absolutely. We employ some of those strategies too. We have the Crystal Award that goes on your desk. Right. We want that to be a visual reminder for everybody in the office as well as you. So we do that. Um, yeah. The Hall of Fame for us is an important concept to us during our awards night or during sales kickoff, when Omar’s announced as a President’s Club winner, like we have the star system of every year that they’ve won. So we put that up there. And yeah, so keeping that Hall of Fame and who’s one year after year, that’s an important part of administering the program too.

Omar Fouad: Excellent. Well, Jeremy, really appreciate the discussion. I think after 15 months of planning, you probably need a vacation from the vacation of the Presidents Club. But any, uh, any closing thoughts for folks out there that might be trying to tweak their program? Or maybe they’re getting it off the ground. Maybe they’re, uh, part of that 37% that don’t have a president’s club today.

Jeremy Whiteman: I tell you, the biggest thing for us, and this is what we fall back on all the time, is it starts with and ends with the attendee experience. Like how do you want them to feel when they’re called on stage at sales kickoff. We do a small welcome gift right there. All the way through. How do you want them to feel when they get that post-event survey? And that post-event email and all the way through. It’s what should that attendee experience be? And so that for us is our core North star.

Omar Fouad: That’s awesome. Well, Jeremy, thank you so much for joining us today. Uh, excellent insights and details around President’s Club. Not just why have a program or how you set up the eligibility, but budgeting, approvals, planning, execution, a lot that goes into a President’s Club. But huge motivator again for that that not just that top seller, uh, you know, high selling performance, but those top sellers, those that you’re really trying to continue that motivation, keep that retention of those employees and, you know, create that that aura around the sales force.

Jeremy Whiteman: Absolutely. Thank you Omar. Appreciate it.