Qualities of a Good Event Planner

1. Qualities of a Good Event Planner

2. Creativity • To really strike a chord and put on an event that the guests haven’t seen before, it’s important to show a good deal of creativity. Many clients have some definite ideas on how they want their event to look and feel, but there are equal amounts that have no idea. With these events, it’s often up to the event planner to provide the ideas.

3. Multi-Tasker • An event planner is often more like a juggler than anything else. It’s common for multiple projects to be on the agenda on any given day or at any given time. She can’t just focus on one element of an event at a time, or the event will never be completely planned. • The fact that there are usually many different aspects of an event, and many different people involved sort of guarantees that more than one element will be coming at you at a time. It’s just one of those things that’s an inevitability in the world of event planning.

4. Budgeting Skills • Every event has a budget, and some of them will seem quite a bit smaller than what the client is asking for. A good event planner must be able to work with all different kinds of budgets and make them work for the client. • Having a wide range of resources in different industries helps, as does the ability to recognize how much different elements will cost. Basic math and number crunching skills are also a tremendous asset in the budgeting area of event planning.

5. Customer Service Skills • No matter how organized, flexible or smart you are, if you don’t have basic customer service skills, you aren’t going to get very far. Clients have needs and one of them is to communicate with the event planner on a regular basis. And often, this communication involves problems that are happening with some aspect of the event. • It’s important for the event planner to put out fires, ease the client’s mind and help them feel like everything is always under control. Customer service skills are so important because your clients will talk. They will talk to their clients, who may mention you to their clients, and so on. If that word of mouth is good, your business may multiply faster than you’d imagined but if it isn’t, the only thing you might be planning is where to look for a job.

6. Time Management Skills • At the core of every event is time. It doesn’t matter if it’s a wedding, a reunion or a big corporate event. It all has to come together by a certain date at a certain time, and it’s the event planner’s job to see that it happens that way. • Time management kind of goes along with multi-tasking, and if an event planner can do both and respect deadlines, half the battle is won.