Planning Tips, Your Event Career
7 Wedding and Event Planning Resolutions You Should Keep!
A new year means fresh opportunities to create the event planning business of your dreams! You can avoid falling into a rabbit hole of bad event planning practices by following these resolutions for your business in the New Year.
There’s no better time to take stock of your best strategies (and things you need to work on!). Make sure your business is on top on these event planning resolutions—you’ll be ready to take on any contract that comes your way!
1. Using a checklist
Many event and wedding planners swear by this, and there’s a reason for it! Using a checklist for every event you plan will keep you on track and ensure you don’t miss a beat. If you already use a similar planning method, consider adding a checklist to your planning process. Checklists are easy to draw up, and customizable according to the type of event and client you’re working with. Having a visual of what is already completed and what still needs to be done will help you prioritize your event plans.\
2. Creating backup plans
It happens to all good planners—bad weather, venue mishaps, or unreliable vendors—and there’s no way you can stop it. However, you can have backup plans to save the day if anything goes awry! Be sure to always know your options when it comes to making a Plan B. Think in terms of venue, catering, employees and other problems that could befall you or your clients on the big day.
A simple solution: have common scenarios planned for any event and create a few backup plans to have on hand. Keep note of which ideas work, and which situations you need to practice sidestepping. Once you create a basic guide on how to save a big event, you’ll be more experienced (and less stressed) when an event needs a last-minute fix!
3. Recruit day-of staff
For small business owners, it might be difficult to hire employees—especially if you’re just starting up your business. But a clever idea for gaining some extra hands is staffing for the day-of. Whether you ask family members or friends who are supportive of your business, seek some assistance for the day of an event. This could be from setting up or packing things away, to ensuring vendors arrive on time. And who knows, they may even do it for free! Having on-call employees for big events can save you a lot of frustration and worry when planning an event. Planning is already stressful, and you don’t want to feel overwhelmed during an event.
4. Staying in touch with customers
A primary way to gain more customers: stay in touch with former clients! They may need an event planner in the future, and if you do a good job they’ll be happy to hire you for another job. Plus, they’ll want to recommend your services to their friends or colleagues. Don’t be afraid to talk to clients about networking. Your hard work paid off, and a testimonial from them is the best thank-you to receive!
Building your client base is just that—building. You need to stay in touch with previous customers to find more clients. Follow up with clients after the events they hired you for and ask for comments or suggestions. Even if something went wrong, they’ll be happy to see you’re learning from your experiences. Customers want to be valued. Showing clients that their opinion of your business matters will help your business gain trust within the industry.
5. Stop beating around the bush
We know that no one want to crush a client’s dream, but honesty is always the best policy. If a client has an unrealistic vision for their event you need to let them know right away. By waiting to tell your clients the reality, you risk having an upset client and failed event plans. Of course, you’ll want to be as kind as possible and try to work something out for them! Let them know what you can do. Explain how you can manoeuvre their dream plans to create a pseudo-event style that incorporates the most important features.
6. Network with more vendors
There’s no problem going back to good vendors who you’ve booked in the past—in fact, we encourage it! But you also want to branch out to new vendors and try new things in your event plans to stay competitive. Go for recommended vendors who have good customer reviews. This will help you decipher whether they’re reliable or not. Working with new vendors expands your business. First of all, vendors know their competition and they’ll want to be booked by you. Second, your brand will become bigger within the event planning industry when you branch out to new businesses. Letting people know who you are is the first step in expanding your business.
7. Owning up to your mistakes
This is one thing you need to put on your resolutions list if you haven’t already! Owning up to your mistakes can change the way clients view your event planning business. No, not everyone will love your event plans. But that’s okay—you need to face dissatisfied clients to understand how to regain their trust (and keep their business).
The mark of any professional is their ability to admit mistakes and work to set them straight. You’re allowed to make mistakes! Just be sure to solve these problems and apologize to your customers for any inconveniences. Consider writing a card or email to send your regrets. And most importantly, learn from your mistakes! Clients will appreciate that you follow through and are trying to make up for it!
Keep your event planning business going strong with these wedding and event planning resolutions! You’ll be prepared right down to the last detail.
