What to Know Before Hiring an Event Planning Company in New York
When hiring a corporate event planner in NYC there are important questions your team will want to ask to ensure you’re really working with the best event planner in New York City. This city has specific nuances, and bringing in someone who hasn’t worked here before or truly have a grasp on how event planning works here, it can result in last minute emergencies or worse.
What are your best event planning services?
It’s true that no event company can do it all. We all have our sweet spots, or the services that you really own. When talking with corporate event planning companies, be wary of anyone who tells you that they can do everything. If they’re not aware of their sweet spot, they’re likely not aware of their shortcomings either, and you don’t want to be the person to discover those.
Who are you working with on a day-to-day basis?
Often in top event planning companies in NYC, or really anywhere, during the business development process you’ll work with senior staff, but then be handed over to junior associates for the day-to-day of event management. Here at Bash we pride ourselves on having senior staff on the production side, which means that we always have someone with decades of experience on every job.
Do they get kickbacks or rewards from vendors?
It’s common for corporate event planning companies to get kickbacks from their top choice vendor. In fact, it’s more common here than in any other market we work in. So when hiring in New York it’s incredibly important to ask who their relationships are with and how they handle these kinds of savings.
As we mentioned in our post on hiring event management companies in San Francisco, one thing we pride ourselves here at Bash is our transparency in our compensation. This means that when we work with venues in New York, instead of a kickback, we look for discounts for our clients and pass that through as a savings, a direct benefit to your bottom line!
Do they have preferred venues?
New York is a city like no other, so knowing a venue well can really help save time and logistics when planning a great event. It’s important to know which venues are preferred by a corporate event company, and if they’ve done lots of work there in the past. Additionally, these venues can often have preferred companies in service areas (like for example registration). If you already have some of your team plugged in and ready to go, you’ll want to ask if the event planning team or their venues are open to working with new partners.
What Technology do They Use?
Making sure that technology can speak to one another is often a point that is overlooked. For example, Some companies who are planning events don’t allow Google Docs at all — and this could be a big problem if working with an event planning company who is Google reliant. Some companies are heavily reliant on Slack to communicate instead of email, or some prefer meetings. Getting a sense of what kind of technology your event planning company can adapt to is a key thing to know before signing a contract.
How Hands-On Are They as an Event Planning Company?
This question might lead you into the weeds, but it’s a very important one to ask. Knowing the level of detail that your event management company will handle on your behalf is critical to know upfront. Some ways to answer this question would be asking If they negotiate with vendors on your behalf? Or do they secure the vendor but expect you to do the negotiations yourself?
Often times the level of involvement will correlate to how much of the event they’re owning. Understanding what this means to each organization as the planning company is critical having accurate expectations going into the partnership.
How Do They Handle Your Budget?
The last question when hiring an event planning company is to be clear on how they will handle your budget. Is the budget ownership collaborative? Will they share the budget with you throughout the entire process, or will they own it and check in with you at regular intervals? Will it be all up to you to own?
A follow up to this is knowing how they plan for overages, emergencies or buffers. Having a clear plan when it comes to owning your budget is a key part of building a great event planning team.
Ready to bring in a stellar team for your next NYC bash?
Bash Creative is an event planning company that specializes in incredible gatherings that go beyond just great design. We’re known for teasing out smart goals for your event and serve up a stylish execution that will keep your guests buzzing. Located in San Francisco, but often found in New York, Austin, Chicago, Seattle, and beyond.