Interview With Victoria Sandvig,
January 2007
Give Me 5
Vice President, Schwab Institutional Events & Client Education / Corporate Events, Charles Schwab & Co.
Victoria Sandvig, who appears on our cover this month, epitomizes the meeting professional whose work is integral to the overall strategic goals of her company. She began her career at Schwab in 1992 as their first in-house events manager. Over the subsequent 15 years, she has steadily enlarged the range of her contributions to the company, reflected in her elevation to vice president of corporate events in 1997. Sandvig joined Schwab Institutional early in 2005 in her current position. She oversees a team of 20 within the division who design and execute events for internal participants as well as clients.WHAT KINDS OF EVENTS DO YOU OVERSEE FOR CLIENTS?
I actually oversee a wide range of events. We have more than 200 meetings a year. These are for registered investment advisors.
We do everything from small client recognition events to an annual conference that is attended by 3,000 in the industry, including investment advisors, our sponsors and exhibitors. It’s held in a different place around the country each year. This event, IMPACT, is the largest of its kind the industry. It’s unusual for an industry gathering like this to be sponsored by a single company.
Our Schwab Institutional client events are for small business owners, essentially people who provide custody, wealth management, and investment advice for their clients. Their firms may manage anywhere from $10 million to $10 billion worth of assets. We help these firms grow by providing best-practice education through these meetings.
We do custody for 5,000 advisory firms. We’re the largest in the industry. We’re three times larger than our next closest competitor.
WHAT DO YOU CONSIDER WHEN DESIGNING EVENTS?
I think we focus completely on who the audience is. The businesses they represent vary in scope and size, so the events will include programs on back-office technologies and efficiencies for improving business. There are events recognizing our top clients. There are programs planned to help our clients to grow, to compete.
The key is first to understand what the objective is for each of these the events, who the audience is, and then to design it to meet the objectives and the needs of these attendees. The more focused we are in defining these, the better overall experience it is.
Then, second, the targeted message to the particular audience is of utmost importance.
Every time we design an event we step back and ask, “What do we want our clients to take away? What is the unique value-proposition?”
Many of our events draw big-name speakers. We not only call upon our internal corporate expertise
for these events, but we’ve also had Alan Greenspan, Richard Branson, Thomas Friedman, Steven Levitt and Andrew Weil as speakers. Or it might be a
highly specialized law firm—where the members
are almost celebrities within the industry, but unknown outside of it.
HOW HAS YOUR EXPERTISE
CONTRIBUTED TO THE COMPANY’S STRATEGIC INTERESTS?
I feel fortunate that I have a seat at the table. I actually report up into the Strategy Department. Events are always highlighted as one of the many factors that help grow business in Schwab Institutional. They’re considered as a strategic advantage. They’re used as a tool to create as many one-on-one connections for our clients and our advisors. Events serve to bring these advisors together to have peer-interaction. These are small entrepreneurs. Some have offices of five to 10 people; others have upward of 100 or so. We’re providing an opportunity for them to come together in ways they might not have already have, as well as sharing information with them.
WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE
PROFESSIONAL TOOL?
Actually, we brought in something new for us in 2006. It’s Microsoft Sharepoint. This is a web portal that integrates with the Microsoft Office suite of programs, where we have been able to create an event calendar. It sounds so simple, but it has some functionality, and because we do so many events during the year, we use it not just within our department, but also throughout the organization.
Last year we built the tool so that you can see, in a snapshot, the calendar of events. Going forward, we’ll be building into it what events clients are actually going to. Then we’ll get to the specific sessions that draw attendees. It’s ROI, and it has already helped us build better content for our clients. It helps us answer the question: How can we best help our clients build their business? We truly see ourselves as real partners with our clients, helping educate them, helping them grow and succeed.
WHAT NEW SKILLS ARE YOU GOING TO DEVELOP IN 2007?
I really want to continue to hone skills at retaining and attracting key clients and also key talent internally, to continue to build our already-strong events team. Events are a key strategic lever of the organization. I want to make sure we continue to build a team that ensures growth in Schwab Institutional as well as for our clients.
WHAT DO YOU LOVE ABOUT
YOUR JOB?
First, the entire process. I like the idea that we get to ask ourselves, “What is it that we want to create?” We’re conceptualizing, designing, budgeting, launching and evaluating, going from beginning to end, and then you get to move onto something else. Every event is different. I’ve been doing this a long time. Looking at each one as unique is a huge benefit. The key is evaluating afterward, asking, “How we can learn from it? How can we make it better?”
Second, it’s the people, the team. The event group members here are fantastic; they’re some of the industry’s best. But also I love working closely with sales and finance; the breadth of the interaction we have within the whole organization is fantastic. It keeps you on your toes. It’s fun; it ensures that you learn about the business you’re in.
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WHAT NEW CHALLENGES DO YOU FORSEE FOR YOUR DEPARTMENT IN 2007?
I think it’s staying innovative. I’ve been in the meetings industry for not quite 20 years. It’s interesting to watch how this industry has evolved; the professionalism is really impressive. The industry challenge is to continue to be innovative. People tend to think a meeting is a meeting is a meeting. Well, it is not. So the challenge is: how can we continue to evolve so that nothing gets stale—so it’s fresh? That’s what jazzes me the most.
In the industry, we’re pushing ourselves and each other. When attendees leave after the meeting and they go tell their family about who they heard speak, or when they carry that bag they got at the event, the experience
stays alive. It’s what they take away. It’s what it translates into. So for us, it’s
staying curious, looking at things in different ways. For our events, we have many of the same people coming back again and again; you have to keep it fresh for them.
Flawless execution is the ticket to play. So then the next level is what can we do to make our events–our client experience–different from what our
competitors do? It’s how we differentiate ourselves. And we still have to execute flawlessly.
We do a lot of brainstorming. I look at magazines. I’ll go to the theater and see something. I’ll talk to colleagues and ask them “What did you see? What did you like?” We have a lot of great minds around here. And I would be doing a great injustice if I didn’t also mention the importance of hiring key vendors and working with business partners who are also the best in the business, who offer creativity, who help us expand our horizons. These would be DMCs, production companies, third-party vendors, designers, caterers, collateral production companies. It depends on the events. We do a little of everything. That’s key: look at each event uniquely and ask what is needed in response to that event? Then it’s assembling the components and team inside and from among our business partners.
WHAT ONE TIP WOULD YOU SHARE WITH YOUR
FELLOW meeting professionals IN 2007?
Stay curious; focus on the experience; keep innovating and deliver the
value. C.H.
