PCO ASSOCIATION
Where’s the value?
Event professionals are in severe danger of becoming a commodity. One of the causes of this is that they are
not aware of their own value or, if they are, they don’t present that value to the client. This begs the question,
where is the value and what is it worth? Asks Kevin Jackson and Warwick Merry.
decrease in staff turnover? It’s time for us
to move from being mere service providers
to being strategic partners with our clients.
This means less year-to-year proposal work
and more long-term, multi-event, strategic
engagements as a value based partner
rather than a mere provider of services.
Let’s be honest with ourselves. This is not
necessarily an easy transition to achieve.
But it is an essential one for the future of
our industry or we will be relegated to a
mere commodity rather than an essential
part of the future of business. The first step
is to truly understand the value that you
provide to your client. You should be proud
of that value and know that you contribute
significantly to the bottom line of your client.
As event professionals we have focused
for far too long on the small functional
elements of what we do. It’s all about
the timing, the logistics and the look and
feel of the event rather than focusing
on what is the real value that it brings
to the organisation. For example, if you
create and event for a large sales team
in an organisation how do you measure
your success? Do you measure it using
evaluation forms or do you go deeper and
look at the increase in sales or increase in
sales activity that your event generated?
One of the biggest challenges we face is
that we don’t value what we do ourselves
let alone from a client’s perspective. How
do we value our creativity? Often we
create a look or feel or theme of an event
as a value add for the client but we don’t
charge for it. This is doing ourselves a great
disservice. In essence, this creativity can
be a point of difference between us and our
nearest competitor.
Anyone can order food, anyone can
process registrations, anyone can deal
with the logistics of event; but no one
else can pull an event together to give
it a look and feel like you. Surely that’s
worth something of significant value? So
it’s time we started charging for the full
value of the services that we provide.
The key here is to prove that value. To
do that we need to be smarter with our
measurements. This will require effort on
our behalf. We can’t continue to use the
subjective one to 10 scale of an evaluation
form. We need to start using some kind of
strategic measurement. What is the impact
on the bottom line of our event? What is
the impact on overall sales of our event?
What is the impact on staff morale and/or
34 Convention & Incentive Marketing, Issue 8, 2016 www.cimmagazine.com
The second step is to start to be smart
about measuring your value. What are the
measurements that you will use for your
different events? You measure different
events different ways but you have to start
being accurate in your measurement of
the services and value that you provide.
Sometimes this measurement maybe a
long-term measure such as annual sales
figures and the practical impact that you
had on those figures. The final step is to
start thinking bigger. Maybe it’s time to
let go of the concept of being conference
or event organiser. Maybe it’s time to start
considering yourself as a brand positioning
agent or a sales and marketing advocate
rather than a PCO or event organiser. If you
raise the bar and then your new clients will
do the same.
Discover value, deliver the value and
communicate the value and you can’t help
but significantly increase your success in our
industry. Organisations are always willing
to invest heavily in something that returns
significant value. So where is your value?
Kevin Jackson president of ISES UK,
and Warwick Merry, PCO Association –
master MC.