Visits in total: 228617
Visits this month: 1515
Visits in total: 228617
Visits this month: 1515
Organising your company’s conferences and events properly can be hugely time consuming, frustrating and extremely difficult, so it’s inevitable that at times to relieve the stress, you may want to look at outsourcing your event co-ordination work, but with an industry lacking any regulation, how do you know you’re getting the right advice about your company’s important event.
Here are some tips to help you source the right support partner for your events:
These are the people that just say ‘YES’ to everything without any thought given to the request itself, any professional feedback given or any suggestions from their professional experience.
Not saying that outsourcers won’t want to get as close to your specification as possible but by just saying ‘YES’ to everything can spell future dangers and disappointment and may sometimes be unachievable at the event itself, thus leaving you feeling frustrated and let down by your outsourced supplier and somewhat embarrassed in front of your colleagues and peers. Somewhere no one wishes to be……ever!
A typical example of this is where an ‘order taker’ said yes to fully theming an evening awards event following a full day conference at a hotel where both meeting and evening event were to take place in the same room. The error was that the ‘order taker’ had ignored the fact that it would take around 3 hours to re-set the room and only scheduled 30 minutes because they thought they might lose the business if they said otherwise to the client.
Well i’m sure you can guess the result….They did eventually lose business due to disappointment by their client and a loss of trust. The client never used them again, all for the sake of not giving the right advice from the outset.
You may have some experience of previous events yourself so ask for a recommendations about a certain area of your conference. An experienced event consultant / co-ordinator should be able to offer advice on most aspects of the event. They may not be an expert in Audio Visual or Team Building for example, but they should be able to give you an overview based on past experiences or ask for some time so they can look into possibilties. Be wary of those that can’t answer anything or just say ‘Yeah, we can check that for you’ to the majority of your requests. Ask yourself or them, why don’t they know now?
If the outsourced company are good at servicing events they should have a host of repeat customers of whom they can call upon and ask permission for you to get in touch about their service. Take time to speak to these people. EXTRA TIP: When they do give you a contact for a reference, make sure that you also get the company name they work for as well so you know it’s not just their mates! (It does happen!) This will give you a true account of who you are working with.
This is a great way to outsource your conference or event work. Partnerships are usually formed as part of ‘mirrored positioning’ so one side of the partnership should match the other.
A great example here is if a prestigious hotel with a great reputation for events recommends an event supplier they work with. It’s likely that the supplier has
A) Been tried and tested
B) Have won the trust of the hotel
C) Is positioned at the same level as the venue.
It’s almost like a reference given before you have even asked and thus giving you a great head start!
It works two ways though, if your chosen outsourced company do offer great advice and really want the best for your day, listen to them and use them like a ‘Sat Nav’, trusting their suggested route and be willing to make small changes for the best reflection on the day. They will surely want to impress so as to get repeat business from you in the future and the only real way for continued business is to ensure that you impress you, your peers and your colleagues, whilst making things easy and even fun for you.
It’s true……if you use these tips when thinking about outsourcing your conference or event work, it will vastly reduce the risk of disappointment and embarrassment on the day of the event itself.
