Planner takes care of all the small things

Sitting down one day, David D’Eletto joined two colleagues and painted a picture of a company that would be hands-on and produce more quality than quantity. Soon after that initial meeting, those colleagues and that dream would come together to form Meeting Alliance.

Meeting Alliance, located in Robbinsville, is a full-service meeting and event planning company, which specializes in the corporate health industry. The company spawned when D’Eletto met with founding partners Michael Franks and Barbara Jackson to discuss a change of direction from the company they were currently working at.

“We saw what they were doing and sat down and said, ‘Hey, we could start this thing ourselves,’” D’Eletto said. “We knew what we are doing and that there was a niche for smaller clients out there who prefer the personalized custom service, which is something our company seemed to be going away from.”

The trio agreed that they needed to get down to a more personal level and so, in 1999, they opened Meeting Alliance.

“We wanted to focus on the customer and show that the service we would provide would be as equally important as the fees we would charge,” D’Eletto said.

Over a decade later, Meeting Alliance has been able to do just that, while also moving forward in an industry that D’Eletto says has been growing ever since Meeting Alliance was opened.

“Basically, the way the big companies started going was to have administrators do their planning,” D’Eletto said. “Then, they got to the point 10-15 years ago, where they started to create departments of meeting planners in their companies. But pretty soon, it got to the point where it became too big of a function, so they began to outsource their programs to companies like us.”

Meeting Alliance, which has been named one of the fastest growing companies by Inc. magazine and NJBIZ, lives by the motto, “We pay attention to the details so you may focus on content.”

D’Eletto says that his company works behind the scenes and handles all the little things involved in meetings and events. These tasks include booking the meeting space, finding hotels rooms, arranging air tickets, doing special events after meetings and setting up food, beverage and all the audio-visual.

“The big statement we make when we pitch our company is that we are going to manage all the small things, all the pieces and all the logistics,” D’Eletto said. “Meanwhile, we allow the clients to concentrate on the message that they want to deliver at the meeting, their agenda and the company’s needs.”

One of the biggest things that Meeting Alliance has worked on, according to D’Eletto, is adding flavor to meetings that used to be dull.

“Instead of sitting down at a meeting and watching a talking head up there and speak to you, we are trying to make the meetings more interactive and getting more response from the audience,” D’Eletto said. “Technology is something that we are using to do that. We use audience response systems, getting into the idea of giving out iTouches and having them respond on there and really engage them into the meeting more.”

The company also works with team-building activity firms to engage their clients’ employees and keep the momentum of the meeting going. Last year, one of their clients was taken on a scavenger hunt, while another client had its employees form groups to build bikes that were donated to a local charity.

Another engaging aspect of Meeting Alliance is their ability to take clients on incentive trips that provide an “once-in-a-lifetime experience.”

“We went to Monte Carlo last year, and we brought the client to a private dining area where you could never get into on your own, and we did a special dinner there,” D’Eletto recalled. “We basically try to partner up with the cities we go to, trying to find the things that the general public couldn’t go to, things outside of the box.”

Although he recognizes the fact that his company is growing, D’Eletto does not want to stray from the personal touch his company gives, which was his original goal back in 1999.

“We are trying to keep a ceiling on (adding clients) because we don’t want to lose the touch that we have now, the personal touch,” he said. “We still want to make the customer feel like a priority, so we are doing a gradual growth over the years and our goal is to bring in a handle of clients every year and make sure we can service them.”

On the web: meetingalliance.com