Entertainers have a responsibility to keep everyone’s spirits high and put smiles on our faces during times of crisis.

Here in The Secret Magic Library and Bunker, I’ve been posting some magic videos to keep the fun going.

Bezos said that everyone asks him what will change in the future, and really dismissed the question as interesting but irrelevant.  

 Every trade show attendee is going to eat dinner, go out for drinks, and probably seek some kind of entertainment - why shouldn’t your best clients and prospects do that with your sales team?

The people who sign up for these events want to feel like they’ve “met” the celebrity. They want to feel like they’ve exchanged some conversation and authentically connected with this person. 

But if you’re hosting a celebrity golf tournament where the celebrities are your headline entertainment, that’s a problem. 

If you can show that you’re driving revenue and making sales, no one will cut your budget.  Accountability is immunity.

Imagine if your "thank you" event did more than just say thank you to your customers and clients...

• Could it drive traffic to your trade show booth?  

• Could it encourage more people to attend your speech or convention session?

• Could it encourage your guests to answer follow up calls and emails?

• Could it help you schedule appointments?

It can.  It should.  Here’s how…

To successfully connect your sales person to your customers, the buyer/seller barriers must come down.  If they don’t, your clients won’t feel the connection that compels them to answer a follow up call or open an email, much less schedule an appointment.

If you want customers to answer your rep's calls after the event, they need to remember meeting your rep at the event... Event planners can help sales reps (and even top executives) by making them memorable people.

If you’re going to create a memorable hospitality event, it’s important first to understand how the human memory works.

We host events to connect our sales people to our customers, so our sales people can build rapport, create trust, and eventually close sales. Here's how.

Every event planner should read The Art of Seduction by Robert Greene.  But, event planners are very busy people and the Audible version is twenty-two hours long, so let me save you some time.  Just read Appendix A “Seductive Environments.”  

But then maybe you shouldn’t. 

A huge goal is making sure that people are so engaged and entertained at your event that they would never think of leaving.  

After all the time, money, and energy you’ve put into planning a corporate hospitality event, the big pay off comes when your guests tell their friends, family, coworkers and clients about the incredible experience they had at your event. Everyone who attended is excited to have been there (everyone who didn’t is just slightly jealous). Your name and brand are the talk of this conference, and your party is the “must do” event at the next one.

So how do you achieve this powerful star status? What are the secret components to making your event an unforgettable experience that your guests are talking about at breakfast the next day and continue talking about for the rest of the year?

Once you’ve got people to attend your event, how do you get them to engage each other and connect?

Every great event planner focuses on two critical questions when they create an experience for their guests: what are they going to see and feel while they’re at the event, and what are they going to remember after the event concludes. Keeping this audience-first perspective helps to keep the entire planning process on track and ensures a successful outcome. As Wendy Roberts famously wrote in the liner notes to Switched On Bach: “Any parameter you can control, you must control.”

The Heath Brothers excellent book “Making Your Ideas Stick” is a fantastic guide to the second question, “what are they going to remember after the event.” Let’s break down their six components to a “sticky” (or memorable) idea:

One way or another, every event planner and every event client wants to be remembered. A corporate client wants the company name, company representative, and brand message clearly imprinted on the mind of each guest. A charity benefit organizer wants people to remember her event so donors plan to return the next year and donate again. A socialite wants her event remembered and talked about, so she knows her guests will be sure to attend her next event.

But what makes an event memorable?

In their wonderful book Made to Stick, The Heath Brothers outline six things that make ideas memorable. Including some or all of these components in your event will ensure your event stands out in the minds of your guests forever.

Since hospitality events are such powerful tools for connecting with your clients and engaging new prospects, it’s amazing how few companies host them. Bringing hundreds (or even thousands) of potential prospects to an event, feeding them, offering them drinks, and entertaining them them takes a lot of money, but the potential return on investment is incredible.

One of the biggest trends in trade show marketing provides exhibitors with a tremendous opportunity to get someone else to pay for the most expensive parts of hospitality marketing, while driving huge crowds of potential prospects to your trade show booth.

What if there was even a way to get someone else to take care of most complicated task - advertising the event and getting people to show up?