Javier Sánchez, team supervisor at beon. Events, speaks about the importance of building customer loyalty through hard work, and how to create memorable, successful experiences.
Is it an undeniable truth that there are not two events alike?
Absolutely. There are not two events alike because everything in an event that are the same because it is impossible that organizers, audience, venue, contents, audiovisuals, décor, etc. are repeated exactly the same.
Even similar projects or briefings will be developed and executed in a complete different way by every company or agency. When a briefing is collected, even if the same was commissioned to two different agencies, they will deliver a very different event. From the point of view of the company, every time you organize your internal convention, even if attendees are the same, you will change the content to surprise them. And finally, from the perspective of the audience, they will interpret the content in a different way, and this directly affects the development of the event itself.
What do mean by “create memorable experiences”?
This means, in short, the challenge of every event manager. To achieve a level in which attendees associate your company or team to something they truly enjoyed. This is the greatest recognition a professional can dream of.
How will you define a successful event strategy?
For me, a successful event strategy is one that runs parallel to the market trends. One may try to anticipate future winds but in events, taking into account the current economic and social situation, you cannot think in the long term. Given the fact that there is a strong competition between companies that minimize margins to gain more business, the strategy to be followed, in my opinion, is to provide maximum quality to the event, I think should be the fact of giving more quality to the event, even if it means some loss. In the end, if you expose yourself to a social opinion you will prefer to have spent a little more from the budget to make it perfect than taking risks that may damage your image.
What are the present and future challenges for the event manager?
I believe that the immediate challenge if your company is doing well is to try to retain as many customers as possible. It may seem a conservative attitude, but I think that in the end, if you keep loyal customers and you do it well, your work will have a positive impact and new business opportunities will come to you.
Looking ahead, I think the main challenge is not to sit back and relax. You have to try to keep training and be interested in keeping up with trends and innovations, and improve all the resources. This will make your clients to trust you and want you to manage their events.
Name some of the mandatory elements to add value to the event.
The physical elements that are part of an event, to a large extent are given by the budget or the needs of the client. This is why we are probably limited in this sense and there will be times we could do nothing to improve the material part. But the greatest differentiating element lies in the account manager. If you get the client to trust you blindly, anything you may suggest for their event, will be seemed appropriate.
