Page 7 - BusinessWest July 10, 2023

“We’re able
to take our experiences from one association or industry group and apply them and add value to others.”
and taking on substantial debt and essentially launching a new business was a scary proposition.
But they moved ahead with confidence, a vision, and an operating philosophy grounded in what they call ‘fundamentals’ — and they’ve never looked back.
As they talked about association management, members of TMG’s leadership group said there are many components to this work.
Events are an important and highly visible part of it, said Ben Markens, adding that the firm will assist with everything from finding speakers to choosing the hotel; from ordering awards to handling the banquet order. But there is much more to this than events, he said, adding that TMG essentially becomes the back office for the association it serves, managing assignments ranging from membership to marketing to social-media content.
As it does so, it brings to those assignments several specialists, as opposed to one generalist that a nonprofit or trade association might hire to handle those tasks listed above, said Irene Costello, director of Operations for TMG.
“If they do hire that one full-time staff person, they have one person managing the books, doing the marketing, trying to plan
an event ... and that person can’t be a master of everything,” she told BusinessWest. By hiring us for a similar price as a full-time employee, you wind up with a full staff of experts in each individual area that can bring their expertise and pull the association forward and make it successful.”
Ben Markens agreed. “Instead of having one person with two arms and two legs, you have the arm of a social-media person, the leg of an event planner ... it’s full-time staffing at part-time rates.”
But while they’re specialists, the team’s members are cross- trained and can step in and fill any of a number of roles, said Leonczyk, citing, as one example, the Springfield Regional Chamber’s recent Outlook lunch. The team member managing the chamber’s account came down with COVID the week of the event, she recalled, adding that others within the firm were able to effectively backfill.
“We have a very strong bench of cross-trained individuals,” she
Jennie and Ben Markens have the firm on a serious growth trajectory in recent years.
Staff Photo
said, adding that this is one of the key ingredients in the firm’s formula for success.
Firm Resolve
This deep bench, and the ability to provide specialists in the place of one or a few generalists, help explain the emergence of AMCs, and especially TMG, said Brian Westerlind, vice president of Industry Affairs and Strategic Communication for TMG. He noted that there is an association for association-management companies (the Association Management Company Institute), which has conducted
studies yielding statistical
evidence showing that TMG
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