The first steps you will take in planning a corporate event is to answer the following questions:

Deciding on what kind of event you are planning:

This may or may not be decided on beforehand. Is it an internal or external event? Define what you are organising, as in depth as you can. Instead of saying "Event type is a trade fair exhibition", make it much clearer what you are doing: "International Sales and Marketing Show in New York from Dec. 8 - 10th"

Targeting your audience:

Is this an internal Sales Meeting or an Executive Meeting? An internal, but international meeting with members coming in from different countries? Is it a trade show, professional development seminar for clients or even a big corporate event with social character (rock concert, anniversary bash, etc). Setting the target audience (internal or external, or both) and the number of particpants is vital in being able to set up the rest of the event.


Choosing Venues and Locations:

This is one of the most important parts of the pre-planning stage. Take your time to search for fitting venues. This will depend upon the size of your group, the goals your event is following and your budget. Do you need hotel rooms or just meeting space? Do you need just a plenary or do you need breakout rooms. What kind of service do you expect? A good starting point for your research is the Event Hotel Planner. Here you can request quotes from many different hotels at once, which saves you the time of having to research them all individually. They also promise to save you up to 70% than what you would pay by going through the hotel directly. Another favorite of mine is Accor Hotels . They offer hotels in different categories, first class service and a best price guarantee. I have personally worked with them in the past, with very satisfactory results.

Setting your budget:

So now you know what you are planning, who and how many you are planning it for, and ideally have a few quotes on your desk from different hotels and venues. Now it is time to put together your detailed budget. I have made a sample event planning budget that you can download here. Although just a sample, you should find that most contingencies are covered, and you might even come across things that you hadn’t yet though about (name badges, for example). Making one budget per Hotel or Venue is a good idea so that you can easily compare the offers, as they differ so wildly. It is very important to keep your budget constantly up to date, otherwise you are in danger of going over your budget. Small things like guest welcome presents for $11.00 each sounds like such a small part of a large budget, but when you are buying them for 400 people, and then paying distribution fees in the hotel for putting the gifts in the rooms, you are easily adding another $5000.00 on top of your budget. Don’t forget to save the older versions of the budget, but keep them well away (in a file labeled “old budgets”) to make sure that you are always using the most up-to-date version.

The purpose of this event:

Now that we have the rough draft of our event, it is time to ask ourselves what is our goal with this event. You should be able to answer this easily at this stage. If not, it is time to decide on what is being targeted. Are you going for a higher degree of brand awareness? Or promoting internal communication? Whatever your goal, the better you define it at this stage, the easier it is measure the success after the event. Setting specific goals here will also help keep you on track with your planning.