Your 7 Step Plan to get Management Buy-In for Your Event Ideas
Have you been tasked with organizing an event for your company? And have you forged ahead, full of enthusiasm, and succeeded in coming up with the most brilliant idea, only to be met with skepticism from your superiors?
While it can sometimes be hard for executives who aren’t quite as invested as you are or simply don’t have the creative vision to see the value of your fabulous event concept, you need to learn how to ‘sell’ your event idea to your manager(s). With this in mind, here’s your 7 step plan to help you get buy-in from any stakeholder and see your event planning efforts brought to life.
1. Present a solution to a problem.
Before management can be receptive to your specific event ideas, it’s a good idea to lay the groundwork first. You should prepare everyone to be on the same page – the ‘bull in a china shop’ approach is not often successful. Start by finding a common business problem and then use your event solution to overcome it.
For instance, if there is resistance to making budget available to find a venue in London, your argument could be that holding the event in-house would result in space restrictions, which could impact attendance and engagement levels, meaning fewer people asking questions, taking pictures or sharing the event on social media.
To give the event the best chances of success, the business solution for this particular scenario would be to find a competitively priced external venue that offers sufficient space for your event needs – but you may not be able to tell them that just yet.
2. Ask for management input.
Once you’ve explained the problem, ask your manager to suggest a way forward. Perhaps a short brainstorming session will throw up some interesting solutions and will broaden their receptiveness to different options – with any luck, they may even come up with the same idea as you’re about to suggest.
In the context, present your idea as one sensible option, so that the other stakeholders feel included in the decision making and hopefully reach the right conclusion: they’ll choose the solution and/or ideas you have presented to them.
3. Be guided by the event goals.
Creative ideas are all well and good but do they meet the objectives of the event? Make sure you’re clear about what the event is supposed to achieve and check with your line manager about the purpose, goal, and agenda for the upcoming event. If your visions are aligned, you’re much more likely to get managerial backing for your ideas.
Teamwork is key – your ego shouldn’t be dominating the proceedings. Let go of the concept of wanting praise for ‘your’ ideas or of the whole project somehow being ‘your baby’. If other people come up with great ideas too, make sure you can be flexible enough to take these on board, show enthusiasm and proceed to implement them where appropriate.
4. Get a second opinion.
Positive feedback is key – but you may have more than a single hurdle to overcome and you may have to tweak your idea a few times before it’s likely to be positively received. If you think you’ve hit upon a brilliant idea for, say, a networking event, make sure you run it past more than one person to gauge popularity.
An informal ‘dry run’ to other executives and colleagues in your company may help you to tease out the pros and cons of your idea, which you can then work on and incorporate into a strong final pitch to the decision makers, for the best chance of a positive outcome.
5. Tailor your communications.
It’s important to communicate your event ideas in a way that chimes with your boss’ (or company’s) personality. Are they the quiet, analytical type – in which case a carefully constructed report sent via email may be the best way to engage them? Or do they have little time or patience, where a short but persuasive ‘elevator pitch’ may be more successful?
Perhaps a full PowerPoint presentation is required or a Dragon’s Den style business pitch, complete with a video of the venue and even actual food samples or technology demos to try? However you decide to play it, make sure that you engage on a level that reflects the decision maker’s mindset, and not your own.
6 Choose the best time.
If you want to maximize your chances of a positive outcome, the right timing is everything. Set a meeting for later in the week when people are generally more relaxed than on a Monday or Tuesday – but gauge the mood carefully before you go into the meeting.
If you can sense that management is preoccupied with other things, stressed, feeling poorly and generally not in a receptive mood for your suggestions, you’re better off postponing the meeting until the indicators are more positive.
7. Show the value.
Perhaps the most important point. Whatever budget you require for your event plans, it’s important that you can demonstrate a return on this investment. Even if the payback is hard to measure in numbers, make the business case to back up your budget.
Outline the benefits of your ideas in terms of value to the business. There may not be any direct financial rewards to woo your decision makers with, but likely returns in terms of, say, heightened brand awareness, improved business reputation, better customer engagement, greater market visibility etc, may be just as important to your executives.
Guest Author Bio: Dakota Murphey has been working as a professional content writer for over 10 years. She enjoys writing extensively about anything event and business related, and has done so for a number of established companies in the industry.
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