How to Help Your Clients Define & Weight Their Event Goals

One of the key elements of being a trusted advisor in the event industry is the ability to design, plan and execute special events that cost-effectively advance the host’s business objectives. A key part of that is being able to define those objectives, build an event that achieves them, figure out how to measure whether it was successful, and help analyze the ROI.

It all starts with defining goals. But who gets to define them?

Who Decides If Your Event Is A Success?

The success of an event, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. And the beholder, in this case, is not you. All the things that YOU think make for a successful event (hitting your budget, strong registration numbers, a flawless run-of-show, beautiful design, etc.) don’t matter. The only opinion that DOES matter in determining an event’s success is that of the client, whether it be an internal client like a corporate executive or an association board, or an agency or independent planner’s external client who hired them. 

This begs the question: what criteria will THEY use to evaluate an event’s success? This is the reason you need to have clearly identifiable, and measurable, event goals. Otherwise you’re flying blind. The trouble often is, however, that clients are usually horrible at defining tangible goals when it comes to events. Even the savviest executives have trouble articulating specific event objectives. But this creates a tremendous opportunity for planners to prove their value.

Order Takers Vs. Trusted Advisors

Defining clear event goals is not easy. I often say it’s like trying to nail Jello to a tree. But it’s precisely because it is so difficult, and so important, that helping your client through the process is perhaps the single best thing you can do to improve your stature as a trusted advisor to them. Even the mere act of bringing up the topic with them and engaging in conversation has value. It shows you’re taking their business seriously, and that you’re thinking strategically about how the event can advance their overall business objectives.

Most planners conduct an intake interview when being asked to plan a new event. You can tell the difference between an order-taker planner and a trusted advisor by the questions they ask first. The order-taker goes right into the What, When, How & How Much. The trusted advisor starts with the Why and the Who.

An easy way to remember this: pretend it’s your business, and you’re paying for the event with your own money. If that were the case, you’d care a heck of a lot more about why you were doing the event and what you wanted to get out of it, than the logistical details.

Questions to Help Define Event Goals

Ask a client what their event goals are, however, and you’re likely to hear . . . crickets. Here are a handful of ways you can coax goals out of them. 

1. What does success look like? The event just finished and everyone is high-fiving. Describe what happened. Often clients will have an image in their head of the event they want to host, and can picture it being a success.

2. What action do you want the attendees to take at or after the event? Do you want sales people to be motivated to produce higher numbers? Move prospects down the sales funnel? Deepen relationships with our brand? Weave new hires into the company culture?

3.  What do you want attendees to think about your brand after the event, and how does that differ (if at all) from what they think about it now? Are we reinforcing an existing brand message, pivoting to something new, or raising awareness of enhanced capabilities?

4. Describe a scenario in which you definitely WOULD host this event again. Describe a scenario in which you definitely WOULD NOT do so. This at least gives you some parameters to stay within.

5. Who needs to be impressed? Key execs? Top clients? Major investors? A handful of important industry leaders or social media influencers? Often the verdict of a very small number of attendees – sometimes even a single person – can be the difference between success and failure.

6. What are the risks of NOT doing the event? Sometimes events are maintained for a defensive posture. For example, if your company is known for hosting the Monday night reception at a major multi-day trade show, relinquishing that position opens the door to a competitor to swoop in. It’s rarely a good idea to continue hosting an event that doesn’t perform well, but don’t underestimate the optics of being seen as being replaced by a competitor.

These are all just conversation-starters, and you’ll want to find one that resonates with your client. Think of the diverse questions a doctor asks a patient to help determine a diagnosis. It can be a bit of a puzzle, with trial and error, until you and your client solidify the event goals.

Goal Weighting

If you’ve done a good job with the goal-setting exercise above, there’s a good chance you’ll wind up with more than one goal. If that’s the case, you’ll want to rank or weight each one to assign relative importance. This is another example where “perfect” can be the enemy of “good”, but again, some progress is better than none. To weight the goals, simply agree on a percentage of importance for each one, with the total being 100%. It’s not worth splitting hairs here, so don’t get caught up in the exact numbers; it’s the relative priority that matters.

For example, the head of an industrials group at an investment bank wants to host a conference with the following goals and assigned weighting.

The exact percentages are far less important than the relative weights. If you didn’t weight them, you might wind up creating and producing an event that did wonders for showing thought leadership & cultivating internal team building, but didn’t generate many new deals, and think you didn’t do so badly, though I would bet the client would not be happy with those results.

The Next Step

Once you’ve helped your client define, and perhaps prioritize or weight, their event goals, the next step is figuring out how to measure success. This involves: (a) determining which metrics to use, and (b) setting target levels for those metrics.

Here’s to taking your event business to the next level,

Howard Givner

P.S. Thanks for reading! Please give me feedback by hitting reply.

If and when you’re ready, here are ways I work with event business owners & leaders:

• Business Diagnostic & Company Valuation

• M&A

• Growth Consulting

• Exit Planning

• Business Coaching & Owner Accountability

• Event Measurement / ROI

• From Order Taker to Trusted Advisor

• Proving Your Event’s Value through Data & Storytel …

Wanna chat? Email me, or schedule an intro call.