You’ve prepared everything for your customer or staff appreciation event. After your CEO introduces the evening’s entertainment, things start to slowly come to an end. You expect to hear laughing and applause, but instead you hear stillness and murmurs of resignation. The performer, who you believed to be the ideal corporate entertainer for your group, panics and begins demeaning the crowd. You slink into your chair quietly and consider how current your résumé is.
People will forget what you said and what you did, but they won’t forget how you made them feel, as Maya Angelou once remarked. Even if the food was excellent and the setting was lovely, these things will be quickly forgotten. Your audience won’t soon forget how terrible it was to watch the performer you hired to provide some “fun” and “excitement” to your event. It’s strange that, occasionally, an events manager would spend months preparing certain event elements—such as food, lodging, decorations, etc.—but wait until the very last minute to get the right corporate classifieds entertainment.
Here are a few suggestions for corporate event advertising to assist you choose the best corporate entertainer for your upcoming gathering or event.
1) Do Your Homework – Stop depending on a speaker’s bureau or an beauty bureau to book your talent every time. Since many well-known corporate performers don’t always have agencies, you can be missing out on some of the best talent. Agents are not the only way to find talent, though they might be a terrific place to start. Do not assume that an agency has worked with a corporate performer simply because they are on their client list. Do a Google search for phrases like “funny motivational speaker” or “entertaining motivational speaker” if you’re willing to “broaden your options.” Here, you may find a variety of corporate entertainers who can help you give your event a “WOW” element.
2) Examine the Demos – After selecting one or more performers, carefully review their demos to determine whether they would be a suitable fit for your group. This saves you time since, if you don’t like the video, you can immediately go on to your next contender. It is the quickest approach to determine whether the specific performer will work for you. Watch the demo and check to see if the talent has experience with organizations like yours. Observe the group’s demographics. Does the video show the reactions of the crowd? Is the applause and laughter spontaneous or was it staged? Does the video primarily include one performance, or are there many performance clips? Was there a single standing ovation or several for the corporate performer?
3) Examine the Website – If you like the demo, check out the talent’s website to learn more about the kinds of restaurants entertainment they offer. Check to see if the corporate performer offers a variety of program selections. Additionally, have a look at the businesses the talent has worked for before reading the reviews of those businesses. Many corporate entertainers display company logos on their websites, but when you look for client testimonials from those businesses on the talent’s website, you could not find such testimonials. If a talent displays the logo of a business, it suggests that he or she has worked with that business; hence, the talent should presumably have a testimonial to support that claim. What do you suppose they won’t do, then?
4) Testimonials are Tops – Referrals have been replaced by video testimonials. A video testimonial will tell you everything you need to know about a talent without the need to call anyone for a recommendation. Who is giving the testimony and what they stated are the two things you should pay attention to in a video testimonial. For corporate event entertainment, the testimonial should come from the person who made the booking; ideally, this would be an events manager, marketing or sales professional, or someone with equivalent authority. Testimonials from audience members are acceptable, but you really want to hear from someone in corporate who really hired the talent. The written testimonials will likely surpass those on video because most corporate entertainers who are good at what they do have been doing it for a while. However, there should be enough video reviews to give you reliable information about the standard of the entertainment you may anticipate.
5) Speak with the Talent – Once you’ve decided that a specific corporate entertainment will be ideal for your client or employee appreciation event, get in touch with the talent. A brief phone conversation will reveal how well the talent will mesh with you as well as with your group. The key to every event is adaptability. You might need to explore elsewhere if your talent has too many requirements or needs. You are, after all, juggling the requirements and requirements of your team and your executives. Additionally, you don’t need a “needy” entertainer. Discuss pricing, staging needs, and most importantly, how the performer may help you make your event more memorable throughout your call.
Conclusion: It does take “time” to choose the appropriate corporate entertainer for your business event entertainment. To ensure the event is successful, event managers spend the time to organize several location visits, make a ton of calls to hotel caterers, stress over décor, strategize hotel bookings, and much more. Don’t let choosing the entertainment for your corporate event be one of your last actions, and don’t always rely on just one provider. Remember that while your group is unlikely to recall the specifics of the food they consumed or the specifics of the table decorations, they will never forget how awful it was to see a bad corporate performer.