Why are some event companies better at selling their value than others? And how can event management software help?
Sure, successful event and entertainment companies deliver great experiences, products and services, but they are ultimately driven by successful sales. And, successful sales are driven by a team who understands the exact value in what they’re selling. If you’ve ever been stuck in a position where you have won the ‘race to the bottom’ and have secured a bid only because you’ve proposed the lowest price, you’ll realize that one or a few of the following things tends to happen:
- You end up with multiple change orders and an unhappy client
- You are upside-down, or very close to it, when everything is said and done
- You end up providing a sub-optimal experience for your client
Your customers generally want what we all want: the best product and/or service for the lowest price. They do understand, however, that there are differences between the different price points and levels of service and are *generally* reasonable people. Your company should never feel pressured to be the cheapest. Because ultimately, when your client’s job and company reputation is on the line, though they do want to be conscious of their budget, they generally want to hire a company who will make them look good.
The difference between the company who gets the job at a healthy margin and the company who gets the job because they bid the lowest generally lies in their teams’ presentation or ability to sell their overall value in combination with the company having the right processes in place to scale up or down to meet each job requirement in a streamlined, automated way.
Presentation at its core is a combination of marketing and knowledge. Marketing is an indispensable part of the equation and can drastically alter your prospects’ view of your company. Knowledge in what products and services your company offers and the value they provide is the second part of that 1-2 punch to secure good clients, but it can be much harder to address. If your team is struggling to sell value over price or if your company is having difficulty scaling their processes to meet customer demands, you can start by asking a few questions:
- Is my company reactive?
- A reactive team is one who does not get ahead of challenges and cannot think about improvement proactively.
- As a growing company, the best thing you can do to combat a reactive situation is to identify your bottlenecks.
- Where are you wasting the most time?
- Are there any tedious, soul-crushing activities that you could remove from your process?
- What tools or procedures (i.e. like LASSO’s event management software) can be put in place to address those bottlenecks?
- Once those bottlenecks have been addressed, your team will have more time to get creative, think ahead, and gain the knowledge they need to be successful.
- Do I have all the data I need?
- If your team does not have the data they need to be successful, it will be difficult for them to sell value because they cannot justify information or numbers they are providing to a client. Your team will not be able to effectively push back when they need to and they will not be able to explain things that your customer likely doesn’t understand about the service you are providing.
- Do your company a favor by equipping your team with the information they need to have meaningful conversations.
- If you are able to pull reports on historical events and other key data points, you’ll have more data to help predict trends and provide solid quotes that you can confidently stand behind.
- Am I organized?
- Tribal knowledge is a form of self-sabotage most companies don’t even know they’re perpetuating because their processes are so broken.
- Make sure everyone takes good notes about your vendors, clients, venues, past events, and crew and make sure they’re accessible to everyone, preferably in a centralized dashboard.
- When you go to quote a new opportunity, having information readily available to reference in your proposal will make your company appear much more professional and prepared.
- Could I be doing better on the back end?
- Yes, it sometimes is possible to be more profitable and lower your pricing at the same time, but to do that, you’ll need to understand what your costs are and when they can be minimized.
- If you have a good method of understanding and predicting your profit margins before an event, you’ll be much more effective at quoting accurately and delivering quality to your customers.
Once your team is better equipped to win better opportunities and keep better clients, your business will prosper. Would you rather be painfully busy with many low-profit events that you won because you bid low or thoughtful about higher-profit events you won because you came to the table prepared and were able to scale your processes accordingly? The clients you collaborate with are the ones who will keep coming back and will make you successful. The ones who only took the cheap way out will either continue to do so or will learn from their experience.
Request a demo of LASSO’s event management software to see how the platform will help your company be more proactive, have better data, be more organized, and have streamlined processes to ultimately sell your company’s value over price and have more profitable events.
