10 Reasons to Hire a Conference Planner

The fall conference season may seem far away, but for event planners, the time is now. Most businesses prefer to plan well in advance so that the inevitable fires last minute details can be handled in due time.

Organizing a conference or meeting can be a tiring responsibility, and if you could find professional help to assist you with the planning of your corporate conference event, your time can be well spent in dealing with other important business concerns.

Wondering why you should hire help from professional-level planners in order to organize your conference in the fall? Here are ten reasons why you should hire help for your upcoming conference. Trust us, you will recoup the money you spent in no time.

1. Professional Expertise

As a business entrepreneur, your experience lies in a field other than planning events. That means you likely lack the expertise necessary to plan a successful conference incorporating all of the vital details. However, hiring professional help will ensure that your conference is planned to perfection. Find an event planner who has years of experience in their field so that they can give you reliable results.

As planning events is a part of their everyday lives, event planners are able to tackle all of the problems efficiently, allowing you to enjoy your event without any worries.

2. Focus on Details

As professionals dedicated to their work, event planners are able to help their clients by paying attention to each of the small details that are included in the planning of a successful corporate conference. There are simply details that an unexperienced person would never think of in advance, or even recognize once they arose.

3. Working On a Fixed Budget

Having years of experience in the field, event planners are able to plan the best of events within a budget, allowing you to entertain your corporate clients and guests at your upcoming conference and leave the financial concerns to them. Without pro help, you are likely to get caught up in negotiations and unexpeced expenses and you will likely go over budget.

4. Strong Vendor Relationships

As event planners are frequently dealing with numerous vendors in order to organize their events, they are able to make long-term and reliable working relationships with them. Frequent use of the same vendors ensures that the quality of the events will be the same as all of the previous events planned by the event planner and that the services will be up to high standards. Let’s face it, when you blindly choose a vendor with no prior experience, you’re rolling the dice.

5. Good Negotiation Skills

Having good relationships with vendors may allow event planners to obtain the materials required for the conference event at a low or discounted cost if they have signed a contract deal with a particular vendor.

Even if they do not have an existing business deal with them, most event planners excel at negotiation and social skills and this helps them in obtaining items for the event at reasonable rates.

At the same time, event planners are able to recognize when a deal is too good to be true. For example, we recently had a client who wanted to rent some linens for an event. They went online and found the linens at half the cost, but upon inspection, they were very tattered and torn.

As event planners frequently visit the market in order to obtain goods for planning an event, they are also aware of the market rates. This market knowledge helps them in bargaining for the right price with vendors.

6. Timely Preparation

A skilled event planner will be dedicated to their work and will make sure that your event is planned in time for the final day. As corporate events and conferences are often attended by a lot of foreign or non local travelers; a delay in the event can cause major problems for you and your business. Thus, ensure yourself of a timely conference by hiring a professional event planner.

7. Cost Effective

You may not think so, but event planners make it their priority to stick to your specified budget, making the conference planning a cost effective event. Their contract or proposal may seem high in the beginning, but once you calculate all of you and your employees’ time dedicated to the event, combined with the efficiency of a pro planner, you’ll see that it’s actually much more cost effective.

8. Less Stress

Organizing a conference of any size can be quite a hassle. In some senses, you have to follow all of the same steps for a conference of 200 as you do for a conference of 200,000. Event organizers are often run ragged by the time the final day arrives. So save yourself from this stressful task and hire professionals for your help. This will leave you with time, energy, and a clear head so that you can interact with your corporate guests without worrying about the overall organization of the event.

9. Deep Event Knowledge

Aside from the practical experience in the field, the years spent in event planning and execution give professional planners the ingrained knowledge about planning the best and most successful events. This knowledge allows them to make your corporate events a success for your business.

10. Keep Your Focus on the Event

When you have hired an event planning professional, you will be able to divert your entire focus on your conference, allowing you to relax and enjoy the event at its optimum level. Think about it. Is your time best spent worrying that the caterer is late, or networking with guests and ensuring that their time is beneficial. Building relationships is the number one way to get word-of-mouth marketing from your guests and ensure improvement year after year.

Hence, hiring an event planner is not only a cost effective way to plan a successful event; it is also a means of assuring that your corporate guests are provided with the best quality of entertainment, knowledge and value during your conference.

Image: Gisela Giardino