Process Improvement
Three Questions you Should Ask yourself Every Day
by Deborah Macfie | Published in June 2007 Event Currents
Here are three important issues event planners should consider every day you do your job:
- Will you make money if you take this event?
- Are you asking your caterer the right questions?
- What is your value relevant to the client’s needs?
Making Money
Yes, we all set sales and profit goals for the year (if you don’t, you should!), but do you write out these goals and state them in present tense?
Each week, write down the top five things you need to do that week to accomplish your goals; start each day by doing one of them. Framing your week will help you become more successful and ultimately make more money.
We have all heard that higher volume means lower margins and lower volume means higher margins — and it bears repeating. Piece apart your past sales with the sales and profit by year, month, job and line item. Then consider what line item makes you the most money, what line item is the simplest to produce or sell, and how often you repeat that process.
Questions for your Caterer
Here are some questions you may not even know you need to ask your caterer: How involved do you get in the food for your event? Are you insured? What staffing agency are you using, and are they insured? Does the food handler have his/her food safety training certificate? Do you know the correct cooling and heating temperature and what the danger zone is?
The questions are endless; however, the most important one I want to address here is about food safety during transportation, reheating or cooking on-site, and the final display of the food for your guests
to consume.
You owe it to the health and safety of your clients to ask your caterer:
- How are you transporting the food from your shop to the site? It should be transported in a refrigerated van or a refrigerated Cambro insulated box.
- Do you carry temperature logs with you indicating the food temperature at the time of leaving your shop to arriving at your site to reheat or cook? (Yes, they should, and you should ask to see them.)
- Once the product is reheated/cooked and ready for display, has the chef on-site probed the product and recorded the serving temperature? (Yes, he should and you should know that reading.)
- Will any food items on a buffet for more than two hours be disposed of? Leftovers should never be taken off of a buffet to be served at a later time.
Relevant Value
Is what you are selling to your client actually relevant to the client’s needs, or are you simply putting this in your presentation: “Here’s who we are, what we do, how we will benefit you and here is who else we do this for.”
It’s not all about persuasive selling techniques to get clients to agree; you must fully understand the relationship between the value and meaning of the event you have to portray and execute, in conjunction with the critical components of the service you
are offering.
After the execution of a flawless event, client retention should be your singular goal. Your key competitive distinctions and advantages have to be expressed as they pertain to that particular client — you can’t get away with stock answers anymore. Your purchasing power is only relevant, for example, in what it does for them, not you. You have to ensure that the value you provide is relevant to the way they measure the success of the relationship. (To gain further insight into this, I highly recommend “Why Good Clients Fire Great Companies,” by John Gamble.)
If you keep in mind the three questions we started out with every day, you’ll be well on your way to a successful — and profitable — career in the event business.
About the author: Deborah Macfie
Deborah Macfie is vice president of sales and marketing for Gourmet Cuisine in Mississauga, Canada, and president of ISES Toronto.
Contact: sales@gourmetcuisine.com