Focus on Special Events Business | Returning to Basics

The special events business and hospitality industry is constantly changing - blink, and you may miss a hairpin turn and continue straight, right off the cliff, so to speak.  However, with technology and strategies all changing at lightning speed , there are still some basics that stay the same and will never change.  In all our years of consulting and ever more so in the recent years of economic challenge, we encourage businesses to return to basics.  What does this mean and how do you do it?

Returning to Basics
1.  Know your market and strengths and focus on this exclusively.
2.  Stop doing what is not bringing in revenue.
3.  Invest in areas where customers want it.  Hint: Use your social media to help get a feel for who your customers are and what they want.
4.  Whatever you decide 1-3  above is for you, stick to it and become known as being reliable for it and giving a consistent experience.

To Discount or Not to Discount?
One of the most common questions in a hard or recovering economy is  whether or not to discount your product or service.  The second most-common question is how much to discount, how long the discounting should take place or should be used. 

Discounts are no longer a point of reference for .  If all you do is compete on price alone, you will never be able to win.  While low rates may initially attract consumers to a product, indiscriminate discounting can isolate current clients as it decreases perceived quality.  But further, it does not guarantee that new customers will become long-term , loyal customers.  To help ensure this does not happen, the following are recommendations:

1.  Have a knowledge of who you want to target.  This is focused discounting to a specific market for a specific service or product and time. 

2.  Carefully watch your competitor's actions.  In the Beverly Clark OnLine Wedding Hospitalty Training Program, there is a dedicated exercise in the Final Exam to help you do just that.

3.  Find your USP - your Unique Selling Proposition - to see how you are different from the competition other than monetarily.  Go beyond to find out where there needs that are not being fulfilled and then fill those niches and make that your differential. The Beverly Clark OnLine Wedding Hospitality Training Program walks you through other ways to help determine your USP as well.

Tying all of this together is a matter of drawing from your history - the strengths, failures, opportunities - and involving your team as well as balancing the feedback of your customers.  Social media has proven an invaluable tool for this in helping to create custom products and packages based on the demand. 

One major airline "returned to basics" with three simple things they decided to focus on:  1.  Baggage that arrives with the plane   2.  A clean plane    and   3.  Friendly customer service.  They forgot all the other "bells and whistles" because they were not bringing in revenue and decided to focus exclusively on those three areas. 

If you focus on the basics - whatever those are for you - and provide service and a product without confusion or irregularities for the customer, you have the potential to increase your revenue the best way possible:  simply.

By Kerry Lee Dickey