Tracy's Top 3 Take-Aways

There are many great ideas and important lessons that I’ve learned through my experience in this Event Management course and since I cannot go over all of the different topics and interesting subjects, I list and briefly discuss a few things that I’ve considered important that I found essential in managing events. These few items, which are not in any particular level of importance, are Stakeholder Management, Risk Management, and Sales.

In our event management course we studied the importance of stakeholder management. I learned that an analysis must be conducted for any event strategy, not only to identify who the stakeholders are, but also to act as the foundation for the risk management plan.

Each stakeholder group will represent a cluster of risks and it is therefore vital to identify all individuals or organizations that might influence the planning, implementation or execution of an event.

I’ve always thought I paid attention to the stakeholder when planning events because at this point, I am pretty much conducting social events for one or two clients, typically for weddings or a social birthday party for instance. I now realize that the stakeholder is not just the client but everyone participating in the event and to have the best possible event, all stakeholders should be taken into consideration.

I am now more cognizant to ensure I list and consider certain stakeholder concerns as I plan events such as:

What financial or emotional interest do they have in the outcome of my work? What motivates the stakeholders?
What do they want from me?
How do they want to receive what I have to offer and what is the best way of communicating the message to them?

I believe knowing these few things at the start will put me on the right track to managing my stakeholders. As a class, we received a lot of information to reflect on, read case studies and entered into discussions considering the importance of the topics.

Another great lesson learned dealt with risk management. I learned that organizations should conduct a review of events on a regular basis to ensure the environment is safe for participants, officials, volunteers and spectators and to use a checklist to evaluate the levels of safety and risk every time.

As someone who loves to do events and does them in support of my business, I never honestly took into consideration the importance of conducting a review that is so important. Yes, I have gone to site visits and merely just looked at the overall space visioning beauty and grandeur and I would evaluate if there is a nearby bathroom and enough power outlets for the equipment but that was pretty much the bulk of my concern. I learned that failing to assess risks involved in events can be disastrous and can result in:

Loss of reputation

Financial loss

Damage to facilities

Injury to participants

Stressed out employees and,
Loss of equipment

All the above translates to dollars for me and I am not even making nearly any money to pay myself let alone be in a position to pay someone else after being sued, not to mention the damage caused to my business name.

This lesson was an eye opener for me that I have to take seriously to avoid being a victim of the above tragedies. I used the example given to us in class as a template to consider when conducting risk assessment on site visits and developing a client’s event. It is a serious thing that I don’t want to get caught with my pants down.  

The final point that I’d like to cover which was a learning point for me in this course was the skills I need to develop when making sales.  I still think I have a lot to learn with this subject because I am not a good salesperson and I hate sounding like a commercial. One point that I felt was helpful from the lessons we learn came from a video that Dr. Levy played; it featured a hotel salesman having a consultation with a client attempting to sell her on why she should select this hotel for her event. Needless to say, I thought he was a selfish salesman not really trying to take into consideration the stakeholder but just making a sale. The depiction reminded me of myself which is not how I want to represent myself. I know that I need to be more cognizant of how I communicate with potential clients as I don’t want to run anyone away and I find myself losing a lot of business.   

What I learned in the course is to do my best to make it fun. Bring upbeat energy to the consultation, ask about them, and use creativity to move forward toward selling a solution. I know I must remain positive, not be lazy by using tired sales scripts, don’t argue with my prospect and use storytelling to my advantage by telling the client what I can do for them or how I can accomplish what they want.

Overall, these 3 lessons learned have helped me rethink how I want to do a better job at providing service to my clients and how I need to develop the core competency skills to becoming a highly effective, incredibly memorable, and super successful event manager. I am so happy to be taking this program of study and everything I learn I try to immediately apply it to my day to day business operation. I look forward to my next course of instruction.