To be a successful event planner in today’s economy, you’ll need to be dynamic and flexible. And you’ll want to be constantly looking for ways to improve your event planning skills. Look for ways to boost how you find your creativity, how you manage event budgets, and how you problem-solve. Moreover, you can explore these key areas of improvement to sharpen your event planning skills in a way that ensures you can continue to be successful and grow your business in a dynamic events landscape.
Improve Your Organizational Skills
One of your most important superpowers as a New York event planner is your ability to organize everything. It’s your job to know every moving part of your event, right down to the smallest details. But organizational skills aren’t finite – there’s always room for improvement. Here are some suggestions to help you streamline your event planning skills as a master organizer.
- Look for ways to declutter, including your workspace and your calendar.
- Improve how you prioritize tasks and deadlines, so you can separate the immediate from the mid and long-term to-dos.
- Break down big projects into manageable and organizable steps.
- Use the best-fit software solutions for organizing timelines, checklists, event tasks, and business management.
Improve Your Time Management Skills
Time is money. Event planners can always be looking for ways to streamline processes and timelines to save time. If one step in your event planning process takes an hour to complete, and you can find a solution that reduces time spent to 30 minutes, it’s a HUGE win. Consider these tips for improving your time management and banking hours you didn’t know you had to dedicate to other aspects of your event business and success.
- Make and keep an itinerary for everything to visualize how much time you’re spending on various tasks.
- Keep a priority list in tandem with your general to-do lists.
- Get an early start to your day and to your event planning.
- Delegate anything that can be delegated.
- Leverage all the time-management tools, resources, and software solutions that make sense to your agenda and needs.
- Make quick decisions and only deliberate when necessary.
- Give yourself deadlines for everything.
Improve Your Creative Processes
One of the reasons your event clients come to you for all their corporate and social celebrations is your creativity. So, it’s imperative that you look for ways to preserve and improve your creative processes. Don’t cut corners when it’s time for big event ideas. And consider these steps to ensure you keep your creative event-planning skills sharp.
- Dedicate time for creative planning.
- Schedule routine breaks to avoid event planning burnout.
- Be open to new ideas from others, including studying other events.
- Create routines that include walks or time away from screens.
- Force yourself to think and explore beyond your comfort zone.
- Find inspiration around you and seek out creative outlets.
Improve Your Leadership Skills
Whether you’re leading an internal team of event planners or coordinating vendor partners, your leadership skills as an event planner need to be on point. Take notes from leaders you already admire in events or in leadership roles. And always be open to feedback from staff and colleagues about improving how you oversee, manage, and execute your events. Remember, leaders aren’t bosses. The best leaders inspire high-level performance without dictating such. Here are leadership-boosting suggestions to consider.
- Work on yourself as much as you do others.
- Operate from a position of transparency and clarity, including the “why” behind your initiatives.
- Maintain your positive mindset and preserve your attitude in any situation.
- Expect challenges and uncertainty so you can prepare teams accordingly.
- Be a supporter, not a dictator.
- Hold yourself and others accountable to the same standards.
- Improve and maintain fluid communication at all times to take the guesswork out of every process.
Improve Your Event Experiences
New York event planners are only successful when the events they curate are home runs. You can always be looking to sharpen your event planning skills in a way to elevate guest experiences at every event you coordinate. These sets of skills can only be improved if you’re open to new ideas, critical feedback, and new technology, too. Start implementing tools and resources that allow you to up your event-planning game and guest experiences, including these insights.
- Leverage post-event surveys.
- Offer mid-event polls.
- Study the latest event trends online and within your networks.
- Talk to your vendors about their event ideas.
- Partner with other event planners for bigger productions.
- Be an early adopter of new ideas, technologies, and event experiences.
Improve Your Networking and Collaboration
If you really want to take your event planning skills to the next level, you’ll look for ways to improve your networking and collaboration. Today’s event planners recognize that elevating the industry together is a win/win. And while you’ll remain competitive in your space, don’t be blind to working with others to improve your event planning services in a big way. Explore these networking opportunities and broaden your circles of connections.
- Find new networking opportunities in your community.
- Attend ribbon-cutting events locally.
- Get tickets to events, hospitality, and marketing conferences.
- Schedule lunches and meetings with other event planners to network.
- Talk with your event vendors about networking events they enjoy.
- Collaborate with local charities and nonprofit organizations.
- Discover online communities for event planning professionals.
- Attend business after-hours events.
You know that the key to your event planning success lies in your ability to continue learning and improving. Keep these insights and suggestions handy for inspiration as you explore new areas of improvement. And learn more about sharpening your event planning skills by attending the three-day event planning conference – The Event Planner Expo 2023. Thousands of event professionals, corporate decision-makers, brand representatives, industry leaders, and executives will be there sharing and networking. It’s the one conference where honing your event planning skills is inevitable. Get tickets and secure your exhibitor space on the trade show floor for maximum networking opportunities, lead generation, and brand exposure! And improve your event planning skills so you can take your business to new heights!
