Developing and maintaining relationships in the event industry

Developing and maintaining relationships in the event industry

‘The client is always right’

In the event industry today, a lot of what we do is all about contact and communication. This being with clients, suppliers of all kinds, organizations and venues. This mainly comes from us as event organizers, as an agency worker a big part of our business is making sure we completely understand the client’s requirements, we are there to lead them and to communicate ideas and execute the final ideas.

I truly believe that a main factor of pulling of a successful event in this stage of business is how well you understand you client and there vision. To do this you need to be surrounded by a good team and look at the client as if you are a merged company to truly get a feel of what they are envisioning.

In such a competitive industry fir event agencies, client relationship management is at the top of any successful, management model. A close working relationship needs to develop between us as the organisers and them as the client.

So, how do we manage to keep a client happy? How do we maintain a bond with them on a high level throughout the whole process?

We need to keep the client confident in or ability to lead and guide them through this experience, every client is different but every client is right. We need them to feel safe.

Communication

Offer different channels of communications, you need to be constantly making sure they are aware that you are there on hand when ever needed. If you need more time, you tell them, if you need clear guidance you tell them. It is more and more important these days we are transparent as we can be. They want to know what we are doing next. The more communicable you are the better the trust that you are attentive.

Realistic

The worst thing you can do for a client is promise unrealistic goals and ideas. Remember they have the budget and ultimately they are the final say so we don’t want to guide them into thinking they can do more with their means then they can. Clients will always be happy if you save them money where you can whilst having the innovation to put on a great event. They want you to open up and offer a range of ideas but truly understand them as a client will set the sites for a trusted relationship, gaining you more power to lead them to their event.

Transparent

I have touched on transparency a few times now as I can’t stress enough how important this is for any event organizer to client relationship. Being transparent means that the client is kept informed with every step of the planning and implementation of an event. This includes if there are problems that arise and will affect the event. It will always work in your favour if you keep a client informed on any wrong goings rather than to keep quiet and find that things are not going as planned. If the client is informed early, than changes can be made. This ultimately comes down to the fact that the most important factor of developing and maintain a relationship is the trust they have for the event organising team.