They wined and dined, they flew and bid adieu. Now, the hope is the 14 business executives representing 10 different companies that attended last weekend’s fly-in event will return to the region ready to do business here.
The event, financed through private donations, sponsored by Greater Portland Inc. and organized by a number of business development groups including the folks behind the “Land Here, Live Here” campaign, involved flying a number of CEOs, chairman and managing partners to the Portland-Vancouver metro area and giving them a personalized tour of what the region has to offer.
Attendees were given itineraries tailored to their individual business interests and hosted by local CEOs.
“The bottom line,” explained Susan Bladholm, marketing VP of Greater Portland Inc., “the agenda was driven by what our guests’ interests were for business. It wasn’t about telling them where to stay and having them jump through our hoops. It was, ‘what is your interest, explain it to us so we are clear about who you want to meet with and why, and we’ll put an itinerary together based on that.’”
Event organizers set out four goals heading into the event:
• To be truly inclusive and bring together the region
• To conduct the fly-in within budget (with sponsorships raised)
• To produce a replicable event
• To share and develop a list of qualified business prospects
“I think we really nailed each one of those bullets,” said Bladholm. “We couldn’t be happier with how it went.
“Frankly, there wasn’t a dud in the bunch. They were all fun and engaging to be around, and there were some great conversations actually leading to business getting done and partnerships being created,” she added.
An illustration of the event’s success: Organizers were hoping 200 people would turn out for a Saturday night welcoming dinner at Pearson Air Museum. More than 240 showed up, including seven mayors from around the region.
Given the positive feedback organizers have received about the fly-in, it’s no surprise there has already been talk of making it an annual event. However, Bladholm cautioned there is still much to do before thinking that far ahead.
“We’ll have a debrief with the Pearson Air Committee, with our fly-in committee and with the individual CEO hosts that escorted our guests through the time of their visits,” said Bladholm. “We’ll get lessons learned and we’ll make sure we quickly follow up with the prospects that were here to actually take those interests and put them into action.”
When asked what organizers might do differently a second time around, Bladholm said there’s likely room for improvement in their process of whittling down the list of fly-in candidates.
“I’d like to think we could be a bit smarter about how we prioritize the companies in terms of how we gather intelligence about them and what the business-value propositions for them truly was in the Portland-Vancouver region,” said Bladholm. “We created briefing papers for a lot of companies that weren’t able to come out. That being said, its great having that information on file because many of those companies couldn’t come out because of timing, but they are interested.”
