the Pro Manchester annual dinner.It was a splendid affair with about 550 packed into theMidland Hotel.Ann Davies, my business development director and I hosted a table and we were delighted to have 8 guests. I hope they had a good time. We worked hard to ensure they knew all the arrangements well in advance, the day before we again reminded them of everything and on the night did our best to play the perfect business host.
Through the meal I suggested the men moved one seat to the right after each course to ensure we all had chance to chat to as many people as possible.There were 5 men and 5 women so there was perfect symetry.
This morning Ann and I will have our debrief meeting. We will discuss what went well, what we might have been able to do better and discuss any possible business opportunities for us and/ or our guests.
When you host corporate events there are three distinct sections.
1 The planning and preparation
2 The event itself
3 The debrief as soon as possible after the event
Are you and your team covering all angles when investing time and money in corporate entertaining?
We run How to Host Successful and Profitable Corpoate Event workshops. Please view here for full details
Interesting stuff Will. I think the key point is that often we attend meetings and events and comment ‘that was good’ but then don’t actually debrief properly what we will take from the experience. What you say is common sense but rarely common practise.
An interesting point. Normally I hold the marketing networking responsibility for my business but maybe I should be reviewing what is generated with my business partner more often? After all, he should clearly understand the nature of the relationships I am building as he will have to fulfil a lot of what I agree!