Planning Special Events - Part OneWritten by Heidi Richards, MS
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Who is target market? As an Event Planner, you may not be involved in that part of planning. Your job may be just to stage an extraordinary event. The company or organization may be responsible for attendance. How will you measure success of event? By number of attendees, by amount of money raised, by number of people interested in helping out with future events? If this event has been hosted in past, talk with others who have worked on it before. Get their advice and support. Seeking opinions and advice of others will help to elicit support for future success of event. Find out what went right, what went wrong and how they measured success in past. What are/were their expectations of this event? Were those expectations met or exceeded? If not, what would they have done differently? This will help you develop your Master Plan. © 2005 - Heidi Richards
Heidi Richards is the author of The PMS Principles, Powerful Marketing Strategies to Grow Your Business and 7 other books. She is also the Founder & CEO of the Women’s ECommerce Association, International www.WECAI.org (pronounced wee-kī) – an Internet organization that “Helps Women Do Business on the WEB.” Basic Membership is FREE. Ms. Richards can be reached at Heidi@speakingwithspirit.com or heidi@wecai.org.
| | The Top 10 Ways for Managers to Build Rapport through Listening (and stuff!)Written by Martin Haworth
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Build trust by following through with commitments.
Create an environment where as you listen, you make commitments and agreements which you follow through and deliver. This creates your 'emotional bank account' credits (as Steven Covey says in 'Seven Habits of Highly Effective People'). If person you are listening to knows you will deliver what you say, you are well ahead in their credit rating.Seek clarification if you are not sure - don't assume.
As you listen, there may be things which are unclear. Don't be shy, be honest and ask for clarity. It is far worse to make incorrect assumptions and get it wrong, than to admit that you didn't quite understand what they meant. It will also make you human and real - well, at least slightly more so!Use other body language to show you are listening.
While you are listening you can show all sorts of encouraging signs that speaker will take positively. Apart from loads of facial gestures (raised eyebrows, smiles, frowns, nods of head etc.), other parts of your body show you are listening closely too. A shrug of shoulders, arm and hand gestures and even an open body posture (arms NOT folded!) can all make a difference to your speaker. (A soft-shoe shuffle of excitement can work too - when you know folk a little better!)Put off interruptions.
When listening to someone, maintain full attention by switching off cell-phones, pagers and PA announcements for you. If someone else asks for your attention, don't flip from your original speaker to them. Every time you are interrupted, your rapport build has to start again. And at end of day any interaction, when positive, supportive, encouraging and fun, is going to make a big, big difference.
© 2005 Martin Haworth is a Business and Management Coach. He works worldwide, mainly by phone, with small business owners, managers and corporate leaders. He has hundreds of hints, tips and ideas at his website, www.coaching-businesses-to-success.com. (Note to editors. Feel free to use this article, wherever you think it might be of value - with a live link if you can).
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