No event is a deserted island. When you are organizing an event on your own, unless you are hiring an event planner, you will be dealing with at least 5 or more vendors per event. Sometimes it can be as many as 10 to 20 of them! It is therefore important to know how to deal with vendors. They can make or break your event!
1) Treat Your Event Vendors As Your Partners
In any event, you may have to deal with the venue representatives, caterers, audio visual suppliers, photographers, videographers, and many more depending on the complexity of your event. Great vendors are a source of expert advise - they can help solve problems for you and they have a wealth of ideas that you can tap on. If they are your partners, they will not hesitate to help you out.
2) Treat your vendor as if he or she is your friend...
If your vendor is a friend, they will go the extra mile for you. Sometimes staying throughout the event to ensure that there are no technical glitches without charging you extra. This helps ensure that your events run smoothly. Furthermore, depending on your event needs, you may have to run a pre-event rehearsals which you didnt budget for - as most vendors will charge for this. But if your vendor is your friend, its easier to seek for their "understanding"
3) Build a relationship with them
Even if you have a newly working relationship with your vendor - learn to build a solid relationship with them. Especially the good ones! I always make the point to know my vendors personally. I go to their office, have coffee with them and even attend their wedding!
Having said that, you must not take in everything they say nor take advantage of their "kindness" so to speak - you do not need to drive sharp bargains to get things done. If you are really in a tight situation, explain to them the real situation and know when it is reasonable to request for more.
4) The 3-Quotes Requirements - What not to do
Vendors hate to be treated like they are fulfilling your 3-quotes requirements. It wastes everyone's time and it is not productive at all. If you have not decided on your vendors, then by all means go ahead and get the three quotations. But once you have decided, it is not fair to get other vendors to pitch in just for you to fulfil your 3-quotes requirements. So always watch out for this as you will develop a reputation in the industry and no one wants to work with you.
5) Differentiate the good from the bad
Learn also to differentiate those vendors that just want to "make a quick buck!" If you are not careful, you may have one or two of this kind to deal with. Especially when you are not paying them much. Look at the way they handle your calls (no matter how frequent), listen to their comments when you ask for an opinion and observe how fast they respond to your requests. Vendors that don't bother to answer your calls and not return your calls without any good reasons are not the ones that you want to build relationships with. And those that they didn't show up when they said they would without calling back, warrant reasons to worry because on the event day itself - he or she may not show up and that's bad news!
6)Rewarding your vendors
As with all things, it goes both ways, if your vendor goes beyond his call of duty to help you then it would be good to reward him or her also. Pass him/her a business referral or two, give him/her a letter of commendation (if he/she deserves it). Be a good paymaster and pay him/her on time. Your vendor may not mind getting paid less if the payment is prompt and you treat him/her kindly. So even if you may not have big budgets to play with. You can still go a long way if you treat your vendors well!
穢2011 Maya Kuchit-Desjarlais, Convention Links (S) Pte Ltd
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