As entrepreneurs in the online space, we tend to do the majority of our business … well, online!
But many of us know that augmenting our virtual endeavors with a handful of in-person events can be a FANTASTIC way to increase our reach. Hosting a retreat, a book signing, a celebration, or a workshop helps boost visibility, increase brand awareness, and even sell our products in many cases.
Gatherings are great, even if you only do them once or twice a year.
The down side?
Events and retreats take a boatload of planning. Coordinating the logistics alone is enough to give a girl a migraine!
Between the venue, the food, the promos, the guest list, and the follow-up, hosting unforgettable events can suck up huge amounts of your valuable time. Which is why you share that workload with your virtual assistant!
Between the two of you, you can plan out and split up the tasks so neither of you gets bogged down, and the event itself is a roaring success. Here are the different ways a VA can help expedite and plan your business events and retreats.
Hire a virtual assistant to perform event research
Before you start promoting your event and selling tickets, you’ve gotta make several key decisions about how it will run.
Selecting your venue, identifying event production services you need, and arranging things like catering services and entertainment options are not choices to be taken lightly.
In fact, it’s best to vet several vendors for each and get quotes to compare. Don’t have time? Your VA can come to the rescue!
Ask her to research the top event pros in town and do some preliminary interviews. She can even help with out-of-town events by scouting venues and vendors in far-off locales.
Once she’s done that legwork, you can swoop in and make the final decisions … or if your VA has been on your team for ages, you can defer to her choices.
Hire a virtual assistant to handle event-related communication
Once everything is researched and booked, you’ll need to stay in touch with your vendors in advance of the event itself.
You’ll also need to create a channel for attendees to ask questions, get help, and resolve issues. AND if you have guest speakers or panelists, those folks will need a point of contact, too! Now, don’t panic.
You can delegate much of the basic communications work to your virtual assistant, and ask her to loop you in on important or complicated discussions.
That way, she can run communications command central while you focus on programming, strategy, and promos.
Hire a virtual assistant to oversee event organization
Organizing an event means managing timelines, vendor payments, promo campaign dates, and guest schedules, among other things.
Do you have the bandwidth to juggle those tasks yourself? Of course, you don’t.
But your VA does and can be put in charge of overseeing the organizational elements of the planning process, leaving you and your team in control of the big decisions.
Ask her to make a master calendar related to the event or retreat, and help you keep track of everything that needs doing week-by week.
Hire a virtual assistant to deal with sales support
Depending on how exclusive your event is and whether it’s a high-touch retreat or a large-scale event, you may want to handle some of the sales work yourself. However, there are multiple sales avenues associated with a live event, and your VA can help cover several of them.
Provide her with a list of leads or prospects to follow up with after the event has wrapped, and ask her to handle the bulk of the post-event sales efforts, including keeping an eye on the sales funnel emails and fielding questions from prospective customers.
This will allow you to move on to your next big project, while still reaping the rewards from the event!
Your VA can also work on processing bookings and payments, arranging travel for staff, and obtaining assistance with building and room setup, among other things.
And, as the planning process rolls along, you can call her in to pinch-hit when something pops up that you don’t have time to address. Basically, she can make sure nearly everything related to planning and running the event goes without a hitch, and keep you focused on your strategic goals.
Together, you two can create a business event or retreat that your fans and clients will rave about for years to come!
