Less is sometimes more in events,no?

Above : Who I feel are the world champions in events, at least in my world , for how and why see below ;-)

To borrow a line or two, “There is a cruel wind blowing through our business.

We all feel it, and if we don't, perhaps we've forgotten how to feel. But here is the truth.

We are less ourselves than we were when we started in this business!” . I looked at 2008 and how many events we had done and how little we achieved and how much time we worked. I felt like my team and I were losing our battle with all that is personal and real about our business.

Every day I can look at a list of phone calls only partially returned. Every day I thought about what was not accomplished, instead of what was accomplished. I felt like I was pushing numbers around, doing my best, but is there any real satisfaction in success without pride?

Is there any real satisfaction in a success that exists only when we push the messiness of real human contact from our lives and minds? When we learn not to care enough about the very people we promised the world to, just to get them to have an event with us.

Remember one thing : "Every time you allow a problem in your life, you are actually at a point of transformation. Crisis is a powerful point of transformation."

We are now at a point of transformation in this industry. But this is not something to fear, it is something to celebrate. Because I come to you today, looking out at the dark London skyline, not only with a challenge.

I come to you with answers too.

But first let us define our position:

Right now we are a breaking point with our industry .. we need to look at what we do and what result we got and then try something new.

I decided to take less clients, spend more time with them, create something bespoke and choose who we worked with as opposed to taking on everything.

My December in numbers :

Year on year we showed over 400% growth from Dec 08 – December 09

December 1st – December 18th , that is to say we made 33% of our annual takings in 16 days.

Christmas 2009 was the most challenging Christmas I have done to date, this can be solely attributed to lack of preparation for the busiest period of the year. And so, the biggest learning that any event manager wanting to have a successful Christmas should have is that he/she MUST start plans and preparations in June at the latest and have someone or a team to double the sales and half the burden of paperwork and follow up. Saying that it would be unjust not to also mention it was the most successful Christmas I have had and to found out how, please read below:

So how did we do in numbers :

2009:

35 events:
1500 people aprox:
33 positive testimonials

2008:

60 events
3780 people
40 positive testimonials

Bespoke services :

I believe we set ourselves apart by creating a bespoke service. We offered everyone a glass of champagne and a sit down meal and then spend time understanding their wants and needs and then taking a day or sometimes as long as a week created our very best solution.

We understood that money was an issue and instead of selling menu options talked about their financial limitations and created menu’s around their budget and tastes. To save costs we spoke to sponsors on behalf of our clients to provide drinks and sometimes food at a lower cost or on the rare occasion at no cost at all.

Pricing Strategy:

The pricing strategy portion of our marketing plan involved how we priced our product and service; the price we charged had to be competitive but still allow us to make a reasonable profit.

The keyword here is "reasonable"; you can charge any price you want to, but for every product or service there's a limit to how much the consumer is willing to pay. Your pricing strategy needs to take this consumer threshold into account. We asked budget and what was expected. Then created a solution around this.

The most common question people have about the pricing strategy section of the marketing plan is, "How do you know what price to charge?"

Basically you set your pricing through a process of calculating their costs, estimating the benefits to the client, and then talking about your unique selling points and why they have to pay more for this. In the end they are not just paying for product and service but are also paying a premium ( can also be called service charge) to guarantee the night is perfect and the only thing they have to worry about is a sore back from all the slaps and gratitude the next day.

“How does the pricing of your product or service compare to the market price of similar products or services?” is a question, I never asked as I believe what we do is unique and I am sure you are the same in only this fact.

Objectives & goals:

· To achieve growth over the Christmas period
· To beat last year’s total spends for the period
· To beat all known records for sales
· To ensure service and standards exceed customer expectations
· To have a fun, smooth Christmas that would enable us to build on sales and marketing in 2010.

Overall,

· Having a manager to manage there floor and only there floor was a great idea
· Bringing in a Duty Manager, was a revolutionary to the success of each night.
· Having a daily /weekly event/ops meeting was instrumental in all our successes.
· We increased restaurant covers for the period
· We smashed the record day 3 times in the December period, and the had the highest taking week on record I believe TWICE!
· Customer feedback on the whole was more than complimentary

In conclusion

2010 should be a great Christmas season , concentrating on the correct and early delivery of all and any marketing material, “the offer” (in particular venue hire) and capacity management should enable year on year sales to be broken once again.