The Prouty Project is a company on the move — literally. Consultants jet across the country, racking up frequent-flyer miles to meet with clients in faraway convention centers and hotels.
Working on the road a lot has many drawbacks, such as time away from family and fewer opportunities to meet with more clients. But for a firm that facilitates hundreds of team-building meetings and outdoor adventure-learning exercises, sometimes the most daunting challenge is dealing with unfamiliar venues.
“It’s hard to get ready to deliver high-quality stuff in an unknown setting,” says Pat Costello, a consultant with the Eden Prairie-based company. Considerable time and energy must be spent sizing up the site before the clients arrive.
Given their druthers, most Prouty Project consultants say they would conduct their meetings at Oak Ridge Conference Center, a 57,000-square-foot meeting facility in Chaska.
“We know each other so well, so we really have access. We know how to maximize the facility and the property because we know every inch of it,” he says.
That close-knit connection was taken a step further last spring. The two organizations formed a partnership that combines their resources to market Prouty Project-led, Oak Ridge-hosted meetings under the banner of the Center for Strategic Team Development.
Together, they hope to increase sales and build a nationwide reputation as a full-service, one-stop shop for companies’ team-building needs.
The Center has logged 10 events since its ribbon-cutting in March 2005; Costello says he hopes to reach 50 by its one-year anniversary — 10 more than Prouty Project alone held at Oak Ridge last year.
Though his firm had dabbled in some superficial joint marketing efforts with Oak Ridge over the years, Costello credits an outside business consultant with the idea for Prouty Project to form a partnership.
The first real opportunity for the two to partner came about two years ago when Oak Ridge began searching for a local group to manage its underused ropes course, and approached Prouty Project for the job.
“We sat down and talked about it together and decided, let’s do more,” says Costello. “Let’s think about how we can really make Oak Ridge the great place to have meetings. Since then, we’ve been walking down the road of partnership.”
Rare partnership
It’s a road that few have ventured down. Marriott Hickory Ridge Conference Hotel and the Corporate Learning Institute in Lisle, Illinois, is the only other known example. More are sure to follow, say industry observers.
“People are going to watch how it grows and the business they’re pulling in,” says Sunil Ramlall, about the Prouty Project/Oak Ridge partnership. Ramlall is an assistant professor in the College of Business at the University of St. Thomas, whose research focuses on human resource management and organizational behavior. “It’s likely you’ll see pockets of similar businesses blossoming around the state and Midwest.”
Companies, after all, spend more than $300 billion on employee training and development. “That’s a major investment,” he says, that will only grow as the corporate world becomes more diverse. Today’s work teams don’t just consist of people with different personalities, but also of people from different cultures and countries, he says.
A change in tastes might also spur similar partnerships. Adventure-based team-building activities, such as treasure hunts, horseback riding, ropes courses and wall climbs, are making a comeback after losing popularity during the 1990s, says Marlene Levine, director of the Daniel C. Gainey Conference Center in Owatonna.
While no other local organizations have a formal partnership like Prouty/Oak Ridge’s, many event facilitators form their own casual, micro-partnerships with sales staff at venues to bring down costs.
WomenVenture, for example, a St. Paul-based nonprofit, uses the Minneapolis Convention Center exclusively to host its annual convention.
Since the organization has hosted the event at the convention center for the past seven years, people are accustomed to it being held there, says Kathy Bardins, principal of Bardins Communications, Plymouth. If you change the venue on a long-standing event, people will still show up at the old place because it’s “programmed into their brain,” she says.
Bardins has been contracted for several years by WomenVenture as the conference manager to handle the details and get the good deals.
Like most other venues, the Minneapolis Convention Center has a sliding scale for fees, but it is based on capacity, not on for-profit or non-profit status. Therefore, it is up to the event planner to negotiate the best package, says Bardins, who has a longstanding relationship with the venue.
“It’s based on how competent the event planner is, how easy they make the event for the site managers, and how pleasant they are to work with. Believe it or not, honey catches more flies than vinegar,” she says. While WomenVenture pays full rate at the Convention Center for rental space, Bardins negotiates the rest, which includes food and amenities.
Sheila Ronning is owner and president of Sharp Upswing, an Edina-based event company that also handles meetings and membership for the Minnesota chapter of the National Association of Women Business Owners (NAWBO). She says she’s picked the Metropolitan Ballroom & Clubroom in Golden Valley for most of her events, which number about 40 a year, since 1997.
Though she loves the friendly staff and feels the interior is beautiful, her connection with that venue’s senior vice president of sales has been the glue throughout the long-term relationship.
She knows her needs and makes the whole process easier. “I’d follow her anywhere she went,” says Ronning.
Prouty’s arrangement
Prouty’s arrangement with Oak Ridge goes beyond such informal relationships. The Center for Strategic Team Development has no physical boundaries or designated space. It exists wherever Prouty conducts an event while at Oak Ridge.
Anne Jaeger, director of the center, has her own office next to the Oak Ridge sales team, and acts as the main contact for the center’s clients and prospects. She also leads some team-building meetings.
Having her work side-by-side with Oak Ridge staffers streamlines the process of planning and scheduling meetings, says Costello, who is president of the center.
Since there’s no exclusivity clause to the partnership — Oak Ridge continues to book all sorts of events that don’t involve the Prouty Project, and vice versa — they’re also swimming in a sea of sales leads.
“The opportunity to talk with people who were going to be there anyway was huge,” says Costello.
Oak Ridge, on the other hand, benefits from the firm’s golden list of client contacts and leads, says Carl Blanz, director of sales and marketing at Oak Ridge.
“We struggle like the dickens to get to the C-level as a sales force,” says Blanz, referring to CEOs, CFOs, and other top executives. Prouty Project “only deals with those people.”
Each organization chips in a share of the partnership’s expenses. Prouty Project pays for Jaeger’s salary and her office space, although she works full time at Oak Ridge, and has footed much of the initial public relations/promotions tab. The firm also pays a “usage fee” to Oak Ridge any time it uses the outdoor ropes course with a client. Costello estimates his firm’s total investment in the partnership so far is $150,000.
In addition to providing the overhead and support staff for the Center, Oak Ridge picks up some meal tabs for consultants when they’re not eating on a client’s dime.
There’s no formal revenue-sharing agreement or quid pro quo. Instead, the two organizations have drawn predictable lines around who gets what: Oak Ridge makes revenue from clients who rent rooms overnight, meals, and meeting services, while Prouty Project makes revenue from consulting fees.
[contact] Kathy Bardins, Bardins Communications: 763.541.9363; kbardins@winternet.com. Carl Blanz, Oak Ridge Conference Center: 952.368.1419; cblanz@or-cc.com; www.oakridge.dolce.com. Pat Costello, The Prouty Project: 952.942.2922; patrick.costello@proutyproject.com; www.proutyproject.com. Anne Jaeger, Center for Strategic Team Development: 952.368.1419; anne.jaeger@proutyproject.com. Marlene Levine, Daniel G. Gainey Conference Center: 507.446.4464; mmlevine@stthomas.edu; www.stthomas.edu/gainey. Sunil Ramlall, College of Business, University of St. Thomas: 651.962.4349; sjramlall@stthomas.edu; www.stthomas.edu. Sheila Ronning, Sharp Upswing: 952.400.0198; sronning@sharpupswing.com; www.sharpupswing.com.
