【纽约时报】商业旅行给你带来更多生意

满仓

【中文标题】商业旅行给你带来更多生意
【原文标题】Business Travel and The Boost To Your Bottom Line
【登载媒体】纽约时报
【原文链接】http://paidpost.nytimes.com/cathay-pacific/business-travel-and-the-boost-to-your-bottom-line.html?_r=0#.VO6Q3HxRLW5


到另外一个地方与会见一位客户，的确要花点钱。但是有越来越多的迹象现实，面对面的谈话要比视频会议和电话会议更有效地打动客户，从而获取更多的收入。



安东尼•吉奥利在职业生涯中犯过一些错误，但是有一个错误，这位旧金山的公司高管永远不会再犯，那就是削减出差费用。

在经济衰退期间，这位科技公司的CEO削减了出差费用，很多公司高管也采取了同样的行动，就是为了省下一些钱。结果他们发现这是一个代价昂贵的误判。当时，吉奥利和他的团队正在向一家台湾公司竞标一个金额庞大的合同。他们每周通过Skype与海外合作方召开会议，还定期用电子邮件沟通。一切似乎都很顺利，直到他们发现一家竞争对手赢得了这个合同。他们为什么会失败？他说：“他们不辞辛苦前往台湾，与客户面对面沟通。我们省下了2000美元出差费用，但是失去了赚取几十万美元的机会。”

吉奥利现在已经是一家瑞士科技公司KeyLemon的销售和市场副总裁，他终于了解到，商业旅行绝非是预算中可有可无的一个部分。一些独立调查结果与吉奥利的发现相吻合：一家公司在商业旅行上投入得更多，它就越赚钱。

《牛津经济学家》在2013年的一份报告中提到，在经济衰退期间，在商业旅行方面花费最多的公司要比削减商业旅行费用的公司利润更高。它还发现，在商业旅行上平均投入1美元，可以带来9.5美元的收入和2.9美元的利润。《牛津经济学家》所调查的企业领导人中，有57％说经济衰退期间削减商务旅行费用对公司的业绩产生了不良的影响，只有4％的人说带来了正面效果。

的确有一些原因可以解释为什么商业旅行对公司的账本至关重要。多伦多大学教授、《网络：新型社会运作系统》一书的作者巴里•威尔曼说，面对面的会谈要比Skype电话、电话会议和电子邮件更好地开展新业务、保持业务关系。

威尔曼先生研究过人们的各种沟通方式，发现在面对面交谈时，人们获取的信息更多。威尔曼说：“你不但要听到对方，还要看到对方的肢体语言，他们的举止如何。握手时，是大力的商业性握手，还是轻轻的触摸。通过这些迹象你可以很好地了解这个人。”

视频会议的确可以看到对方的面目表情，并且与对方的目光接触，但它永远无法取代老式的面对面谈话。他说，这只不过是一种狭隘的沟通方式，而且它还很难让更多的人参与谈话，“你会忽略人们之间的窃窃私语”。

他的研究还发现，尽管科学技术有利于保持人与人之间的关系，但大部分生意关系还是开始于某次面对面的谈话，通常是一次会议，或者至少是一个要求见面的电子邮件。他说：“面对面的会议是最好的接触方式，或者一个人发一封电子邮件，说我们找个时间见面吧。就好像是在安排一次约会。”

尽管经济衰退期间的成本削减方案层出不穷，但大部分公司高管都了解面对面会谈对生意的重要性。实际上，根据韦恩堡的调查公司阿伯丁集团在2011年的一份调查报告，四分之三的公司高管认为面对面的沟通非常重要，82％的受访者说会面时他们可以更好地表达自己。

商业旅行热

公司在商业旅行方面的花费越来越高。下面是全球商业旅行的总花费，包括已经发生和对未来的预期（十亿美元）。



相关的数字凸显了这一点。除了2008年和2009年，过去十年里的商业旅行呈持续增长态势。根据全球商业旅行协会提供的数字，从2003年到2013年，全球商业旅行收入增长了90％。美国商业旅行收入在同期增长了35％。2014年，美国商业旅行的总消费预计高达2740亿美元，高于2007年的顶峰。全球商业旅行协会预计2018年将达到3400亿美元。

加速增长

总体来看，商业旅行的综合年度增长率在2014年到2018年之间，高于其前面的13年。

目前：2000年到2013年。


未来：2014年到2018年。


一家专门帮助企业高管提升沟通技巧的公司首席执行官史黛西•汉克也在提升自己公司的商务旅行费用。对她来说，面对面的沟通非常重要，她把公司70％的预算投入到商务旅行中。她指出，公司并不是与对方公司签订合同，而是与坐在对面的人达成协议。“人们接受的是对面这个人。如果你们从未谋面，你如何影响这个人？”

汉克去年积攒了40万英里航空旅程，她每周都会出差。她没有使用任何网络沟通工具，因为在网络上与他人建立信任关系太难了——而信任是商业关系最重要的一部分。

以她的经验来看，人们盯着电脑屏幕上的面孔时间太久了。亲自与对方接触可以打破障碍，还能体验视频对话无法做到的社交活动。她说：“信任假装不来，只有与对方面对面坐下来才能袒露真诚。人们不能总躲在显示器后面。”

国家之间的比较

有些国家的商业旅行支出告诉增长，有些国家停滞不前。下图是部分国家2013年在商务旅行方面的花费，以及与前一年相比的增长率。



很多公司已经发现商业旅行是一项重要的竞争优势。《牛津经济学家》发现，在人们素未谋面的情况下，只有23％的潜在客户会变成真实客户。而当经历过面对面的沟通之后，这个比率上升到42％。

《牛津经济学家》旅游事业部的总裁亚当•撒克斯说：“这里有很大的差距。如果你在选择两家潜在的供应商，其中一个愿意来和你做面对面的沟通，另一个只和你保持远程联络，那么前者显然具有优势。”

吉奥利现在显然已经了解到这一点，商务旅行在以前的确有助于他的成功。经济衰退之前的几年，吉奥利在争取一个几百万美元的业务，而他的对手是已经与对方公司有合作关系的大型同行。在六周时间里，他的技术团队每周都会飞到潜在客户的总部，与对方做各种形式的接触。最终，他的公司得到了这个合同，因为客户了解他，不了解没有付出这些努力的竞争对手。

今天，吉奥利每年都要飞行10万英里，一个月有一周到10天时间都是在路上。他的部门把总预算金额的15％用于商业旅行，即使资金压力再紧张，他也会努力保持这个比例。

他说：“你总需要找一些办法来确保足够的出差费用，即使时机不是那么好。我在2008年学到的是，竞争对手总有办法搞到一些钱来出差。”









原文：

It may cost a few bucks to go see a client in another locale, but there’s growing evidence to suggest that face-to-face meetings are far more effective in landing clients — and generating more revenue — than video chats and conference calls.

First commercial flight from Tampa to St. Petersburg.

Air travel first used to conduct government business.

American Airlines opens the first airport lounge, at La Guardia airport.

First commercial jet takes flight.

Supersonic Concorde debuts, halves New York-London flight time to less than four hours.

First frequent flyer program launched.

Cathay Pacific first transpolar flight, New York-Hong Kong travel time drops to 16 hours.

Wifi debuts as in-flight service.

Overall transportation demand predicted to grow by 40 percent.

Next-gen supersonic planes will cut Paris-Tokyo travel time to 2.5 hours.

Anthony Gioeli has made some missteps over his career, but there’s one error this San Francisco-based executive will never make again: Slashing his business travel budget.
During the recession, the then technology company CEO cut travel expenses, as did many executives during that period, in order to save a few bucks. It turned out to be costly mistake.

Back then, Gioeli and his team were bidding on a lucrative contract from a company in Taiwan. They held weekly meetings with the overseas operation via Skype and communicated regularly through email.

Everything seemed to be going well until they found out that a competitor won the business. Why did they lose out? “They made the effort to go there and meet them face-to-face,” he says. “We saved $2,000 by not going, but we could have made several hundreds of thousands more.”

Gioeli, who is now vice-president of sales and marketing at KeyLemon, a Switzerland-based technology firm, learned the hard way that business travel can’t be a discretionary budget item. Independent research echoes Gioeli’s personal discovery: the more a company spends on business travel, the more money they’ll make.

In a 2013 report, Oxford Economics found that companies that spent the most on business travel during the recession posted higher profits than ones that cut. It also revealed that for every dollar companies invest in business travel, on average, they realize $9.50 in new revenue and $2.90 in profits. As well, 57 percent of the business leaders that Oxford Economics surveyed said that cutting back on their budgets during the downturn hurt company performance while only 4 percent said it helped.

There’s a good reason why business travel has proven to be so important to a company’s bottom line. In-person meetings are far more effective in landing new business and maintaining relationships than Skype calls, conference calls and email, says Barry Wellman, a sociology professor at the University of Toronto and the author of Networked: The New Social Operating System.

Mr. Wellman has looked at the many different ways we communicate today and found that people take in a lot more information about each other when they’re talking face-to-face. “You get to hear them and see their body language, how they move, and whether they break your hand in a business grip or lightly touch it,” says Wellman. “Those things tell you a lot about a person.”

While video conferencing does make it possible to read people’s facial expressions and see a person eye-to-eye, it will never replace the old fashioned meeting. It’s simply a much more narrow form of communication, he says. It’s also more difficult to include the entire room in a conversation and “you miss the little whispers among people,” he says.

His research has also found that while technology is useful for maintaining contact with someone, most business relationships begin with an in-person meeting, often at a conference. If not, then it’s an email asking to meet face-to-face. “Conferences are the most preferred contact method,” he says. “Or someone will send an email saying let’s meet at the conference in a few months. It’s like setting up a first date.”

Despite the cost cutting that went on during the recession, most executives know how important face-to-face meetings are to business. Indeed, three quarters of C-suite members think that in-person collaboration is critical, while 82 percent felt they were better understood after in-person encounters, according to a 2011 survey by The Aberdeen Group, a Fort Wayne-based research firm.

Business Travel Boost

Corporations are spending more on travel than ever before. Roll over the bars to find out how many dollars have gone — and will go — towards business travel worldwide.

The travel spending figures bare this out. Other than in 2008 and 2009, business travel has steadily grown over the past decade, with global travel revenues climbing by 90 percent between 2003 and 2013, according to the Global Business Travel Association (G.B.T.A.). U.S. business travel revenues jumped by 35 percent over that same time period. In 2014, total spending on business travel originating in the U.S. is estimate to have hit $274 billion, higher than its 2007 peak. That total should grow: come 2018, G.B.T.A. expects spending to hit $340 billion.

Growing Growth Rates

Overall, business travel's compound annual growth rate will be faster between 2014 and 2018 than in the 13 years prior. Click on the red buttons to see how these growth rates are changing. Current: 2000-2013. Future: 2014-2018.

Stacey Hanke, chief executive of Stacey Hanke Inc., a company that helps executives improve their communication skills, is doing her part to boost travel spending. Face-to-face interactions are so important to her that she’s allocated 70 percent of her company’s budget to business travel. She points out that firms don’t sign contracts with corporations, they sign deals with people. “People buy people,” she says. “How can you influence someone if you’ve never met them?”

Hanke wracked up 400,000 air miles last year and says she’s on a plane at least once a week. While she does make use of online communication tools, she says it’s a lot harder to build trust with someone over the web — and trust is one of the most important aspects of a business relationship.

In her experience, people can only stare at a face on a computer for so long. Physically experiencing someone breaks down barriers and it allows people to socialize in a way they can’t over video chat, she says. “You can’t fake trust,” she says. “But that authenticity only really comes out when you can sit with someone face-to-face. You can’t hide behind a screen.”

Comparing Countries

Some locales are seeing booming growth, others not so much. Roll over the flags to see how much people in these nations spent on business travel in 2013 and the annual change in growth from the year before.

Many companies are figuring out that business travel can be a competitive advantage too. Oxford Economics found that when people did not meet in person, only 23 percent of potential clients would become customers. The conversation rate jumped to 42 percent when there was a face-to-face meeting.

“That’s a huge difference,” says Adam Sacks, president of Oxford Economics’ tourism division. “If you’re choosing between two potential companies and one is willing to come and look you in the eye and one is remote, then that’s an advantage to the former.”

While Gioeli certainly understands this now, travel has helped him land business in the past. A few years before the recession Gioeli was bidding on a multi-million dollar piece of work and he was up against a larger operation that already had a contract with the company he was trying to woo. Once a week for six weeks, the tech executive would fly to the potential client’s headquarters to meet with different contacts. Ultimately, his business was awarded the contract because the client got to know him and not his competitor, which didn’t make nearly as much of an effort as he did.

Today, Gioeli travels about 100,000 miles a year and he’s typically on the road for a week to 10 days a month. His department allocates about 15 percent of its budget to travel and he’ll do what he can to maintain that level of spending if money ever gets tight again.

“You always need to figure out how to find money for travel, even if times are bad,” he says. “As I learned in 2008, competitors will always find the budget to make the trip.”

呼唤法制统一