Event planning is a demanding role. There are various components that need your time and effort in order to ensure the event comes together. Selecting the perfect venue, dealing with stressful clients, budget cuts, failure to plan well- all these can lead to stress.

To ensure that you stay on top of our event planning game, here are some tips to help you avoid a breakdown.

Set goals

Goal setting is integral in planning an event. It helps you have a vision of what you want to accomplish and take the necessary steps to get there. Failure to set goals can create chaos and setting unrealistic goals can be demoralizing. In order to have a successful event, you should create SMART goals. Your goals should be:

• Specific – Goals should be well defined
• Measurable – Have a metric that measures the performance
• Achievable - The goals should be possible to achieve
• Relevant – Your goals should align with your company vision
• Time-bound – Should have a finish date

Have a checklist.

Checklists are good for indicating what needs to be done as well as allocating timelines for these activities. Instead of trying to remember the tasks that need your attention having everything written saves you a lot of time and mental activity.

Checklists make it easy to delegate tasks to your team enabling you to reach your goals quicker.  They allow you to stay on track and keep deadlines that need to be met.  Checking out items that have already been done is proven to give the motivation to get more things done.

Use an event management software

Event technology has tools that help manage an event successfully. Depending on the goals that you want to achieve, event technology can automate tasks so you can focus on other items on your checklist. Communicating with attendees, selling tickets, registration management, polls and surveys can all be done with registration software. When shopping for an event technology pick a solution that is customizable to attaining your event goals.

Know your limits

Clients have different personalities: the constant complainers, those that panic over everything, those that change everything at last minute, those with unrealistic expectations. You have probably experienced at least one difficult client and they can raise up your stress levels. From the first meeting you can already tell the type of person you’ll be dealing with. If you would like to go ahead and work with them, set boundaries earlier on or sign an agreement that can protect you if the client makes false claims against you. If you don’t see yourself working with the client, decline the offer. Sometimes your sanity if more important than money.

Have a risk management plan

Organizing an event opens you up to potential risks. A lot could go wrong in terms of security, medical emergencies, no show speakers, power outage, fires and so on. Lack of preparedness for these risks can cause legal issues, financial loss and reputation damage. When planning an event, asses all the potential risks by going through every stage of event production. Group them according to the possibility of the risk occurring, e.g. low, medium and high. Create an effective risk action plan to manage anything that could go wrong. Being prepared will also avoid any panic during the event for you and your team.

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Event technology, event planning, reduce event stress, risk management, events, software