Event Planning Sales: Ideas & Cold/Warm Calls

Soliciting Sales: Innovative Ideas

• To create events that excite guests it's important to excite potential clients and grab their attention.
• Clients are tired of being overwhelmed by sales representatives who waste time with predictable routines.
• Sales representatives that stick to outdated methods may be shown the door.
• Move away from the mundane and ordinary because that is not what you are selling.
• Marketing campaigns should be personalized to the appropriate industry.
• Capturing clients' attention and breaking through information overload requires creativity.

Cold and Warm Calls

• The event planning sales process usually starts with "cold call" or "warm lead".
• Cold call: no prior contact with the client or company, starting from scratch.
• Some sales reps like to initiate contact over the phone to introduce their company.
• Warm lead: sales rep may have a referral from a business or personal contact.
• Clients are more inclined to be receptive to warm leads.

Sales Kit

• Sending kits and making calls are not always effective.
• A sales kit must reflect the desired company image and match the clients you're targeting.
• Sales kit is a marketing tool viewed as a public relations package
• Sales kits should showcase company credentials and quality of care.
• An effective sales kit can get you through the door, but its message is not enough once you're face-to-face.
• Capture clients' attention with creativity and original approach
• A typical sales kit does not tell clients how the company can meet their specific needs.

Meaningful Marketing

• Clients want to know how you can help them compete in their marketplace.
• Avoid empty phrases, clients want to see a display of talents.
• To a client, one sales prerequisite is seeing exhibited ability before entrusting their company's success
• Billions of dollars are spent every year on event marketing solutions
• When speaking with clients, establish credibility and make the message meaningful to them.
• Meeting clients where it matters most to them allows you to become their creative solution.

Capturing Attention

• Capture clients' attention by appealing to their senses, similar to event planning techniques.
• Event planners know what to do, and apply the same principles in marketing.
• Avoid standard approaches by applying a creative perspective
• Companies falter when they prepare something standard and lose track of the need for a creative perspective.
• Creating sales opportunities in unconventional ways helps in capturing attention

Creating Sales in Unconventional Ways

• One company involved in promoting sales knew its company possessed amazing talent.
• Sales kits were similar to cutting-edge press kits, demonstrating an understanding of the industry.
• The staff prepared a professional message with scriptwriters/voice coach and underwent training to conduct a client interview
• The company invested in a well-known stylist to show them how to dress for success in this market.
• They added fashion and style nuances to their total package and helped them open doors.

Charity Golf Event

• To increase company sales/loyalty/goodwill, one company asked its independent sales staff to set up a local charity golf event.
• The charity golf tournament was the staff's sales and marketing tool to bring select clients to them.
• The company could choose specific clients to invite to the tournament, to have control over the golf foursomes
• Staff could get quality time with clients they were looking to connect with
• Benefits: media attention, client and community goodwill, chance to do something good, etc.

Being Responsive to Trends

• One fast-food company pride itself on being responsive to trends and created product options.
• They teamed with a fitness expert to endorse and promote the company.
• They gave their customers a pedometer with purchases from its healthy new menu selections.
• A different fast-food company put its website to market its commitment to customers' health by featuring a food calculator

Drawing Crowds

• A museum wanted to attract a new audience and created an event that became a much-anticipated yearly event.
• An outdoor sporting event captured media attention and promised it would ensure that it would not rain if possible.
• They did cloud seeding (authorized by officials) so that rain would be induced away from the city on that day resulting in media attention
• A supplier determined to make her mark in floral designs and put herself in a target-rich environment—her city's financial district

Innovative Marketing Tricks

• The "Tumbler" is a brick-shaped light that changes color when it is turned, with a message to increase market share via creative options.
• Wax candles being used in luxury hotels in Las Vegas can be used in companies where safety is a focus
• Designers came together to create an event that would showcase their designs and dress debutantes for debutante balls.
• A debutante ball presents girls usually between ages 15 and 19 ready to be courted

Emotions

• A hotel chain used humor to sell its guest rooms by an offer for a "towel amnesty"
• A "towel amnesty" allowed clients to submit stories about missing towels in exchange for charity donations
• A fitness club issued a weight loss challenge on TV.
• When the show received queries from finding support groups, the fitness company offered its facilities.

Getting Creative

• A marketing kit can include negative headlines and promote the company as an antidote to bad news
• A possible event take- home gift could be specialty pieces from Frank Lloyd Wright's masterpiece for potential clients in the architectural field
• Clients might consider San Francisco as a destination and take note of the national park service selling chunks of Alcatraz
• One company marketed itself with the use of videotape, a nutcracker and two walnuts

Displaying Creativity

• Sales zoomed through the roof for clients in the pet shop industry when they teamed with movie theaters to set up displays for Disney's Nemo film
• One company used a fresh approach when introducing its new staff member by sending a postcard composed of different images of a new staff member
• A small island in the Pacific opened the first underwater post office with waterproof postcards for sale and an underwater postage franking machine

Goodwill

• One company provided holiday bonuses amounting to $1,000 for each year the employee worked within the company
• One company promoted a caring image by providing charter planes to take terminally ill children to the North Pole

Camera Cell Phones

• Savvy cell phone companies launched undercover marketing campaigns to place their product in the hands of its target market.
• This demonstrates ease of use, attracts consumer interest, creates a desire to own and creates a viral/virus marketing effect

Bags

• One supplier did not need to advertise because her bags did it for her.
• They had perfected putting images on quality leather goods, and turning favorite photos into one-of-a-kind bags
• Enhanced CDs were the marketing mode for one company that used mini CDs

Captivating Clients

• One event planner won accounts by being ahead of competitors with innovative marketing schemes
• Creative concepts should stand out and awaken client interest.
• The client knows the event planner knew exactly what his company was trying to achieve and who the event would be targeted to.
• There is no one tone of language that's right for every client or concept; tailor it to the sitation

Keys to Success

• Soliciting sales using innovative ideas, strategic planning techniques etc can lead to success.
• The company should provide fresh ideas
• Planners help their clients create sales opportunities in unconventional ways
• Consider your competition's marketing approaches and fresh ideas to clients through creative design