How to Update Your Event Planning Repertoire

Get More Clients and Take on Bigger Events

As an event planner, you need to keep growing to stay successful. While you might carve out a nice niche for yourself doing small, DIY weddings, performing the same work day in and day out will limit your revenue opportunities and eventually sap your inspiration for the work. It’s important that you continue to expand your repertoire so that you have a variety of work available and more opportunities to maintain your revenue stream.

4 ways that you can expand your event planning repertoire Get More Training

Planning weddings doesn’t require the same skills as planning a big conference. If you want to add a certain type of event to your repertoire, you may need to get more training. Attend conferences, seminars, and workshops for information and small training sessions. Consider signing up for an online course or a local training session. You should have access to plenty of opportunities for training to get the skills you want.

Sometimes, getting new jobs is just a matter of expanding your network. That might mean attending more networking events, or it might mean expanding your marketing efforts. You want to get the word out about your services and to gain referrals. You can also create an incentive program for your current clients to give you referrals.

You just have to target your efforts to meet your goals. For example, if you want more wedding planner jobs, you should attend bridal fairs or e-mail your clients about your wedding planning services. You can also place ads in bridal magazines or on wedding websites.

An easy way to get more experience and to feel more comfortable with planning larger events is to slowly increase the size of the events you handle. For example, if you are accustomed to taking on smaller weddings of 50 to 100 people, start opening up your books for weddings that are between 100 and 150. When you’re comfortable with that sized crowd, start taking on events that are between 150 and 200 people.

When you are comfortable handling large events, you can translate those skills to different types of events, such as weddings, conferences or business events. The planning details will be a bit different, but you’ll feel confident in taking on different work because you are already comfortable with the size of the crowd..

Even if you’re the best party planner around, you aren’t a one-man powerhouse. The bigger an event is, the more help you will need. Make sure you have the right team in place to expand your repertoire. You may want to start with temporary or part-time help while you drum up the new business, but you should have a plan in place for hiring a permanent, full-time team once you start meeting your new business goals.

Consider establishing an internship program to train the workers you will eventually need and to create a strong relationship with your workers.

You can easily grow your event management business by expanding your repertoire of event services. Getting the right training and slowly expanding the size of the events you manage can help you feel more comfortable with the events you plan. Getting the word out about your services and hiring the right team can help you attract the business you need and to pull off events successfully.

Now I’d love to hear from you. In the comments below, let me know what steps you’ve taken to expand your event services..

As always, thank you for joining me each week and for sharing this post.