Setting A Goal For Your Social Event
Whether you are planning a major corporate event or a social dinner party, there is one question you need to ask yourself before you start planning: How do you want people to feel?
Whether you are planning a major corporate event or a social dinner party, there are three questions you need to ask yourself before you start planning:
What do you want people to Think? How do you want people to Feel? What do you want people to Do?
Set A Specific Goal
Even in social settings you have to get clear with yourself about what the goals are when you’re thinking about what to serve
Is your goal to show off new dishes because you’re a budding chef?
If so, put thought into the complexity of the dish. I once set a goal that I wanted to learn how to braise shortribs in wine. Once I perfected this skill, it was a perfect opportunity to prepare them for a New Years dinner party!Maybe your goal is you want to engage with people you haven’t seen in a while?
Come up with a menu you can put in the oven while guests arrive or make in advance then spend just 10 minutes to finish up. This way, you won’t be stuck behind a stove and can offer each guest a glass of wine and catch up with them. #superhost!
Prioritize Your Goals
Before planning an event, I always lead a prioritization exercise to get clear on the experience we want to create.
People usually want an event to accomplish a lot, but guests have so much competition for their attention and mind space, you can really only take away three things from an event. I know, I know, you want them to remember so much more, but trust me on this one!
Think about the last time someone asked you about an event. How did you describe it? How much detail? Most people are never going to say more than three things, so when I work with people or even when I’m planning my own events I list all the things I want people to think or feel.
After all those ideas are down on a list I can start to prioritize each one. Once I know the three most important things, I can start to put attention on those.
Questions To Ask Before Your dinner party
1. What do you want attendees to feel while here?
This helps you get into the mindset of your guests and reminds you of the reason why you’re hosting the dinner party! If you want them to feel loved, what are you doing to show them this while at your dinner?
2. What are two things you must have and two things you would like to have if time and budget permit?
This helps you prioritize where your focus should be before you allocate time and budget to all the ideas you have.
3. What is the most important part of the environment?
If it’s mood, think through your lighting, scent, music. If you want people to connect, think of your seating plan strategy.
4. How much effort, time, and money do you want to spend?
Paying a venue but means you don’t have to clean your house and they’ll handle the food so you can focus on other details like gift bags, music, speeches, etc.
5. What can you outsource?
Figure out how you can get help, because no matter how awesome you are - no one can do it all.
Want to capture photos at your social event? I started hiring task rabbit photographers to come to my events and take photos with my phone that way I make sure I capture everything without burdening your guests.
My mom has her housekeepers come to dinner parties so they can do the dishes and she can spend time socializing with her guests without worrying about the clean up between courses.
Pro Tips for Planning Women's Events
Women need events where they can access role models, support one another, and hear success stories specific to women.
"We are linked not ranked." - Gloria Steinem
Hosting women’s events helps companies retain female employees, acquire new talent, make new business connections, and increase female employee morale and career development.
Making Equality The New Normal
Women need events where they can access role models, support one another, and hear success stories specific to women. There are many things we can do to make events more women-friendly in addition to hosting women-focused conferences:
Consider setting a goal to have 50% speakers and 50% of your attendees be female
Consider the marketing and graphics you’re using on your event site. Is there good diversity and inclusion represented?
Consider offering travel grants or subsidized tickets to under-represented groups like women to encourage them to attend.
A great way to create a baseline of diversity within your event is by adding questions to your event registration form. Take into account cultural sensitives and labor law based on your the location of your event. Doing so will help you capture needed information.
How do you plan a women’s only event properly?
There is a lot of debate around whether women-only events perpetuate segregation or benefit females. Personally, I feel the offer a valuable experience for attendees to safely share and connect with others like them, make career connections, get inspired, and speak openly.
When planning women’s only events, you should consider whether you are making the event exclusive to women, or women-centric, allowing males allies to attend (and hopefully learn how to support women).
Ask yourself questions around what the goals of your event are which will help guide you to a decision. Some other best practices around hosting women’s events are listed below:
Add a mother’s room so that nursing mother’s can attend your conference.
Consider the hours of your conference and adjust them to accommodate pick up / drop off times for parents and/or offer childcare or a childcare stipend.
Offer pronoun stickers she/her, he/him, they/them, ze/hir, and blank field for people to self-identify.
Choose your colors and vendors mindfully
For a women leadership summit I planned, we were careful to select all women-owned businesses as our vendors and were also mindful not to lean into gendered stereotypes (like focusing on shopping, manicures, and pink/purple).
We featured women-owned businesses in a market place where we served up confections, coffee and healthy treats throughout the day.
Our production agency, videographer and photographer were all female and our female musicians even complimented us that we’d hired female sound technicians!
Without leaning into stereotypes, we featured content relevant to women like a VR experience that featured women in different industries including America Ferrera and other inspiring and diverse females.
We created networking activities like postcards featuring work by female artists that attendees could post around the room with inspiring messages, or mail to someone (postage and adorable mailbox provided by us)
Making Room At The Table For Everyone
In industries that skew heavily male, the male to female participant ratio is often unbalanced and the topics addressed can make women feel excluded from the conversation.
By tailoring an event to a group with shared experiences, attendees can discuss and gain advice without judgement – addressing challenges women face in their respective industries.
Key Factors of a Successful Proposal
As event planners, we’re expected to write proposals at a relatively high frequency. Most vary from each other, but I’ve taken what I’ve learned along the way and improved my overall proposal strategy dramatically over the years.
As event planners, we’re expected to write proposals at a relatively high frequency. Most vary from each other, but I’ve taken what I’ve learned along the way and improved my overall proposal strategy dramatically over the years. This has culminated in my pitching to a number of fortune 500 companies for partnership on the launch of my book, The Art of Event Planning.
Last week I wrote a proposal for a potential collaboration with a company I’ve gotten to know well over the years. I sent my new contact all the information I knew she would need to make a decision. We’ve all dealt with potential clients or stakeholders who don’t follow up, but this meeting quickly materialized. Our conversation was a great one, and I felt thankful for the expertise past mentors had imparted. Now, I am sharing my strategy with you, and I hope you hone it to represent your own voice and move mountains!
Establish a level of understanding first
When we collaborate or pitch to new people, we try to ensure that they understand the role we will play in helping them create a goal-oriented event. However, I do think it’s easy to overlook how little a new client might know about the event planning process. Think about it this way, what seems obvious to us, most likely wasn’t fresh out of school.
Maybe the new prospective client assumes that they will sell a certain number of seats at their ticketed conference, at an exact price point, and this bolsters their budget. However, we understand that there are comps and discounts and affiliate codes to be shared, and these affect net numbers. These additional discounts must be accounted for, since the overall budget will likely be less afterwards.
If we can educate our clients on basic strategies in talks before the proposal hits their inbox, then we have already cleared up any foreseeable confusion and we can seal the deal in a prompt manner.
Differentiation
The CEO of Advanced Nanotechnology Solutions, Inc.Hector Ruiz, once said, “Fair and open competition is the only course we know that can lead to meaningful innovation.” This much is true, and studying competing agencies will only help you glean information on what’s working tech wise. While there is an abundant amount of tools at our disposal, knowing which ones to use to sustain a client’s strategy is key. In addition, whether you’re great at reducing budgets or very interested in engagement or have unique strategies for sharing messaging— I implore you to share your super strengths within your proposal. List them first and make sure to leave some points open ended so that you can talk to your client and provide supporting evidence, and avoid overwhelming them with the printed word.
Transparency is key
Finally, sometimes, our clients ask us for things to include in our scope that we don’t have practice with. It’s fine to say no, or ask more questions, or propose a different solution that your agency can handle. The truth is, there is a fair amount of risk in overpromising to a client. We must always air on the side of caution when we go about listing our services, when they are outside of our typical scope of work. Whether it’s a 30,000 person event you’re trying to win, or a fully integrated AI concierge service you’re trying to implement— always remember that your “yes’s” should be truthful. Take your time in answering, and if you realize you can’t accommodate their proposal, it’s okay! The great thing is, there is always a way: it just takes some brainstorming to get there.
Finally, I’d love to hear your tips for scribing winning proposals. Since I am learning everyday, I will continue to share. I hope you do too!