Here are some of the critical mistakes you should avoid ensuring a successful event.Try not to become a man of success. Rather become a man of value.
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1. Lack of experienced event managers.
Problem: Event planning can quickly grow out of control without an experienced event manager at the helm who knows what they are doing.
B The first step is to hire event managers with certifications and the finesse required to understand and manage the customer’s needs.
Good event managers have the right combination of ‘soft skills’ and can demonstrate how to facilitate planning meetings, manage risk and handle a variety of different stakeholders. it’s really comes down to people skills, especially given the different stakeholders.
How to Overcome Challenges in Conducting Events
2. Not Setting Event Goals
Many event owners and even their planners focus on trying to ensure nothing goes wrong with the event so much that they forget to define the objectives for the event.
Event goals and desired outcomes should be identified from the beginning.
3. Too much or too little catering
To underestimate and overestimate the catering needed for an event is one of the most common mistakes we see. Attendees won’t have a good experience if there are not enough refreshments and on the other side, an overestimation could blow a hole in your budget as catering is one of the largest and often overlooked costs. As a final note, if your event is over lunch, breakfast or dinner, you need to serve food!
How to Overcome Challenges in Conducting Events
4. Failure to allocate the right resources, with the right skills.
Problem: It’s seems fairly obvious that proper event staffing is critical, yet improperly allocating resources tops the list of most common event management mistakes. Not having the right people managing an event can be a recipe for disaster. The key to a successful event is getting the right people with the right skills. All the planning in the world won’t overcome an insufficiency of talent.
Event Planning Possible Solutions:
Solution: Event managers need full visibility into the skills and workloads of all of their resources, including vendors, contractors and outsourcers, who often get left out of skills assessments even though they’re doing a “huge” proportion of work. A thorough assessment of all resources at the outset of the planning process can provide such visibility into everyone’s skills and workloads. Once event planners know everyone’s capabilities and who’s doing what, it becomes far easier to figure out how to allocate resources across the myriad elements and day-to-day work.
5. Miscalculating staff required
At an event there needs to be someone greeting and registering new arrivals and speakers, staff on catering, AV, depending on the layout people to direct, people to sell and the list goes on. It’s common for people to forget basic staff needs or to miscalculate it. Make sure you’ve seen the venue beforehand, and you’ve worked out how many staff members you’ll need for the event to run smoothly.
How to Overcome Challenges in Conducting Events
6.Simple process mistakes by not following standard, repeatable event management processes.
Problem: This is a far more common event management mistake than most event planners imagine. Lack of an agreed uopn plan increases the risk that tasks related to the event will fall through the cracks, that the event will have last minute issues, fall short on budget and ultimately miss a major objective.
Solution: A well defined and agreed upon event plan helps planners tackle every task efficiently and raises the appropriate level of awareness of all the activities involved in the execution of an event. Having baseline of repeatable processes for scoping, scheduling, allocating resources and communicating with stakeholders removes a lot of the guesswork associated with events.
7. Failure To Allow Enough Set Up Time
Nothing is more annoying and unprofessional to attendees as arriving at an event to meet workers running about still trying to set up the venue.
Timing is very crucial with events, so you must have a good estimate of how much of it you need to get everything in place. Let your goal be to always have everything set so your attendees can walk into a perfect event.
How to Overcome Challenges in Conducting Events
8. Seasonal timing
We’ve spoken about days and times that work in event strategies, but often event failures can be put down to hosting an event on an entirely wrong time of the year. In general, avoid bank holidays, half terms, Christmas, Easter, as a further example don’t run an accountancy focused event at the end of the financial year, or don’t run an event for retailers close to Christmas as they’ll be busy selling.
9. Not choosing an easy to reach venue
With events in London especially, we’ve often seen that having a tube stop nearby can make the difference between people coming to your event or not. Make sure you’re near a major public transport hub if you’re hosting the event in a city, that there’s ample parking if needed and that you give clear directions to the venue.
10. Failing To Budget Properly
Another costly mistake many event planners make is to overlook some items on the budget. Leaving such out could be a very costly mistake and may cause budget overrun and in some cases, failed events. So don’t overlook any budget item the next time you are planning an event.
How to Overcome Challenges in Conducting Events
11. Not standing out from the crowd
It’s critical that your event stands out from the rest, you need to give people a reason to take time out of their busy schedules to attend your event. Don’t have a boilerplate topic, choose your speakers carefully and make sure it’s a creative theme and format. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel, but you need to be on topic, trendy and relevant.
12. Forgetting To Schedule A Walk Through With Clients
Communicating event details to clients through emails and spread sheets are no doubt very crucial. Relying however on such alone, could lead to oversights.
It is therefore advisable to walk through the day’s itinerary onsite with the client where possible, discussing the details of the event as if it was happening right there at that moment. That way, you can agree on the final arrangements and avoid having an unhappy client.
How to Overcome Challenges in Conducting Events
13. Ignoring Murphy’s Law.
Problem: If anything can go wrong, it probably will! Stuff happens at the last minute, leaving everybody surprised by it. Consequently, the event goes into a tailspin while the event planner tries to clean up a mess they had not anticipated.
Solution: Perform an event risk assessment as an early part of the event planning process. Set time aside with your event team to brainstorm what could happen to derail the event, cause a budget overrun, or to prevent you from delivering the expected results. Then figure out ways you can mitigate those risks. This exercise doesn’t take a long time, and it’s enormously helpful in understanding the weak links before planning even gets underway.
14. Assuming Things Will Run Smoothly
It will be an event planner’s greatest undoing not to double-check event tasks and arrangements as it is very unlikely at any event for things to go smoothly as planned and uninterrupted. So be sure to always check, double check and check again to ensure all arrangements are going on well, from venue booking to menu lists and even the printing on all literature.
You wouldn’t want to discover an hour to the start of your event that instead of the chocolate brown and cream themed event, your decoration is appearing brown and peach.
Since this event planning mistake will be blamed on you, even if you have team members handling different tasks, be sure to check everything yourself over and again.
How to Overcome Challenges in Conducting Events
15. Not Following Up After The Event
This is one of the common mistakes event planners make, thinking that once the event is over, it’s just over. Two post-event activities are important.
One, obtain a feedback immediately after the event. That helps you to know what you did well and what to improve upon at your next event. Two, be sure to personally call to appreciate everyone on your team who has contributed to the success of the event. That way, you build a motivated team for future event.
Keep the above mentioned common event planning mistakes in mind when planning your next event. It helps you to avoid them and makes things easier for you.
For best output at your next event and/or quality training for a profitable career in event planning, please contact us through any of the means we have provided and we will give you the greatest pleasure you could never imagine.
16. Not Paying Attention to Little Things
Solution: Create an Event Planning Team
When planning a corporate event, most people fail to pay attention to little things. By little things, we mean those details that seem small, but can have a major impact on the bottom line of your event. For instance, you may forget to investigate needs for any special licenses, permits, insurance etc.
You should pay attention to these minor details to ensure that not a single thing gets missed. If you think that you can’t focus on all the event planning details, you should create a team. When you have a team, you don’t have to do every minor task or remember every detail yourself. You can assign different tasks to the team member and ask them to report back to you when they have completed the task. This way you can get things done more efficiently and pay attention to all the details of the event.
17. Too Many Guests
Solution: Keep a Track of Attendees
Getting a lot more guests than what you expected means that you went overboard with marketing. While a big crowd is generally good for your company, but managing it can be extremely hard especially when you weren’t expecting so many guests to show up. You can run out of food or the space can become crowded.
To avoid this problem, you should keep your marketing activities under control and track how many guests are planning to come at your corporate event. If you figure out these things, you will able to offer a stress-free experience to your guests and they’ll be able to enjoy their time at your corporate event.
How to Overcome Challenges in Conducting Events
18. Bad Weather
Solution: Have a Back-up Plan
Bad weather can break your corporate event within seconds. Although you would obviously have to postpone your event if a hurricane or snowstorm is on the horizon, you should be prepared to tackle light snowfall, rain or extreme heat.
You should always have a back-up plan to address bad weather challenge. For instance, if rain is expected and you have organized an event in the outdoors, arrange umbrellas. If the forecast reports a heat wave, then be prepared to offer water bottles, juices and sunglasses to your guests. Your guests will appreciate your special arrangements to tackle bad weather.
19. Losing Attention of Guests
Solution: Make Event Exciting
A corporate event is only successful when the guests remain interested in the event. If your event is dull and boring, your guests would regret accepting your invitation in the first place. Holding the attention of guests in a corporate can be extremely difficult.
You can keep the guests interested by breaking up your presentations with interesting activities that require involvement of guests. You should also have a plan to counter boredom. For example, if your audience is losing interest because of speeches and guests-speaker sessions, you can offer entertainment to keep the interest alive. You can offer photo booths or organize magician acts, circus show, comedian acts or a rock band performance to keep the guests entertained during the corporate event.
How to Overcome Challenges in Conducting Events
20. Thinking that You Have a Lot of Time
Solution: Start the Preparations Early
Some people think that event planning is easy and they just have to make a few calls to make all the arrangements. However, that is not the case. Event planning isn’t something that you can wrap up in two or three days. It takes time to plan a successful corporate event. If you start planning a few days before the date of your big event, you are bound to miss something important. Even professional event planners start preparing for an event early to ensure that nothing gets missed.
Therefore, start planning as early as possible by outlining your goals. Once you have outlined your goals, prepare a specific timeline depending upon those goals. For instance, if your event is due in February, define your goals and event schedule and set your budget in October. In the next month, say November, search for the venue, find speakers and make arrangements for catering and entertainment. In December, finalize your invitation strategy and start inviting guests. In January, confirm the guests list and send reminder to your guests. Also, remind the caterer about the arrangements required. By doing all these things before your big day, you’ll be able to pay attention to all the details and successfully pull off the corporate event.
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