According to a 2017 study by CareerCast, event coordination continues to be among the most stressful jobs in America. Between running around to ensure that the venue is set up, to coordinating with vendors, there’s so much that goes into organizing the perfect event. Not only does it take a ton of patience and an eye for detail, but it also commands an impeccable sense of time management.
With all this in mind, let’s take a closer look at what makes event coordination such a stressful endeavor.
Creating, presenting, and executing budgets
Event marketers are tasked with using limited funds and resources to maximize ROI.Therefore, managing the allotted budgets and substantiating spends are a huge part of the job description.
And there are many things that can go wrong while planning a budget for an event. For instance, improper structuring and estimations can either result in gross overspending or can result in exhaustion of funds.
As it is higher management fails to see events as a venue for building relationships and gaining new customers. Therefore, getting them to approve the event budget can be a difficult task.
Down to the minute
For event marketers and planners, time is of the essence. Event organizers are constantly working against the clock to ensure that every aspect of the event falls in place. Event strategies heavily rely on proper time management and bad coordination can have severe consequences during the planning process. Tasks that are left to last minute ultimately end up being forgotten or left incomplete.
Meetings, meetings, and more meetings
Meetings take place across a variety of locations. And there are so many aspects to coordinating meetings. Everything from setting up booths and meeting spaces have an unequivocal role in how meetings pan out.
Having a detailed agenda and roping in the right people can have a significant influence in closing deals. Since sales meetings require Subject Matter Experts for technical queries and decision makers to close the sale, managing their calendars can be a compelling challenge. And finally, the job also entails keeping track of every customer through the sales cycle and updating all this information manually into a CRM.
Related: Five things you need to do before your next B2B meeting
It’s all about the end game
Of course, a lot of effort goes into planning, coordinating and executing the event, but where does it all lead? After countless meetings and customer interactions, the end product of their efforts is hard to substantiate. More often than not, they do not know how to measure success at events because success can, by itself, be subjective. Therefore it boils down to understanding the financial impact of customer engagement and measuring the value of in-person interactions.
Related: Event ROI – 5 ways to win your money back
Murphy’s law
Remember the old saying “Whatever can go wrong, will go wrong”? This especially applies to event marketers. Event coordinators always find themselves in the spotlight when something goes wrong. They are in charge of everything from AV problems to insufficient stationary in the meeting rooms. Additionally, they are at the helm of customer complaints and faults in executing strategy. With so much on their plates, there is no real wonder why event organizers are so stressed out.
Event organizers go days without sleep, sacrifice weekends and family time to meet deadlines and get things in place. Handling everything from cooking up the event strategy from scratch to executing it with pinpoint precision can be tiresome both physically as well as mentally. Constantly being on the edge while maintaining high levels of motivation and an unwavering focus throughout the ordeal is not as easy as it sounds.
