ORGANIZING AN EVENT OR SEMINAR COMPANY IN 10 RULES
Organizing a corporate event may seem simple, but even when you have years of experience, you can sometimes forget the fundamentals.
1- Anticipate and be as accurate as possible
· Anticipate and organize a meeting with the decision makers very quickly to know the stakes at hand, the form of your event, etc...
· What kind of event or seminar is it?
· Which participants are attending?
· What is the budget for the event or seminar
· When is the date of your event? Is it a flexible date for your participants?
· What are the objectives or risks of your event or seminar?
· Any messages?
· Did your participants appreciate the event/seminar or not?
· What is the program of the event?
· Does the event recognize all or only part of the organization?
2- Create the plan for your corporate event
· You must then create your event step by step, starting from the arrival of the participants until their departure
· You will be able to precisely define your needs
· Ex: a residential seminar
· Once the participants first arrive at the reception desk, should they register, or should they give the receptionist their bank card?
· Then they leave their luggage in the lobby, how long do they have before they must pick it up again?
· Then they will need to go to the full meeting room, but how do they know where it is?
· Give them a program upon arrival and by mail before they arrive as well
· This allows you to provide the program to the participants upon arrival as well as in the mail prior to the event
· In the room, what are the technical needs required for the event? Will there be coffee or snacks provided?
· With all of this, you will receive a complete summary of the event
· You will know all your needs for your business event: rooms, techniques, accommodations, catering services, animations, and goodies.
3- Consult the event service providers
· With this complete summary and the detailed program, you will be able to consult the service providers
· Evidently, we advise you to search them via Genius Meetings
· Note that you must send them the most complete summary possible because everything planned upstream will cost less in the end
· According to the hoteliers: "As soon as the contract is signed, any addition is billed at the normal price."
4- Compare the return of places in detail
· This is an essential moment
· The main difficulty is that you must first check that the quotes correspond well with your summary... and from our experience of more than 100,000 events organized, 1 out of 2 times has this not been the case
· Do not hesitate to exchange with the places and requalify the specifications
· On Genius Meetings; you have a simple, comparative table allowing you to compare the quotes at a quick glance
5 - Develop a To Do List for your event
It helps you to remember everything before, during, and after the event!
Here is an example of a To Do List:
- Before D-Day :
o Clarify the goals and objectives of your event/seminar
o Block a date
o Determine a retro plan and a To Do List
o Create an invitation list
o Establish a budget
o Select several places to potentially hold your event/seminar
o Develop specifications for each type of service
o Choose your providers
o Make requests for availability support
o Create and send your invitations
o Create a site to centralize the registrations
o Create the different signs
o Review all the details with suppliers
o Pre-validate all the reservations
o Manage the contractual aspects with your providers
o Manage the financial aspects
o Send the rooming list
o Create a menu choice
o Create badges
o Create the event program
o Manage the VIP and Pre-Night/Post-Night seat arrangements
- D-Day :
o Receive the guests
o Receive the speakers
o Distribute the badges
o Distribute the event program
- After D-Day :
o Create and send your satisfaction surveys
o Evaluate your providers
o Anticipate the next event by putting up a reminder
6 - Communicate about your event and send your invitations to participants
· It is now essential to create a website dedicated to your event, on which the participants will find all the practical information about it
· In the end, this helps you to save a lot of time because it saves calls and emails, and allows you to answer a lot of questions
· You are also able to create a website easily via the free tools online or through Genius Meetings
· We advise you to create the site as soon as the place is chosen and as soon as you have contractualized
· Tip: Fill the site as you go and inform the participants as soon as new information is available
· To follow the participants, we recommend that you send them an automated email
· Don't forget to restart a few days before the participants!
7 - Speaker briefings, service providers and the organization's team
· This step is essential so that everyone knows what to do and when to do it
· This step must be done a few days before or at worst a few hours before (not recommended)
· For the speakers, we advise you to discuss with them the timing of their speeches from the beginning (drafting specifications...)
8 - Measure the satisfaction/ROI (Return on Investment) of your event or seminar
· You must first create your questionnaire
. An example: http://www.idealmeetingsevents.fr/2015/08/26/enquete-satisfaction-journee-etudes/
· Don't forget to include questions allowing you to measure your ROI
· Then, you must broadcast the question and eventually raise it
· The software platform, Genius Meetings automates this, but you can also use other tools
9 - Evaluate your service providers
· After evaluating your participants, you are now able to evaluate your service providers
· You will also be able to evaluate their capacity of accompaniment in the organization of the event or the seminar
10 - Anticipate the next event
· To govern is to foresee! So now, it is time to anticipate your next event. Either by interrogating the providers now or by adding a new task for yourself.
· The sooner you go, the stronger your capacity to negotiate!
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