Perfect Events

So, your sales teams hit their number. Or maybe they look like they really could this quarter, and they need that extra incentive to pull it out the bag. Once upon a time you’d have sent them off to a conference centre somewhere outside the city for a day of trust falls, raft building and—if you’d really pushed the boat out—paintballing. A few sandwiches for lunch and a sweaty, uncomfortable coach ride back to the office would top the day off. Jen in comms would mumble that it was “Alright... yeah... fun I guess”, and everyone else would fail to mention it at all. But things have changed in a huge way.

Marketplace competition, leaders with a tight rein on tighter budgets, and a more discerning breed of events provider have changed the corporate events landscape beyond recognition. It’s 2016 and good events are everywhere, just waiting for your high achievers to jump right in. But sometimes a ‘good’ event isn’t good enough. Sometimes you need a perfect one—a game-changer, a true once-in-a-lifetime experience to motivate or celebrate your teams, to improve corporate cultures and staff retention, and to invigorate your organisation in a way that even... well, that even paintballing couldn’t. We’re talking climbing mountains and exploring the most vital cities on earth. We’re talking helicopter rides, champagne in the snow, and your people standing at the top of the world and knowing they’ve made it. We’re talking impossible nights under Saharan skies, dinner at the world’s best hotels, and chances to meet heroes and feel like heroes. We’re talking about corporate events, but not as you know them—immersive, bespoke itineraries delivered on time, on budget and with effortless style and capability. Planning for good events is tricky, but planning perfect events takes a wealth of experience, a keen eye for detail and more than a little imagination. Here are some of our top secrets for how we plan perfect bespoke events for our clients.

1.    Dream Big:
Clients are often amazed by what we can be do with the budget they’ve been given. We talk over their business objectives, budget and any ideas they might have, and get our thinking caps on. Then we use our unrivalled, up-to-the-minute destination and hotel knowledge, expert buying capabilities and vision to bring it all to life.

2.    Understand the Details: Dreaming big is great, but it’s the little things that make the big things happen. An experienced eye is essential—from ensuring accessibility, to planning the finer points of internal transport, negotiating hard, coordinating disparate suppliers, deciding what tech to use to streamline invites, and side-stepping hidden charges for facilities, Wi-Fi or changes in booking numbers, the devil is in the details when it comes to event planning.

3.    Keep Your Business Focus: We hear from a lot of internal HR and enablement teams who get tangled up planning an event. The key to maintaining focus is to remember that the event is not a free standing thing—it is a means to an end, a celebration of a result, part of your wider business process. We take the time to understand our clients, dive a little deeper into why the event is important and what objectives it’s fulfilling, then use our perfectly honed hosting skills to ensure that the event is supporting those objectives.

4.    Learn to Love Insight and Reporting: It’s not enough to plan and deliver the perfect event. As Peter Drucker once famously said, “what gets measured gets managed”—that’s why we take the time to understand our clients’ business objectives and how the event relates to them. With the right insight and the right capabilities, reporting after an event can help to demonstrate related performance lift, prove ROI and justify budgets.

These are just a few of the secrets that keep our clients coming back for more, time after time. Anything to add? Join the conversation in the comments below or get in touch via our contact page.