Whether your business is large or small, creating exclusive contracts for event planning and event management will help your events go much smoother. You’ll sleep much better after completing contracts between you and your clients, vendors, staff, talent and venues. In the long run, there’s no better protection for your event company and your sanity.
Wouldn’t it be much easier to just perform your service, and not worry about a contract? Can’t we trust the customer to simply hand you a check at the end? Well, things are not always that simple. Many times the event company loses out when situations like these go badly. Consider these following 14 reasons why you need event contracts in place.
1. Holding your Client Accountable
Contractual agreements will itemize your proposed services and secure your clients’ word. It ensures that all services, duties, and responsibilities will be followed through professionally, on your side and theirs. Everyone’s expectations and responsibilities will be managed with appropriate agreements. The contracts should cover your full range of services from the initial meeting to the post-event work, so nothing is left out. Your contracts should be covering the full scope of your needs, in order to provide your best services.
2. Setting of Your Boundaries
Contracts won’t help if you forget to include certain conditions and details that are important to you. You might feel taken advantage of by doing unpaid extra work. It certainly helps to include all the boundaries of your client-planner relationship so you won’t be working 24/7. And there’s absolutely no need to be answering calls and texts after hours, etc.
It is truly up to the event manager to set the conditions of the service. If you won’t do it, no one will. And if you’ve been working events a long time, you know that clients’ expectations can be beyond belief and unmanageable.
Clear setting of boundaries will give you confidence and hope for everything to go well at the events.
3. Preserving Relationships
Clear communication and expectations for duties and responsibilities among all of your team is the best remedy to avoid conflict. According to a 2015 survey conducted by data scientist Noah Zandan, half of all Americans have at least one serious argument per month. Many of these arguments are likely to happen during work hours.
As an event planner, your greatest resources are your team, your talent, your vendors, and support staff. Your team is your most valuable asset – they will keep you in business – and they are the ones who will shine for you. Ask other planners – and you’ll find that many people will have worked together for years in long-standing relationships. They work well together, and are able to pull off greatly streamlined events together. Your relationship history will pay off in dividends. The more cleaner your relationships with your team are, then the more successful the events will be. Strive to always have your working relationships as clean and comfortable as possible. Easier said than done, right?
4. Establish Professional Relationship
Contracts can immediately establish a professional relationship between you and your client. They immediately show how you want to be treated. You are quickly demonstrating that you are a business and want to be treated that way. Your requirements and payments should be treated seriously.
Contracts will put your business ahead of another business that hasn’t sent a contract. When you appear more professional, your clients will be more attracted to your services.
5. Managing Expectations and Assumptions
Special events are delightful moments in time that are highly valued by those involved. Planner and clients often have really high expectations of how events will turn out. Their notions could be simple or complex ideas in their head. The client may be expecting just how the event managers operated at the last time.
Contracts are a perfect way to approach the management of expectations and other assumptions from the start. You can spell on the contract exactly how you work, how you expect payment, and what your tasks and responsibilities are. Contracts can limits your event planner services to only be providing what’s detailed on the event contract, and no more.
Food, beverages, work breaks and other things should all be included in the contract. Clients can react negatively when seeing one of your team members eating or casually on break. It helps tremendously when spelling things out. Workers need breaks too!
6. Reduce Conflict and Misunderstanding
Common agreement will win over other alternatives. When creating the contract, make sure you are including agreeable terms that your client won’t disagree with.
Discussion and negotiation of the exact contract terms beforehand will make the event go better, with less conflict. As long as there are no surprises when the client reads it, they will sign it with no problem. Event management will be easier with all the terms as agreed in writing.
7. Avoiding Refunds
Our society now is refund-crazy! People ask for refunds even after they have used the products. Clients may be looking for the *smallest reasons* to get money back. The client may or may not have a sufficient reason for the refund. Lack of attendance or income from the event are not strong enough reasons for refunding.
It is the duty of the planner to review the refund request. There may be foul play. The most common foul play is when the client exits and runs off with the designs, recommendations and planning work without paying the planner. That’s a bad day.
Your strongest protection coverage will come from a refund policy that is crystal clear. Make sure that there are abundantly clear expectations and detailed services when it comes to refunds in your contracts. Don’t leave any bit of service open to interpretation. Your contract should not have any items that are subjective and can be torn apart. Spend the time reviewing your terms so you are covered in any possible situation.
If there are circumstances that you or your client do not fulfill agreed responsibilities of the contract, then you are covered for what work you have done. Either part or in full, you are entitled to compensation for the work you have done according to your agreement. Though nobody ever wants to go to court, at least you would be covered by your contract if you do.
8. Avoiding Last minute Cancellations
Having a contract in place will cause clients to hesitate before cancellation. They won’t cancel if they end up losing too much money. Your clients will be discouraged from hiring a cheaper vendor instead. I’ve seen clients attempting this far too many times, and the deposits will help prevent it.
Cancellations and Rescheduling are part of any event business. Make sure you have a plan for any conditions where these might happen. Deposits and payments up to the cancellation date can certainly be non-refundable, which is within your rights as a business owner. You will be covered for the work you have already done. Spelling out your businesses’ limitations and boundaries will save tons of headaches in the long run. You can’t have a thriving event company if you lose out each week on cancellations.
9. Does Every Event and Team Member Need A Contract Too?
I’m not suggesting that creating contracts is necessary for every staff, team member, vendor and client for each booking you do. However, every written contract will help out. It’s true that working agreements between parties will help everyone involved, and will PRESERVE relationships, which are of priceless importance to your business’ success. Managing vendor relationships will go a long, long way to making a better event.
10. Coverage on Small or Large Events
How small is too small an event to not be creating a contract? You are the only one who knows your business and the conditions of your events. For many years, my own event company typically will contract with corporations and non-profit organizations, and not with small parties. For small private parties, I don’t usually make a contract but do require deposits.
Your definition of “small event” might differ from others. Small private parties might be 20-30 people for some. Others might define a small party as 1000 guests, depending on what event service you do.
The same types of problems with large events can occur at small bookings too. Anyone can take advantage of you. If you are doing extended and involved work with small parties, you may benefit from contract coverage over these events.
11. Avoid Pressure to Over-Deliver
The concept of over-delivering is vague. It often just brings pressure that is so heavy that you can feel it. It may be like this in your head: “I MUST do something extra!!” Your client does not need to get over-delivered in order to be satisfied with the event. Yes, it can be appreciated, but you can only do what you can do.
Contracts that are well spelled-out will make the stress of over-delivering go away. Be clear on exactly what services you are providing when planning and coordinating. You are highly aware of the services that you are able to offer, but don’t kill yourself in getting those delivered.
12. Avoid Commonly Repeated Problems
Events have a way of asking for all you can deliver, and then more! Sound familiar? We can appropriately stretch and provide what is needed in the moment, as long as it is covered by your event contract. When common snags continue to arise frequently, you can adapt your contracts to address these issues. As long as I have been doing events (since the 90’s), I’ve definitely seen similar obstacles come up over and over.
We all know deep down about Murphy’s Law at events. We often worry that if something CAN go wrong, it will! With certain services, you can often expect the same problems occurring again and again. It’s human nature I think. For example, I can never find the client when I am personally at an event. Especially when the shift is minutes from a close, and I’ve got my eye on my watch. When I’d like to be paid . . so where is my client. . and .. crickets! The client is frequently not around when you need her. This is a small example, but beware of regular occurring problems to nip in the bud.
13. Get Paid On Time
Contracts should detail out expectations and schedules for deposits, multiple payments and any additional charges. If you expect to potentially be performing any additional services beyond the regular event services, make sure to include all of these in your agreement unless they come up. Itemizing all the potential charges, fees and services should make the post-event finances cleaner and quicker between you and your client.
Make sure you don’t start working on the event until your deposit is received! The deposit due date and amount should be clearly spelled out on the contract. The deposit will ensure your client’s commitment to acquiring your services. You don’t want your work to be in vain.
At one of my special events this past summer, we worked with an important client, a computer giant in Silicon Valley. She was very satisfied with our event entertainment. She was pleased enough to ask for overtime. At the end of the event, she said, “Just charge the rest of the fees all together – go ahead and put it all on there!”. Her tone was pleasant, but I wondered how that would turn out. As I thought, I received a phone call a few days later to discuss “all the charges”. She had to run through each of the fees and wanted to contest each one, but we held to the contract terms. And that helped a ton. Though there was no serious problems that arose, our contract did hold up and guided the post-event work.
In the event management industry, it’s very common for clients to be late on payments, which makes the planners highly anxious about it. Your job is not a payment collector – and so creating a payment schedule in the contract is a super solution to keep this stress away. Make sure to keep every detail in writing.
14. Reducing Stress on Last Minute Changes
Last-minute changes happen all the time when doing event planning. These can get out of control very quickly, and be very stressful. You can prepare for this in advance if your contracts stipulate everything that may or may not be changed at the last minute.
While some last-minute changes are unavoidable, some may be within your contract and some might not be. Flexibility and strengths will be your greatest assets to make the event succeed despite the new challenges. Unexpected changes and surprises are a big part of event planning and management. Enter the human factor – these changes could harsh or sweet. These are the opportunities for your resourcefulness to shine!
I agree that being flexible will be a huge asset when it comes to helping your event succeed. I want to hire someone who can go with the flow. Not somebody who will cause the event to collapse in on itself because it went differently then planned.