It might be an annual conference, a series of sales kick-off meetings, a congress, a team building event, a product launch. Whatever form it takes, one thing is for sure… The corporate event is the holy grail of avid agents, convention centres, VCBs, hotels, and events-related new business directors across the planet.
But, there’s just one small catch…
It makes no difference that you’re as keen as mustard to throw your best hospitality x10 at in-house corporate event professionals. Because truthfully, catching their eyes and getting past the dreaded gatekeepers can feel like wading through treacle.
It’s not that corporates don’t want to engage with you. After all, their product knowledge and their little black book of contacts are key ingredients of their success. But, trying to sell to them can feel like knocking when there’s nobody home. This is because they’re relentlessly busy people who hate being sold to.
But this doesn’t mean waving the white flag before you’re even off the starting blocks. You just need to get a bit savvier about how, where and when to cut through the noise.
To help you do this, we’ve compiled a selection of 10 top tips from our corporate planners, about how they’d prefer to be approached in ways that are more likely to resonate with them.
This is solid gold. Read on…
Provide event teams with strategic information so that they can communicate it to their stakeholders. As a result, they will stand out from the crowd, and you will be remembered.
Don’t assume that all corporate planners have big budgets. On average, our planners organise 50-100 events per year. They have big budgets for one or two cornerstone events. But the rest of their events are routine. To this end, they need you to share cost effective solutions with them, besides event delivery options.
Why try to fix things that aren’t broken? This is often the view taken by businesses, even if planners are looking for change. So, you need to help them to help you. And you can do this by pre-empting the sorts of stakeholder objections that planners have to overcome. For example, give them case studies of things you’ve done to overcome similar problems in the past.
A planner might love to meet up with you for a catch up and to put the world to rights. But they might feel guilty about having an appointment with you and accepting your invitations if there aren’t any openings for them to do business with you for the next 12 months. Acknowledge this and they’ll thank you for it. Reassure them that you’re not just sniffing around for business per se, but you’d like to share a case study of another event you’ve done that you think would inspire them. It might not generate any results for a couple of years. But your name will be up there when the time comes if you’ve kept in touch and shared ideas without badgering.
Planners love cross-sector networking. So, bear this in mind. And if you’ve got a cool client who you think is relevant, why not invite a planner to dinner so they meet and chat with your contact?
If you can’t meet a planner’s event brief, be honest about it. One thing planners hate is when an agency presents to them and promises the world, only to find themselves having multiple people and companies to deal with once they’ve awarded their business.
Work out where these planners hang out. Are they booking tables at the ICE (In-House Corporate Events) Awards? Are they proactive CEMA (Corporate Event Marketing Association) or EMA (Event Marketing Association) members? By getting involved with these industry bodies, you can position yourself as a serious player in the sector, whilst also getting closer to your desired tribe at the same time.
Selling in the post-Covid event-scape is a collaborative affair. So unsurprisingly, pummeling your target audience with rafts of spammy sales emails might make an impression – for all the wrong reasons. Leave the ‘death by email’ to your competitors. You’re better placed to curry favour by focusing on quality content that’s genuinely valuable. After all, knowledge is power. So, do your homework. For example, read our case studies about the corporate events winners on ICEONLINE. It’s an impressive conversation starter.
Having your clients say how fabulous you are is much more powerful than saying it yourself. So, keep building up a library of testimonials from other clients who have used you and love your work. (Hot tip: If you’re struggling to get a testimonial from a key client purely because they’re too busy, offer to write it for them yourself, ready for them to sign off.) It’s a simple but effective way to catch a planner’s eye.
Remember that big is beautiful for many big corporations. They often want to play with other ‘big boys’ that are in the same ballpark as themselves. But that doesn’t mean you should lose heart if you’re a scaling SME. Larger organisations also reach out to niche companies, especially if they really want what you have. You can convey the perception of size by talking in terms of "we" and "us" in your correspondence and conversations. Emphasise that you have a team behind you – even if you’re a one wo/man band. You’ll soon need one if you’re successful at growing your business.
At ICE, we’re a global community of in-house corporate event planners that shares, celebrates and rewards excellence in the global corporate events industry. In addition, we offer opportunities to suppliers to elevate your knowledge and connectivity with the corporate event planner sector, and help you build a content plan to forge strategic links.
Our compelling tools and resources can catapult your corporate sales journey. So, why not get in touch for an initial chat about your objectives, and how we can help you to achieve them?