- Me: “Hi, I work for Connect Events – we are an event agency specialising in the operational management of events”
- Company: “We don’t have much budget so we don’t use agencies to help”
Nice, blunt and to the point. Perhaps event agencies have been overpricing themselves for years to elicit such a response when no costs (or indeed budget) has been discussed. Obviously we don’t want to be organising events for less than our time is worth but surely it is important to give all budget levels a chance of help with events...after all that is what we all claim we are experts at.
Large agencies not being able / willing to help for cost reasons I understand. Small agencies I do not. As all companies do we at Connect Events have a standard day rate we would ideally charge. However for various reasons, and not just the current economic climate, we regularly charge less. That may sound mad but the fact that is we pride ourselves on being able to help all clients with their events. One small caveat to this is that we don’t help for free – well not often anyway...our accountants get mad if we do it too regularly!
One sector with a number of clients unable (and now unwilling due to being over-quoted regularly) to use agency support is the charity sector. Obviously I am not talking about your large charities such as Cancer Research (CRUK) – they both have enough money /backing to organise the events themselves or to enlist the help of agencies. No, I am referring to smaller charities (I shan’t name names due to recent conversations...just in case they do read this blog). They both organise and participate in a number of events throughout the year and usually have an events team of just one person meaning they are extremely busy. It is this situation where agency support is most important and valued, however it is also a number of these small charities that can’t actually afford this support (and won’t now entertain the idea that they can). Are they right though?
Well I can’t blame them for a) thinking they can’t afford it or b) deciding to not want the support after being previously over-quoted. If one / two agencies have quoted figures well above their budget I suppose it is only natural for them to think all agencies fall within these sort of costs, which is obviously not true. From an agency point of view we all have an acceptable lowest amount we can charge for our services but should that be set in stone?! Clearly this is a decision for each individual agency rather than something that can be decided on mass. Within Connect we accept not all can afford a standard day rate but we aim to help organise events regardless of budget. Many agencies claim each event is dealt with on its own merits – surely if this is the case then the cost charged can be equally specific to each event?!
In the current climate all budgets should be considered both to ensure events (even the small ones) continue to take place and to ensure agencies survive in a shrunken market. Profit margin may have to reduce for the client base to increase.
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