Business Development 101 for Event Professionals

This blog series will be dedicated to event planning professionals who are seeking better methods of finding, securing, and maintaing clients.  In a nutshell, its focus is to introduce business development strategies for event professionals.

I won’t spend a ton of time on the theory of why you need a business development plan. Most of the time will be spent on what you need to do and giving you action plans for making it happen.

I will share some ideas that I have learned in growing and maintaining my own business.  I need you to share what’s working for you, what isn’t working, and to send me your tough and pressing questions about what is challenging you in the area of business development.

To get us started, I’ll share a primer.  You’ll need to check this blog series (and other blog posts on Liz King Events!) in order to find out what you need to do next.

Thinking about “The Business of Your Event Planning Business”

Organizing an event is no easy feat!  I applaud all of the new and veteran event planners who are reading this blog – because I admire the skills that you have and need to use in order to execute an amazing event.

You’ll need to use these skills in your own business.  Not only do your clients need you to be detailed, organized, customer service friendly and a great executor of a plan – but you need to use these skills within your own business.  What separates the successful business owner from those who just get by every month are the ones that spend half of their time on the “The Business of Their Business”

Four Steps for Business Development

Business Development can seem like a scary concept.  So, I’ll outline four concepts to keep in mind as you consider how it can be applied to your own business.

1. Identifying your company brand.  Do you have a clear concept of what makes your business different and is it obvious to your current and potential clients?
2. Designing and implementing a marketing strategy.  Do you have a one year plan for how you are going to share the benefits of your brand in a manner that educates clients and keeps your company as top of mind to solve their existing problems?
3. Designing and implementing a sales strategy.  Do you have clear goals of the number of clients you need to secure in one year?  Do you have the plan in place to take prospects from being interested prospects into satisfied clients?  How easy is it to duplicate?
4. Highlighting your successes.  Do you have a PR plan that shares your successes and victories and positions you within your industry and the industries of your clients?  It can cover social media strategy to formal press releases and positioning with larger brands.

Whew! I know that might be some heavy lifting to digest at one time!!!

But I wanted to share the concepts at the beginning of the series to show you where we are going in this conversation.  If you don’t see the full path, it’s easy to get distracted on the step that you are currently experiencing and miss where you need to go.

We will spend time during the upcoming posts outlining each of the steps and walking you through a plan to a successful business development strategy.

Until next month, post your most pressing business development question and we will feature the answer to several of them in upcoming months.

Happy Event Planning!