Have you attended or witnessed the perfect cocktail party? These shindigs are my favorite kind of gathering.

You can watch any TV show or film and just by setting the tips, tricks and rules are that there are always established guidelines in place.

Set the scene:
Entertaining is a lot like drama, or in some cases HBO. You set the scene and then let the story unfold but the whole time remembering that you need to share its meaning with others. Like most film or TV there is usually some focal point or narrative that commands the attention of everyone, whether that is multiple characters like Game of Thrones or just 3 main characters like True Crime, your party should be around your “characters”. The food, the drink, the theme, the people or crowd. However unlike most TV or film, the party is the first true experiential event. It is the interactive theatre of entertaining, the sum of energy, motion and people. At parties, the action and the stars are not confined to one moment or one space, the story is without true conclusion because is the audience, the crowd, the characters.
Like all good film and parties it all comes down to the director. Who has not been to a party where there is no direction and people stand around, mingle a little and then leave after twenty minutes when they feel they have enough business cards and can justify the activity to bosses, partners and the like. There needs to be dramatic tension, a sense of movement, it should feel like they are in the place to be and the only way to make this possible is for you the party planner to give your show a plot!
Everyone knows that the best films and tv shows can’t create a sense of excitement without a lot of buzz before the show is released. Mailing out the invitation that hints at the colour, tone, formality is the equivalent of a movie trailer or a film poster.

1. The Invitations

   Before the party starts you need the invitations, send printed invitations to your guests in something other than an envelope, why not a glass bottle or a rectangle box filled with wood shavings incorporating elements that will be included in the party to come. This will create a sense of anticipation and curiosity about the event, they will also serve as mementos after the occasion is done. By having a good understanding of your guests profile you can always add something personal that will appeal. For example, if the guest is into rock and the party is in London, send the invite in a record sleeve, the record being, ” LONDON CALLING” and I guarantee that invitee will never forget it. Remember you must also account for all the much needed basics, which includes what drinks will be served, the RSVP info, the dress code, the full timings of the event and the venue address and transport opportunities and accommodation if needed.
   Once they arrive everything needs to be both fabulous and dynamic, physically prepared and leaving a mental memory for we in events are in the memory business. We want to create the party the guests are expecting before they even arrive, so go through the flow of the room. How will the guests move around the room, from food to drinks, decorations and most importantly to each other as this is a cocktail party our main star of the night is the bar and its stars, the drinks.

2. The Drinks
   The host should always greet the guests at the door with the offer of a drink – you should always be the first person they meet – this will immediately make them feel welcome and ready them to step, on to the stage, into the party if only to grab a drink. Already you have set up the first interaction into motion. ACTION…Act One. Now picture a Tarantino film if you will, this scene should be like a shoot out without the blood – every now and then people need to move. If you are a good director you have set up stations of simple snacks like canapes, nibbles, and such in interesting locations all over your entertaining space so that people will have a reason to move to all corners of the room. Think about how great TV is as opposed to a theatre show due to the scene changes so give your guests a chance to change scenes DO NOT put all your drinks or food in one place only. Create different stations with different cocktails.
3. Food

   Offer your guests a progressive selection of tastes, begin by setting out simple bites, cheese, nuts and olives then introduce a few new items in the second hour and so on. Then when everyone least expects it, you bring out your show stopper. Think Keanu at the end of the Matrix dodging bullets or realizing he is THE ONE. Your guests will feel a sense of development, story, theatre and just like that your narrative is in motion. Another great thing about this is that it allows your guests to nibble consistently throughout the night without eating the same thing over and over again. Also think about the importance of chemistry amongst actors, never think about serving strong spirits or other potent concoctions without food. You need the elegance of waltz, people moving around the room instead of the room moving around the people.

4. Decoration
   An essential element of every party is the best use of space and the easiest way to do this is by spreading your decorations throughout the space so people don’t perceive any central place to be. Do not worry over one centerpiece, scatter vases with fresh flowers or simple elements of the design motif throughout all the active spaces. Do not forget to be practical about the positioning of small tables (unlike movies, parties don’t have a blooper reel where you can laugh as you see people trip over props). Avoid trip hazards but provide spaces for perching of drinks, to collect napkins and the placement of discrete trash, like olive pips and the like. No guest wants to see wadded napkins and half eaten food on working surfaces.
   The other vital ingredient in decoration is the importance of dim lighting. As so many parties are straight after work, it will make them feel less self-conscious and much more glamorous. Low lights create a distinctly loose feel to a venue and will only further create mystery, imagine Charlie Chaplin in bright lights.
5. Host/Hostess…You
   As we mentioned, you are as important as any of the above ingredients, if not more important. If you don’t mingle and enjoy yourself how do you expect your guests to?
   I always advise my clients to plan out some basic intros between guests. Remember to be like a boxer – bob and weave – introduce and move on, create connections and move. Everyone has at least one perfect sidekick, one great wingman or wingwoman, put that gregarious friend to use.
   Of course like all good rules, there is the exception to the rule. Come the last 45min of the evening move yourself to the door to say your goodbyes, arrange cabs and transport services, take away car keys where necessary and help with coats and collections of bags and things. I firmly believe that you should be the first face and the last one they see at all parties. After all, at the end of a good film when the credits have rolled the audience is desperate to know who the director was so they can watch the next film he/she makes.

In Conclusion

With the aforementioned tools in your toolbox, and remembering the key point headliners of Invitation, Drink, Food, Decoration and You: you will never ever again be in jeopardy of throwing a less than glamorous cocktail party you would be proud to attach your name and brand to.
In the age of digital everything, parties are truly the last bastion of the face to face. The truly timeless way of getting in touch with clients, media, friends and the like in the offline “real” world.
While some may say this is costly and far too time- consuming, parties are the best way to get your brand out and celebrate all those well-earned victories! Now stop reading and start planning.

An event planner’s work is never done – not even when the event itself is over. Just as important as getting all the details right before your event, there is something you can do after your event to get valuable feedback, streamline your process, enhance your attendee experience, and further cement relationships with your team and partners.

What is this magical task that event planners can undertake to reap the aforementioned benefits? Nothing more than a simple event debrief.

1. What were our original event objectives?
2. Did we meet them?
3. Were there any problems encountered as we tried to meet our event objectives? (think registration or tech issues, budgetary constraints, revenue goals, marketing performance, food & beverage issues, and general attendee engagement) If so, what were they?
4. Did those problems get solved? How? Was the provided solution effective?
5. Was your individual role in the event production process clear to you from the outset?
6. Did you find that the information you needed to do your job was readily available to you?
7. What were some triumphs at our event? Who or what was responsible for them? How can we replicate that success in the future?
8. How effective and efficient was our registration process?
9. How did we utilize technology at this event? Was the tech we used easy to implement and analyze?
10. What would you like to see happen at similar events in the future?

The Front End Debrief
A front end debrief is entirely about attendee experience and engagement. Basically, you want to know if your attendees had fun or walked away with something valuable, how they received your event messaging, and how you can make their experience better in the future. In today’s hyper-digital world, there are many innovative ways to tackle your front end debrief. The traditional feedback form is extremely outdated. And though the information you’re trying to obtain is the same, technology has made getting it much easier (and sexier) than filling out a mail-in questionnaire. Feedback from your attendees can be gotten:

1. Through Social Media – You’d be surprised how many responses you will get by simply asking your pointed debrief questions on social media after an event. Consider posting a Facebook status, or throwing some of the questions into a dedicated Twitter chat after your event.
2. Through Email – Similar to social media, you can (and should) reach out to your attendees via email to find out how they felt about your event.
3. Via Focus Groups – Focus groups are an excellent way to get attendee feedback. You can keep your focus group general (and simply ask questions about registration, as opposed to asking about feedback regarding the registration process for a specific event) or, you could ask your attendees prior to your event to agree to be in your focus group. This way you can ask targeted questions about the event you just produced.
4. Through a Mobile Application – One of the reasons your event app is so important is because of all the ways you can utilize it. In addition to being a committed back channel for networking and helping deliver relevant information to attendees, your event app has the ability to provide you with a platform to deliver your front end debrief to attendees.
5. Polls – Attendees will have the most to say, and be the most likely to give you feedback, immediately after they’ve interacted with your event. This is why on the spot polling is a great way to have your front end debrief. There is no end to the information you can get from an on the spot poll. You could poll your audience after each speaker or presenter. You could have them rate their food and the service immediately after a meal. You could ask about the music, the entertainment, and the flow and decor of your space. The possibilities are endless.

In Conclusion

Debriefing your event is a crucial step in gathering the feedback necessary to keep your events innovative and efficient. Conducting both a back end and a front end debrief will ensure that you know exactly how everyone involved feels about the event you produced. You will also have a working knowledge of what worked, what didn’t, and how you can build on that information to keep yourself, your clients, your partners and your attendees happy and coming back for more.

Event sales are critical to your event success. Here are 5 methods for building your own effective organic database and event sales pipeline and selling more tickets for your events as a result.

Too many event professionals these days overlook the event sales process when planning their events, concentrating on operational elements and more often than not relying on paid databases that have very little impact and offer very low engagement. End result – low registration take up and higher attrition!
As event professionals and event managers we all know that every successful event is the result of tireless and timely planning and preparation. The same then applies when looking at the event sales process and it’s vital that you give yourself the time to allow for clear headed decision making and preparation from the offset if you want to see the best results.

Your event sales should be a critical part of the strategic planning process before you even begin to look at the operational management. If you want to get your strategic event sales planning off to the best start by building a great pipeline, then follow these five key steps.

1. Consider Who Your Customers and Target Audience Are

   Every event is, in effect, a little business, it has it’s own marketing and operational procedure to be followed, profit and loss account to manage, team to recruit and supply chain to manage. Therefore, the sales process for each of your events deserves the same level of attention as the overall business, and shouldn’t be an afterthought later down the planning process when the registrations aren’t looking so great.

   It’s vital from the offset that you take the time to consider who your audience and demographic will be for your event, exactly the same as your overall business. Look at the content of your event and think carefully about who it’s going to appeal to? Put yourself in your customer’s shoes, if I were them would I really want to attend this event? Once you have a clear idea of your target audience then concentrate your efforts on this group of people, simple.

2. Take the Time to Do Your Research

   This part is really important and the one thing that gets overlooked the most. Yes we are all incredibly busy but we’re also incredibly lucky to live in an age where we have access to a wide resource of information by way of the internet, and we can now add social media platforms to that resource.
   It’s no longer necessary to spend hours working our way through printed business directories, unless you’re appearing on the apprentice, aimlessly calling those pesky receptionists trying to find out the best person we should contact, and then only to hear those demoralizing words “sorry we operate a no-names policy”. You do however, need to allow yourself time to do effective research but it’s much easier these days than it used to be and you can also consider employing the services of an experienced researcher.

   You’ve access to a wealth of company and contact information now, and better than we’ve ever had before due to the rise of digital. Websites that offer you information in regards to the brand, culture and overall objectives of a company. LinkedIn that will tell you the key team members within companies that you need to target and also who they are connected to. Twitter that will give you an idea of the personality, likes and dislikes of those particular team members. I could go on but I hope you’re getting the idea at this stage.

   Use this information to your advantage and think about how your customers brand and personality fits with yours. The more information you have to hand on a company, brand and individual, the more powerful this will make you when it comes to the negotiation stage and the more confident you will feel in your approach. It also gives you a head start in building long term relationships with your customers which are crucial in the events industry.

3. Build a Contact Database and Prospect List

   After you’ve spent time collecting all of the above lovely information you need somewhere to record it. There are a wide variety of online CRM or customer relationship management applications now that you can use to effectively manage your contacts and prospects. If you prefer to keep it simple and basic then a spreadsheet will work just fine, just as long as you record everything.
   Keeping a record keeps you up to speed on the latest communications and how things are progressing, but more importantly if someone needs to step in to assist they will also have all of the above prized information at their fingertips when it comes to picking up the gauntlet.

   Your database should have a record of the basic contact information such as name, job title, company name, website, direct dial telephone number (great to bypass those pesky receptionists) and email address, as well as those golden nuggets of information such as brand, culture, tone of communications, likes and dislikes, and should also be up to date and secure, password protected if necessary, depending on the seniority and sensitivity of your contacts.

   Data security is critical, and it’s also important to bear in mind the data protection acts for your respective countries as this can differ.

4. Be Tactful but Tenacious, Follow the 333 Rule
   On average it will take you 8-9 initial contacts with a prospective customer before you get that longed for sale. However, if you bombard your prospects and contacts with emails and calls from the offset, particularly when you bear in mind how many professionals now receive on a daily basis, the likelihood of getting that sale are drastically reduced, therefore try what I call the ‘333’ approach instead.
   Basically the idea here is that initially there should be a maximum of three communications to your new contact. This can be in the form of a phone call, an email, a LinkedIn message or a face to face meeting, any form of communication and make sure you mix them up and keep them as personal as you can. If at the end of those three initial communications the lead is still cold and there’s no sign of a pending sale, then leave it three months before contacting them again.
   After three months send another three communications and then if necessary repeat the process. The timeline can also be adapted to allow for shorter event lead times so can be changed from three months to three weeks, however it’s important to remember that we are allowing for plenty of preparation time, and particularly for paid events.
   If you follow these steps then at the end of nine communications you should be walking away with a sale, however if not the likelihood that the customer will buy from you at this time is slim, so best to leave for now and rethink your approach for the next event.
   I’m not saying don’t contact them again, as you’ll pick on buying signals throughout the above process that will tell you otherwise, sometimes it can be as simple as a “not right now”!
5. Think About Emotional Decision Factors and Sell the Why Rather than the What
   This is so important when it comes to sales and marketing for events. More and more people are moving away from simply being sold to and from old school style campaigns and tactics.
   Practice consultative and relationship selling, this means taking the time to really get to know your prospects needs and motivations and what’s important to them before you have even mentioned anything about your brand or event.
   As we like to say in the event sales world, two ears and one mouth, listen first, listen some more, then listen more still before speaking about yourself, and always make sure that what you’re offering in return solves a business and professional need or problem they may be having.
   People use logic to process the information they receive but it’s really emotions that drive our decision making and actions, and these in turn are driven by our desires and aspirations, such as needing to get ahead of the competition and look good in front of the boss, wanting to expand our network or profile in an industry, or as simple as wanting to be valued and important. Recognize these emotive factors and you’ll be one step ahead of the game.

In Conclusion

The event sales process should begin even before you have confirmed your venue or started booking your speakers. It’s an important part of the strategic planning process. Building an effective event sales pipeline will start you on the right track to establishing stronger relationships, which in the people industry we operate in will only result in your attendees trusting you, your event and the value your event offers them even more. The more time you allow yourself to prepare for this and really get to know who your target audience and customers are then the more effective your event sales and marketing will be in the future.