Business as usual and 2020 are two terms that go together about as well as oil and water in today’s climate. To that end, the COVID-19 outbreak has forced associations to reassess the status quo of standard annual events. The Southern Association of Wholesale Distributors, a.k.a. “The Southern,” was no exception. Here’s how the 97-year old organization maintained the goal of its annual meeting and created virtual connections this past August.

A trade association representing convenience wholesale distributors in the southeast United States, The Southern’s membership spans from Texas to Virginia. Member companies have an annual gross revenue of $50 billion and represent nearly 50 percent of all convenience stores in the U.S. In other words, The Southern means business. And its Annual Meeting is a place where business gets done.

The signature event at The Southern’s Annual Meeting is called Ten-2-Profit. Essentially, Ten-2-Profit is a reverse trade show that hosts speed dating for businesses. At the in-person event, distributors would be seated at tables and remain stationary while vendors bounced from table to table presenting their latest product lines in pre-set 10-minute appointments.

There were two keys to preserve when transitioning this event into a virtual setting: buyer and seller interaction and 10-minute appointments. The reality of our situation was simple: schedule 900-plus meetings within a five-hour time span. So, we set out to choose the right software to meet these needs.

The most important thing to remember when planning a virtual event is to make it as easy as possible for your attendees. I repeat, make it as easy as possible for your attendees, not you as the event planner! It’s easy to want to go down the path of least resistance when it comes to virtual meeting planning, but your event will be much better off if you think of what’s the path of least resistance for your attendees.

Zoom Video Communications, Inc. won out, thanks to its ease of use and the ability to screen share video with audio. Not to mention, most people had about four months of Zoom training by the time of our event.

For distributors, we obtained 50-plus Zoom licenses and created virtual rooms for each distribution company. Typically, distributors would have its own table at the in-person event. With the virtual experience, all the distributors had to do was open their Zoom rooms and stay in it all afternoon as vendors would filter in and out.

For vendors, we sent each person a personalized schedule with a link to each distributor’s meeting room. All the vendor simply had to do was click on the distributor’s specific meeting link when it was time to meet. For example:

Joe’s Product Company Meeting Schedule:                                                                                     

1)  12:30 p.m. – 12:42 p.m.    Doug’s Company

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/83830606212

2)  12:45 p.m. – 12:57 p.m.    Barrel Point Wholesale

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82001095752

3)  1:00 p.m. – 1:12 p.m.        Peter Wholesale

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/87044301972

4)  1:15 p.m. – 1:27 p.m.       Suburban Grocery

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82495472056

5)  1:30 p.m. – 1:42 p.m.       Glide Distributing

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/81351203354

We extended the appointment times to 12-minutes to provide both sides with more time. Two extra minutes may not seem like a lot, but when your original meeting is 10 minutes and there’s real business on the line, those two extra minutes might as well be gold.

We also provided a three-minute buffer between meetings to allow vendors time to close out of their existing appointment and move on to the next one. We assured both vendors and distributors that if a meeting did not take place due to technological difficulties, the association would reschedule the appointment at a later date.

Although we were confident we made the virtual event as seamless and straightforward as possible, we still wanted to cover all our bases. A few days prior to Ten-2-Profit, we hosted a Zoom tutorial for both vendors and distributors, showing them the ins and outs of the software and allowing them to test it on the computers they would be using for the event.

On the day of the event, The Southern staff acted as technical and customer support when the Ten-2-Profit kicked off. Fortunately, the event went off without a hitch as both vendors and distributors saw great value in the virtual event. Not one of the 900-plus meetings had to be rescheduled!

The virtual meeting was so successful, the association is now exploring hosting more interactions like these between their in-person annual meetings.

Although The Southern’s members missed the networking and social interactions of the in-person meeting, they will be the first to tell you that business was still able to get done…virtually.