Planning Your Company’s Big Event? Don’t Forget About Your Co-Workers
Why no one at the office really cares about your event. Why that’s okay. And what you should do about it.
As an event planner, your team is relying on you to lead their event — whether it’s a conference, a marketing giveaway, a holiday party — through to success.
One with more attendees, allowing more eyeballs to be captivated by marketing.
One that creates a more impressive brand experience than your competitors.
One that develops more warm leads for your sales team.
You get the point.
But since these aspects of event planning are so ingrained since day one, they aren’t really the sorts of things that get neglected when unexpected issues crop up.
It’s the marketers. The salesteam. The branding people.
The individuals you work with everyday.
They’re the ones who are at the highest risk of being neglected when you’re busy dealing with unresponsive conference support and frustrating vendors.
This is a reminder that they need your support to be at their best.
And let it be clear — you should want them to thrive. But not just since it feels good to support your team.
It’s also because of things like how they’re the ones who are directly bringing in new business.
And they’re the ones that are going to rally for your importance if your boss ever thinks about, for example, cutting back on the event planning budget.
Believe us. You want all of these individuals to be on your side.
So, let’s take a minute and focus on how you can improve the experience of your co-workers, in the days / weeks / months leading up to your big event.
(As well as how to make their lives easier when they’re actually at the event, and laser-focused on carrying out their expertise.)
1. Get Inside The Heads Of Your Coworkers Who Will Be Attending The Event
Sales cares about acquiring and nurturing leads — but mostly closing sales.
Marketing is concerned with these items, too. However, they’re also focused on making a great first impression and getting leads to want to stay in touch.
Customer experience and engagement cares about building connection, whenever possible.
Help each group focus on what they do best, in whatever way you can.
What to focus on:
The more you move their attention away from these goals (e.g. by making them think about travel logistics), the deeper their resentment will grow. You will leave them frustrated, and flustered. You will lose trust.
The greater handholding and guidance you provide, the deeper you will be relied upon and trust will grow.
Keep in mind that easily digestible information is immensely powerful.
They simply don’t have the time or attention for extraneous things while doing their job at the event.
What are your teams’ needs? What will make them happy?
Identify and execute.
They’re hungry and don’t have time to search for good restaurants.
They need lodging, yet don’t have the attention span to think about when their flights are or where they’re sleeping.
But you do.
They have to make things happen, and can’t concern themselves with all the nitpicky rules (e.g. if their booth needs electricity or carpeting) that each conference requires.
That’s what you’re there for.
The point is this: Be diligent when it comes to your co-worker’s wants and needs. Proactively help them out. Your personal and professional life will improve because of it.
2. Be Comfortable With Playing A Supporting Role
When it comes to event planning, your bosses’ primary metrics of success are, in most cases, qualified leads & sales.
You’re no stranger to this. But you might be the one who is more in tune with how important an amazing experience can be to the bottom line.
With this in mind, as an event planner — you play a supporting role. One that can often feel like you’re stuck sitting on the sidelines.
But it’s a crucial one.
“Great news! This event generated hundreds of email sign ups! And we closed 10% more deals than last year! Great success!”
“Oh btw — everyone loved the party. Seriously. Never thought I’d be talking shop with Tim from MegaCorp, but it happened thanks to your due diligence on that spectacular location. Thanks for setting that up!”
“Anyways…about those leads…”
Sound familiar?
Some might say it’s a thankless endeavor. But it’s the reality of what success and career development often looks like as an event planner.
So, if you ever feel any tension whatsoever, we’d recommend you resign yourself to the following:
Marketing / sales / biz dev leads the business development. You lead the event planning.
All the best relationships in life are a balancing act anyways, when it comes to power dynamics.
If you’re still not satisfied with your level of influence in an organization, just be patient — and focus on working your way toward gaining more leverage with your boss (or whoever has the power to give you more power) as time goes on.
The best way to do so?
3. Flawlessly Execute On Your Word
Providing your teams with well-organized, thoughtful support in their preferred formats will propel you from an annoyance to someone who they cannot live without.
Your Final Output:
Here are some ideas on how to present your information:
Is your team somewhat tech savvy?
Use Dropbox Paper to quickly draft up great looking documents. You can do things like input all the requisite information, add comments, attach photos (e.g. maps of important locations), and allow users to effortlessly search through a document.
All they need to do is click on a link.
Or are they old-school and would rather have hard copies?
Download a free trial of Sketch — an app that’s quickly becoming the go-to platform for modern digital designers.
It’s actually designed for creating digital assets, but you’ll have no problems printing out your itinerary sheet.
Sketch is great for event planners and marketers who have limited experience with digital design programs, and just want to be able to create something that has more flair than your average Word doc.
(And you’re the last one that needs to be told how small personalized touches (e.g. company logos, names, thoughtful organization) can go a long way.)
So, while you probably won’t be the next Dribbble superstar anytime soon, if you take the time to learn the basics, you’ll be able to draft up nice looking documents in no time, as well as add to your resume an extremely marketable skill.
Information to Share
You probably already have a good idea of what types of information would make life easy for your team.
Our best advice is to go with your gut (and past experiences) on this one.
Think about how they will be consuming this information. And serve it to them on a silver platter.
Some basic suggestions include:
- Their hotel info
- Their flight info
- A map of the conference center and surrounding areas
- Local transportation suggestions
- Local food suggestions (both restaurants and quick bites)
- Location and time of any shipments
- When your team needs to be where
- When specific people need to be at a specific location
- Any weird, but essential duties (e.g. check-ins with conference managers)
In the planning stages, do everything you can to acquire this type of information, early and often.
Follow best practice design principles (e.g. you probably should leave more white space), and wrap it up in a perfect little package.
Your co-workers will love you for it.
Bonus Resource for Event Planners:
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