Simple Steps to Find and Approach Event Clients

Today we’re talking about how to find and approach event planning clients.

This may require getting out of your comfort zone but there are organizations, like Toastmasters, that help you get past the fear of approaching and speaking to clients.

Toastmasters is found globally so check your local listings because they help with public speaking.

It’s also great practice to refine your elevator pitch before speaking to the event clients that you want to work with.

Simple Steps to Find and Approach Event Clients

In today’s episode, you’ll learn how to find and approach event planning clients so let’s get started.

Community Involvement: No matter where you live, being active in your community allows you to pay it forward and build your event skills. It’s also a good way to meet influential people, get clients and referrals.

Getting involved in community events allows you to meet event attendees, event organizers, and it gives you the opportunity to share your event experience and your event services with them.

As an event planner it’s important to be known and to get in the habit of talking about your event services.

At the beginning, tapping into your own network is the easiest way to get hired.

Partnering With Other Businesses

Partnering with other businesses: working with complimentary businesses and offering your combined skill-sets is a good way to expand your network so you’re reaching more people, and it shows that you’ve got a network of people and suppliers who are backing you.

So, whether it’s florists or caterers, musicians or photographers, forming business relationships and partnering with other businesses helps you find, reach and approach other clients.

Think Outside The Box

One of our community members, Addie Graham Kramer, owner of The Event Company in South Dakota is a guest on her local news network and each week she talks about what’s happening around town.

She’s not talking about her events but all the activities and all the different events that are going on in her community.

Start your own “what’s going on around town” show with Facebook and/or YouTube.

This is the perfect way to use social media, get your name into your community and meet people.

Meeting Event Clients

When meeting with clients, here’s a tip…

Use an Agenda!

Prep yourself by putting an agenda together. This helps you prepare questions and a timeline for your client meeting.

When you’re preparing an agenda, do it a few days beforehand and send an email to your client saying,

“Hi (insert their name),

Here is the proposed agenda for our meeting on (insert date and time).

If there’s anything that you’d like to change or add, please let me know and I’d be happy to discuss it at our meeting.”

(your name)

Questions to Include

While this is not a complete list, here are a few questions to ask your client during the meeting:

What’s your event objective?
Who are the event decision makers?
What obstacles stand in the way of planning this event?
How will you measure the event’s success or ROI?
What is the budget for the event?

This is also a good opportunity to get to know your clients better, too. Serving your clients is about communicating well and listening to what they say so listen to what they say because you’ll learn a lot about them personally and professionally.

Many people struggle to listen because they’re formulating the answer in their head instead of actually listening.

Tip: record your client conversations so you’re present during the meeting and can review the content later so you don’t miss any details.

Alternatively, taking a team member or intern to the meeting to take notes so your full attention is on the clients.

Researching and getting to know your client is equally as important because it helps build a relationship and create a bond. And with social media, it’s easy to find out about their likes, dislikes, mutual connections, etc.

3 Simple Steps to Find and Approach Event Clients