We are a society that is used to instant turn around. With the integration of more smartphones that are usually carried in a person’s hand or on their hip, we expect instantaneous responses to our texts, emails, and social media comments. In fact, when no response is given within what we consider to be a reasonable period of time, say 1 hour, we start to get upset with the other party that they are not being attentive to our needs. We have become impatient and spontaneous.
Believe it or not, this is spilling over into the event meeting services industry. Corporate events are planned with shorter and shorter lead time, causing vendors and staff to jump through hoops. How does this affect the event budget, goals and stress level? In a big way!
Here are the various ways your event can be sabotaged by rushing your event planning.
- Airfares will be higher. It is very difficult to get great bargains on airfare if the flights are booked at the last minute.
- It harder to find the right venue. You will not have time to complete a thorough city search in addition to exploring multiple site visits. Many popular venues book up early, so you may be stuck with a bad venue in an okay city.
- It will be difficult, if not impossible, to get a good group rate. If your meeting is of any size at all, you may be forced into having your attendees at multiple hotels across the city, which could be a logistical nightmare getting them back and forth from the venue.
- Great speakers will be hard to come by. Most speakers that are in high demand are booked 6 to 12 months in advance. You will be spending more time trying to vet an average speaker and hope that he or she meets your audience needs.
- When renting audio visual equipment, the inventory may be limited. AV is such an integral part of any meeting that you may find by waiting until the last minute, their inventory is already booked for other functions.
- Something is bound to slip through the cracks. Even with the best of intentions, there are going to be some miscommunications between the planner, venue, partners, and suppliers. How can there not be? Too many people and too much stress with too few days equals something going wrong.
- Forget about sponsors. Corporate sponsorships need to be pitched, negotiated with, and then committed. Most of the time, this is a 6 to 12 month process.
Think of your event like a farm. You need time to plant the seed of interest, cultivate the relationship, weed out people not interested in your event, select the right partners, and yield the success of well run event. Farmers don’t plant and reap their crops within 30 days and neither should you.
AV Event Solutions, an association and corporate audio visual supplier, is ready and willing to work with you on your next meeting, conference, or special event. Give them a call today!
