Co-ordinating events and meetings for maximum results

Let us assume that you are planning to host an event and that you will have a number of your colleagues involved as co-hosts. What follows is very important information as I have been to many functions and seen how not to host a function more times than I care to remember. Each time I ask myself how much more successful the host company could have been if they were to have strategised certain required outcomes from the event beforehand?

 I am certain that in most companies there would be people that your colleagues would be anxious to meet and that someone else may have invited. How easy or difficult would it be for their connected colleague to introduce them to that guest? It is equally important to divide the guest list up and to designate certain colleagues to look after invited prospects and existing clients. This will eliminate the embarrassment of having ignored valued clients and potential business by ensuring a carefully thought out and professionally run event. Each colleague must clearly understand the role that they will play in the event. That being said, their role should be to make each guest feel welcomed, valued by the business, comfortable and refreshed. It is not your or your colleagues function to disappear off in a corner for the rest of the night talking and drinking with colleagues or their favourite guest.

In as much as it is important to involve colleagues during the planning phase right from the start of the function, it is equally important that at the end of the function these same colleagues get together to collate and to share the information obtained from the event.

A successful event will be full of energy and hence full of business opportunities. Why waste the occasion or the information gleaned that your colleagues could benefit from?

Once you have decided whom of your colleague’s clients you might like to meet with, you could always arrange with reception or preferably with your colleague to bring the client over to you and to introduce you in the appropriate manner. If it is you who needs to do the introducing of your client to a colleague, and you have spent time with your client and you would now like to move on to meet other people, you can professionally pass your guest on to your interested colleague by saying “My colleague, Gavin Bramley has expressed an interest in meeting with you. Can I introduce you to him?”  All you need to do now is to make the introduction informing your client of Gavin’s field of expertise and how he helps people to do what they do better and make your graceful and very professional exit.

To make sure that a much larger event is successful, it is often prudent to stage a number of events within the larger event. What you would do is to break the larger group into smaller more manageable groups preferably with some common interest or common ground. Do not make the mistake of putting all your prospects into the same group without at least having some existing clients who can tell your prospects how great and wonderful you, your service or products are. A group consisting only of your prospects that might be using your opposition is not such a good idea as you certainly do not want them talking about your opposition all night long, do you?

An additional advantage of having smaller groups in designated areas is that the drinks and eats can be obtained without having to join a long queue. And because you are getting most of the drinks, because you are now a great host, you would not want to be wasting quality connecting time waiting around in queues.