Success is often a result of great planning (or winning the lottery, but that’s beside the point). Why should successfully outlining the details of a corporate event be any different?
If you manage to establish a great corporate meeting event checklist, you’ll be able to achieve the following:
- Build the brand awareness your company needs.
- Create new connections or improve existing ones with clients and business partners.
- Have fun! After all, a corporate event is a chance for anyone involved to get away from the work life for a while.
But what do you include on your checklist? To a beginner, planning an event may seem overwhelming.
You will want to do your best, but there will always be the looming idea of failure. Luckily, we are here to help out. Read on to find out how to succeed.
Always Keep Your Goals in Mind
If you don’t know what the end goal of your event is, you’re going to plan for everything and nothing. The first thing on your corporate meeting event checklist should be the goals for the night.
We’ve started the article off with some common goals, so feel free to be inspired by them.
Now, having goals is nice and all. But you also need to know how you will achieve them. Consider the following in your approach:
- What will be the atmosphere of the event? Will you keep it professional, or add a touch of “casual” to the mix?
- Who will be in the audience? Will the party be employees-only or will clients also participate? Deciding this helps you get the answer to the first question.
- What will your guests gain from the experience? Make it clear that the occasion will benefit them. Gifts, fun, networking opportunities, you name it.
Choosing the Entertainment
The entertainment should tie in with the atmosphere you want to create.
For instance, an act like the Olate Dogs is well-suited for audiences who have no problems with “casual.”
For something classier, your attendees will enjoy Heidi Schwartz. Regardless of who is attending, they will appreciate being part of the painting of an event.
It’s certainly something more special than the classic group photo. That’s been overdone already.
If you have no idea where to get quality entertainment for the party, contact us, and we can set something up.
Your Corporate Meeting Event Checklist Should Include Teamwork
Start-ups and small businesses might face a grave problem when planning a corporate event, namely the issue of funding.
As such, consider teaming up with other companies in your field. It will make it easier on your pockets.
Besides, you can minimize the workload while still getting all the benefits of the party! And make no mistake; there will be a lot of work to be done:
- You need to set up a convenient date for all those involved.
- You have to find a venue suited for the size of the event.
- Allotting tasks to your staff (decorating, sending out invitations, and so on).
- Ordering food and drinks or hiring caterers.
As you can see, setting up an event is no easy task. Share some of those responsibilities on the corporate meeting event checklist and you should have no problems.
How to Choose the Perfect Keynote Speaker
This article is not a case for hiring keynote speakers. It is already established they are a special breed of speakers, people who can single-handedly manage to inspire thousands of guests at once.
Instead, we are addressing those event planners who are already crafting a corporate event checklist.
If you are experiencing a bit of a struggle with picking a perfect keynote speaker, the following lines should make the whole process smoother.
The ‘Before’ Stage
Just like surgery could not be carried out without little preparation of tools, procedures, and research, hiring a keynote speaker implies you craft a thorough plan.
The first aspect you should consider before proceeding to assemble your corporate event checklist is that keynote speakers are in high demand. Everyone wants to have a piece of their wisdom and energy at their events, so you have always got to be ready to pick up the phone to book them in advance.
What we mean by ‘in advance’ is 6 to 12 months.
Pro tip: since it may be difficult for you to keep track of keynote speakers’ availability, the best you can do is get in touch with a corporate entertainment booking agency. They will be able to tell you exactly who’s available on the date you are planning for. From our experience with The Grable Group clients, we can guarantee that keeping in touch with an agency is the best move you can make to ace that corporate event checklist.
Start Preparations Early
When you want to get a keynote speaker at your corporate meeting, you need to present them a clear overview of what they are going to take part in.
This takes a great deal of preparation on your part, so make sure the corporate event checklist zeros in on:
- the overall objective of the event
- meeting logistics and scheduling
- audience profiling
- expectations you have from the speakers.
As long as you make sure all these are dealt with, the speaker will also be very clear on what they have to come up with. In other words, they will be aligned with your event strategy.
Getting There
Once you established a framework and found the keynote speaker fitting the needs of the event, there’s one obstacle to be surmounted. It is called the negotiation stage.
It is essential you get to this stage with the complete understanding of the fees the speaker is going to claim. Take the time to understand the market and also be aware that a professional keynote presentation from a published author or an experienced professional is a highest-quality kind of act.
The key here is to know exactly who your sponsors are, how many guests you are aiming for and which is the ROI (Return On Investment) you should get from the whole event.
The fees keynote speakers claim are relative to the greater scheme of your event, so make sure you approach event budgeting with this in mind.
The Corporate Event Checklist -Your Key to Quality Brand Building
When we talk about choosing keynote speakers, we should always understand they are fundamental to how your brand builds trust and authority – both in your niche/industry and within a community/target audience.
That said, we would like to be by your side in this quest of building a better brand. If you liked this piece and you are interested in finding amazing keynote speakers, you can subscribe to our newsletter and get similar articles straight to your inbox.
Would you like more advice on how to plan a corporate event? Consider checking out our other articles on the subject.
