What I Learned Doing 60 Events in 62 Days

My first year selling events for the venue where I worked, we did less than 15 weddings in each of our peak months. That accounted for about half of all the business we did, which made sense because that fit the revenues resort-wide. 

July and August were gold for us. Or so we thought…

The last year I sold weddings for the resort we had 60 events in 62 days. I’m not talking about big events with smaller, auxiliary events.  I’m talking about 60 full-scale weddings or corporate dinners. That’s a lot when you’re doing only one per day.

To be clear, at this point in my work at the resort, I was primarily selling the events (and operating the day-to-day in lodging). No, this massive undertaking of servicing two straight months of events was pulled off by the incredible F&B team. 

Here’s what I learned as part of this team achievement:

1.Be Smart about Organizing the Work

If you want to grow your business you have to think bigger than yourself. You can’t scale anything, including your revenues, if you don’t get others to do work with you.

One of the biggest reasons we were able to 4x event revenue over a several-year period was the way we organized the job duties. 

Splitting the sales work from the servicing work was key. 

Getting others to take care of client needs after the contract and deposit freed me up to do the sales work necessary to quadruple sales. Providing a specialist for the service experience allowed the client to get 100% of someone rather than only a part of me – also a win for business.

2.Focus on a Critical Path

When you’re putting on an event pretty much every day, you have to remain focused. Hyper-focused. Like nothing distracts you. Not even rainbows and unicorns.

No, you’ve got to filter every decision through a the critical path test. Ask yourself, “Will this directly help me reach [insert goal]?

If the answer is yes, move forward. If the answer is no, dump it immediately and carry on carrying on.

If you’re unsure, it’s almost always going to be a pass and move on. This is the reason it’s called a critical path test. Not near-critical. Not kinda critical. Not sorta critical. Think: food, water, shelter. 

For event pros, your biggest need to produce successfully is people. Then supplies. Then time. Don’t waste yours on things you don’t absolutely 100% need.

3.Don’t Neglect Future Business

You know what was the biggest success after the two-months of hell? 

We kept up our bookings for the following year. 

The number one reason my consulting/coaching/mentoring clients see revenues suffer is because they don’t make enough time to focus on sales. 

Clear and simple. If you want to see improvement in an area you have to pay attention to it. 

Focus exclusively on current clients at the peril of future success.

Implement lesson one and two if you want to succeed at number three.

Till next time…good luck with your inquiries!

-Sam