Please note this transcript was auto-generated
‍
Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the new and improved revenue webinar series all about putting the revenue into your venue. I'm your host Ryan, and I'm thrilled to be here with you for a first session of twenty twenty four. A little about me, I've been with HeadBox for couple of years now. Prior to that, I booked and managed corporate events for a venues group in East London, but enough about me This year, we want to make sure we're delivering exactly the kind of content you're interested in. To help direct us, we sent out a survey and you told us what matters to you.

Perhaps unsung unsurprisingly, it's all about converting inquiries and maximizing bookings. So that's what we're focused on for twenty twenty four. Will be equipping you with the skills you need to get the results you want. As always, we love seeing your posts, about the webinar on socials, So snap a pick and tag us on Instagram or LinkedIn.

We love seeing where you're tuning in from. I hope you've all had a fantastic break and are ready to dive into the latest and greatest in the world of event sales. We've got an incredible lineup of topics, experts, speakers, and game changing strategies lined up for you this year. So whether you're a seasoned event professional or just starting in the industry, this series is tailored to help your venue and your career not just survive, but thrive.

Now we've got something special in store for you today. We're kicking off the year with a bang as we delve into the hottest twenty twenty four event sales trends. It's a topic that's not just relevant. It's essential for anyone looking to stay ahead this year.

I'm thrilled to introduce our guest today, James O' Sullivan, CEO of Cobas, and Sean Beechner head of sales at tobacco dock. They're here to guide us through the top event sales trends that will shape the landscape in twenty twenty four. So let's begin.

Our first today is all about relationship building. In this era of evolving customer expectations, we understand that the game has shifted from transactional relationships to just relationships.

So event sales professionals need to ensure they're not just selling an event, but creating a meaningful and lasting relationship with their clients.

Sean, that being said, considering considering your role as head of sales, at the renowned tobacco dock how do you approach the challenge of building long term relationships in a competitive market?

Yeah. I think, Tobeka dock, we never really had transactional relationships.

Everything we've built since the beginning has been very relationship on relationship.

So and it starts from the very beginning. So I, nickname our account manager's consultants, so they really need to understand the client from the beginning and become an expert in what they're talking about.

So there's a theory around becoming a trusted advisor, and that starts from the beginning. If you don't, set yourself in that place from the start. It's very difficult to bring yourself back. So I think it's very much from, the beginning, if you think about going to your hairdresser, you go and they talk to you about what you want, and then they'll advise you nice on what they think you should be doing. You know, things are not your friend.

And we find like best practices, things like honesty is the best policy.

Eighty one percent of people buy on trust, not on the product itself.

And we feel that honesty and authenticity are key to that.

So clients can literally smell authenticity. So it's about building a culture and a brand that your staff can be proud of and talk about, when they're explaining themselves to clients, they can be really passionate and, yeah, real about what they're doing. Yeah. I love that.

We my team, I tell them, you know, your consultants well. You're advising them. You are you're guiding them. You're the expert here.

I think that's very important. Great. Do you have any examples or success stories, where these principles, have played a pivotal role in building strong ongoing partnerships. Yeah.

Well, there's a theory that people who have a positive experience are seventy seven percent more likely to recommend the product to another. So we had a client a few worked probably a few years ago now. So one of our largest tech clients, and we hosted a client day, and she went around and told everybody about how great we were and, you know, she was upsetting the space without me even being there because she was really passionate about us and We've built that relationship, which is really nice.

On a more personal level, so I'm expecting a baby. And recently I went to buy a pram, and I actually bought the most expensive brand rather than the cheapest brand based on the person who was selling it to me. So he took the time and the effort to understand why I wanted, why I was feeling where I was coming from, rather than the guy that was like just over there, the one with four wheels will do.

So you end up investing more in that person and then by proxy the product. Yeah. Absolutely. It's not just, I mean, to take it back to if if you're working in a venue, it's not just Here's your quote.

It's, no, let's let's talk through each piece. What's actually important to you. So very great. Very great answer.

Thank you. James, as CEO of Cobas, a company deeply evolved in involved in hospitality technology.

How do you see technology playing a role in fustering lasting relationships in the events industry.

Yeah. So the relationships that we help, our operator to to foster are with their clients rather than with someone like tobacco doc where it's with an event of space and, more of a a promoter type scenario.

So the way that we do that is the technology that we provide allows them to have consistent, small, meaningful connections with with those customers throughout the year so that when it comes time to book an event, typically around birthdays, anniversaries, depending upon their age could be graduations, those sorts of things that our clients, our front and center of their customer's minds so that they choose them, for that occasion.

The the way that we do that is very it's very dependent on the type of any that you are. So, typically you'll want to do things that are frequency of touch, and relevancy to the customer. So you'll want to do things. So if you're sending him an email every week, that's that's just gonna get binned as spam.

If you're sending them stuff that is not relevant to them, so if you're sending a vegan, a thing about a hot roast, Yeah. Not gonna be favorite the month of them. But if you can send them things that are, oh, we know that you like wine tasting, we have a special one on this or or that sort of stuff, it means that they will again go back to the trusted adviser point that's that that Sean said they bet that the venue can be that's like the customer can believe that the operator understands him as a person making them more likely to pick that location for their events. Yeah.

I mean, personalization is key. We're gonna come on to that a bit more, shortly. Before we do, I just I just wanted to ask a little bit more on innovation and adaptation, like how you innovate and adapt the technologies, to sort of maintain, retain these relationships.

So the role that technology can play is always about enablement of the experience that a that a operator can give in their venue. It's very it's very rarely that it's the tech right now. There are some examples with a lot of the more modern gaming where it's the tech that enables it to happen, but it's more about how it can make the the time that the staff in the venue need to spend doing things that aren't adding value.

How how can it eliminate those or reduce those to put them more more back into the venue where they can add value, where they can spend time, front of house, with their staff. So thinking of things like, taking temperatures in fridges and stuff that no one cares. They care that it's right, but they don't care about going and doing it so we can automate those with with, some some nice, WiFi monitors.

When you have an operator who's got more than one location, having that consistency of experience from site to site, that's key so that, like, I know as a as a consumer, when I'm in a new plate, a new town, if I can't find somewhere that I like, and I know I can see, a group operator that has a location there. Mhmm. I may very well, very well. We've tried to fill it to places.

They aren't great. We know that that there's a known good experience here, and that's and that's how technology can help, to achieve that by having your service standards, by having, you know, creating that consistency. Yeah. Exactly.

It's it's the consistency of things. Okay. Well, we're gonna segue now to personalize because your your answer prior to that, it was brilliant and touched on this. So I'm gonna open it up to both of you.

What are the most significant changes you've observed in client expectations, regarding tailored event experiences.

I think that we've, as a venue been at the forefront of this since the beginning because we don't have a one size fits all product. So we have to tailor everything we do to the client's needs. So again, coming back to the consultant point, like the vetting process for us is really big. So it's understanding the client's needs, the detail, getting into the nitty gritty of what their objectives are.

So some of the biggest trends we've seen is about, clients having to validate their spend a bit more. So it's understanding what the objectives are of not only the client and her team or his team, the overarching company and brand. So are they, you know, due to be net zero by twenty fifty or, are they heavily concentrating on certain ROIs? So then we can create a tailored product that is those, requirements.

Yeah. Absolutely. I mean, ROI always important, but it just it seems even more important with the cost of events rising in twenty twenty four. So, that's that's great.

I guess How do you ensure regular follow ups and personalized attention to each client? What practices have you found are effective sort of know, to keep your, to keep tobacco doc in the front of the client's mind. Yeah. So we've invested really heavily in a CRM that sort of backs up our team.

So it's a tool that supports the people that are client facing.

So we've created, task automations, certain, like, expectations, but then the person can control them by editing them and everything else, but it does take a lot of time and it does take a lot of effort. So we are also looking to increase our team capacity. So we're we're recruiting for pretty much every department in the company right now, to sort of make sure that we're maximizing on them, and creating everything personalized and bespoke. It is definitely a lot more than it's ever been before.

You speak to your CRM. I I think for the people at home who maybe aren't collecting any data right now or or, you know, are just starting out.

What are some key things you collect or what would be some tips for, Yeah. For for what kind of debts. Well, you've got the basics. You've got the basics for us as a sales team and the contact details. Every department's basics are very different. So we concentrated really heavily in lockdown and developing our CRM to have mandatory fields that we feel as a company are needed.

And every company is very different and it's forever changing. So what we can do with our CRM is associate all contact including emails and calls so that if we ever change our mind in a forever changing world and want to report on something else, then we can do, you know, I think COVID taught us all that we need to be able to pivot to match where it's happening, and data plays a big part in that. And we learned very quickly that we didn't have that data at the beginning. So now we need it just in case, and during lockdown, we were able to create products that matched people's requirements or trends and be able to reach out to people because we had all those contact details at hand.

You know, we had a virtual tour walk through, which seems really basic, but there were a lot of venues that weren't. So we were able to hear slight virtual site visits, so data and other AI tools give you the opportunity to be able to pivot what you need to be. Yeah. No.

I I think that ties it all in everything we've been discussing so far, that ties it all together quite nicely. It it touches on sort of adapting technologies as James was saying, you know, those virtual tours. That's very important. Not everybody can take the time.

Maybe they're not even in London. They can't come see tobacco docs. So that's very important. And capturing the right data and using that data really does help to personalize the customer's experience.

So, James, is there anything you wanted to add on on data? I mean, there's a lot to add on data. Yeah. Exactly.

Is it is an entire hour on its own? I but the the headlines are that the you should take as much data as you can at the lowest level of granularity as you can do. Are speaking to Charles Point about not knowing what you're gonna need in the future. If you've got the data, your day one doesn't need to be the day that you think about measuring or looking at a certain thing because you can go back and see that data from when you started recording it.

So it allows you to make a much quicker start on changes that you have Also, the things that you can do today with data are orders of magnitude better than they were five years ago. And in five years time, they will be again orders of magnitude better. The overhyped term of AI will change probably everything that happens in the running of of businesses because it will allow so much more to be done at such a high level of precision and of repetition and consistency that it's it'll change the game but it needs vast quantities of data to make those good decisions. And so the sooner you start collecting that data, the sooner you'll be able to take advantage of whatever it is that in the future.

It's it's not a this is a thing to go and use now. It's there will be a thing in the future that can do things with this data. I'm just gonna capture it now so I have it for what I needed. Yeah.

I mean, great point. And I think too, you can't improve what you're not measuring. Exactly. You know, you need that benchmarks.

Speaking of measuring, is there anything in particular tobacco doc is is during in twenty twenty four? Mhmm. Yeah. I mean, we're constantly trying to develop as a company.

So we look a lot. At the moment, one of my big projects is looking at turndown reasons. So identifying issues within the venue or client feedback or certain trends, But in a world where we always want more data and we always need more information, we are looking to expand the team and it is a big investment. Like, I think we said earlier, data costs money, and management of data even costs more.

So we've actually doubled like the sales team size in since COVID, and that is a big area in inputting data and making sure it's always clean and updated and that sort of thing.

Yeah. So, you know, we use it for forecasting, trends, sharing information between apartments as well is a big thing. So our whole company is on one CRM.

But yeah, it costs money and time to upkeep it. Every time there's something new to capture and you're you're delivering that message to the staff, they're kind of going, okay. Another another field to fill out. Yeah.

But equally having that data can repay itself. So where where it's it's a cost in terms of data entry side, for the team there, looking again at the labor, So with with our systems, you can analyze when you're busiest and therefore what level of staffing you need need to have at what times of the day to make sure that you're not over understaffed, etcetera. So there's a potential saving in there. And then if you're looking at let's say your your sales mix, we've been we're probably seven or eight years into this now ourselves where we can predict based on the volume of sales that the venue thinks they will do for a period, we can predict the stock that they will use to make up that revenue.

Which means they can be there there's less wastage and there's less holding stock in the venue, which means there's more margin to be made with the operator in a world where there's not a lot of margin to be made right now. That's important in its own right, but it also gives you the flexibility to deploy some of that extra margin into areas that can give better experiences where there isn't the margin to be made. So you can take it from one hand and give it away somewhere else, but that elevates the experience of the customer. Which has all the good things.

That's very interesting. Being able to sort of predict, you know, what you're gonna sell, what food you're gonna sell, what beverage you're gonna sell, and I mean, I always like to shout out sustainability too. I think it's important that that, you know, reduces waste. So Yeah.

The fresher the stuff that you're providing is. Yeah. More important it is that you accurately engage what you're gonna need in a certain time period.

I think it's really interesting that, James, you're saying, you know, there's there's cost savings there. There's there's ways to reduce, but you're saying, you know, with with data as well, there's there's that labor costs to to gather maintain and and keep it clean.

So on on that point, I mean, what are the other trends in twenty twenty for is, I mean, inflation, we're all feeling it. The cost to put on an event is, you know, I think there was a figure I saw that it's going to be twenty two percent higher as an average. In twenty twenty four.

As we know, client's budgets aren't going to grow twenty two percent. So tying it back to personalization, you're saying you're you're a trusted adviser. How do you advise the customer when the cost of a coffee has increased from what it was for their event a year before. How do you approach that?

Yeah. Yeah. Client's budgets are twenty nineteen rates, but their numbers have gone up and the costs have gone up and everything else. So it's it's really difficult.

We end up having to, like, validate our costs a lot, catering, for example, so people say, oh, I can go to a certain coffee shop and get a coffee and a croissant for this much. How why are you charging us this? But the product is entirely different and the, stuff that comes behind it is very different. So, yeah, you're totally right. So budgets are the same as twenty nineteen, but expectations have changed. Numbers have changed. So, you know, event capacities have grown.

Things have cost, Brexit, how labor's increased.

So yeah, as a trusted advisor, we would go in and talk to the client about again going back to like the ROI thing and the objectives, understanding where their money is best spent, and where could we do a cost saving? So we work really closely with all our suppliers.

And we almost become like a little like planning hub with the client, and we take them through that process. So the all the processes are a lot more intense than they were pre COVID times.

So it is a lot more labor and time and effort. Which is worth it, but the margins are very similar. Yeah. I think that's the that's the key thing is that while top line may have reached and maybe even exceeded twenty nineteen levels, that just doesn't translate through to to bottom line profitability because the cost base of every venue is is much, much higher than it was in nearly every capacity.

So you think that headline inflation rates may be down to what? Five percent now, but that that takes into account many things that are not pay up as much as food and and and and drink inflation in venues. They are still. If not double digits there, they're quite close to that still, then you think that the cost of labor most of our clients will employ people at around minimum wage level.

That has gone up by fifty percent in the last five years. Which isn't a bad thing, but it is a cost that has to be absorbed into a business somewhere. And when you've got so many other costs that are rising, there's not as much wiggle room for operators to pass it onto onto their customers or or even a desire to, which means it translates to a a less profitable, either a less profitable business or a worst case, a non viable business.

There's a lot of difficult conversations to be had there with customers who are used to having a product that is personalized exactly how they want to have it and getting all the things they want to have which just isn't viable anymore at the price point that they were used to having it. So there's education there for customers and there is some intelligent use of swapping things out for the same the same look and feel but at a lower price point or maybe a smaller example of the same item to try and achieve the quality that someone wants without without sacrificing too much on the viability of the offering. Yeah. I quite often recently had to write full blurbs about validating cost to people because what they're comparing us to or what they're comparing other things to, they're just not comparable.

So it's very Yes. When you look at a multi site retailer who may have, you know, fifty, a hundred locations, their buying power for commodity items is going to be significantly higher than standalone venue like yourselves. And with those things that there there are just operational challenges, you can't if you can't buy, I don't know, a million napkin to go. You're gonna get a worse price than the person that can do. And, that's gonna filter through to what you can offer to your clients and and therefore how you need to structure your pricing across the the entire event. Yeah. I mean, you're validating your costs.

They're validating their event to their senior stakeholder.

You know, what's the return on investment?

Everybody has to be a lot more strategic with maybe the actual event they put on, but the elements within the event. It's it's very interesting. I'm excited to see where it goes this year, how we how we manage this. Because at the moment, like this this increase in cost, just, you know, there's no bottom.

So eventually, it it's it's gonna have turn around. What you'll probably see and what we're seeing from the spend in our in our clients is that there is a lower frequency of event but there is a higher spend in total and per head when those events happen. So the the move to the move to premium premium my little premiumization, that happened probably pre COVID, but you're seeing that being a more prevalent thing now. On the night out.

So Well, people don't leave their house No. Yeah. Exactly. Because they don't have to. They've learnt they don't need to.

So if you're asking them to leave, it has to be for like that A good risk. Freemium is, yeah, that personalised, that tailored approach. So even, like and we're doing a lot more, to back it up, we're doing a lot more, like, stuff events as well. So, like, get togethers and that sort of thing, which, were before probably, as you say, more frequent and less spend and now they'll just do one a year where they go all out.

Yeah. We've been noticing this as well. Like, there was a quantity before, and now maybe what people are doing is is those quarterly events have become annual.

The quality of which has risen. So they're they're they're getting more budget for that specific event, but it's kind of a like, yeah, what's the word like condensing Yes, which is good because that is the way that you can drive your margin is by having a higher spend on a lower frequency.

The other thing is that the type of, event that someone wants to go to is something that they can't replicate at home. So there's a lot of is a large growth in, competitive socializing, and that kind of, event because most people don't have a nine hole prison golf course at home. So they have to go to a venue to find that, same thing with cocktail master classes, darts, ping pong, they're all these things that are not just location, food, and drink that are reasonably replicable.

But if there's somewhere I can go there with my friends, we can do play these different games or whatever and make it a very tailored custom experience to what we want that is that is a value in itself. It's not it's not monetary to the person, but it's experiential and that experiential driver is what we're seeing is behind a lot of the the the the best performing events in our venues. Absolutely. I was with a client yesterday and they had have two offices, so they had two office Christmas parties.

One was just, as they said, nibbles and drinks, and they kind of said it like that. The other one was an experience. There was entertainment. There was a Cinderella dress with champagne.

I don't even know how they did it. Champagne fleets coming out of the dress so you can take a check. And that's what they want now. That is that is that higher price per head and I think you're right.

Like, it's it's experiences. And, I mean, Sean, you're very lucky with your venue. I know I know it is blank canvas. So the client can bring in whatever they would like to make that experience, but you also do have, I mean, you have skylight as well.

We do. Yeah. We have rooftop where we have two rooftop bars in the group, one at the back of doc and one in Peckham.

But yeah, but I think the problem with the experiential part, like, it's great. But again, coming back to the budget thing, like, they haven't increased since twenty nineteen, the tax cap on what you can spend on staff Christmas parties hasn't increased in I can't even know that five, ten years or something. So, like, it's not reflective of what people want to spend. No.

It's what they can which is restricting them. Yeah. And it's, I guess, you know, for the people at home, sort of what can you do with your venue? What what do you have? What what's your USB here? Like, what can you make do with when when the budget's not there?

Something to think about. Thank you both, for your excellent insights so far. Now I did say I like data earlier. So I kind of want to return to it and shift our focus to, another critical aspect of successful event sales.

So clean data is happy data. And it forms the foundation for strategic decision making. So, Sean, considering the vast amount of data generated in the events industry. How do you at tobacco doc prioritize what data points are crucial for maintaining cleanliness and relevance ensuring that that data is impactful, are there key indicators that you believe every event sales professional should pay close attention to? Yeah.

I guess the answer is kind of no because it really comes down to what you're selling and what the product is. So, no, there isn't one size fits all for data. It comes down to what your objectives are as a company. So with our CRM, like I said earlier, we've invested a lot of time in creating mandatory fields that we feel are relevant, and creating automated task support the team in moving that forward.

Something that we do concentrate really heavily on is having regular meetings where we share that information with the wider team. So we do a weekly Monday meeting. We do a biannual all hands.

It shares information, not just on things like forecasting, but like what other departments are doing, like what their work levels are like so that as a company, we can come together and very much work as a collaborative force. Yeah.

So, yeah. No. There's not one size fits all. It's about keeping it streamlined, though, because there's a really fine line to play between wanting to have everything and having what you need. The factors that collating data as we touched on earlier does take time and effort.

So yeah. Absolutely. James anything to add on that. Yeah. It's if you if you don't have the data on something, you can't use it to your advantage.

That's that's that's the baseline. And how you get the data that you want to work on, there are there are myriad different ways of of doing that. So in some some capacities, it will be a specific task of of going and finding that. In other areas, things that the that the customer will do throughout their interaction with you will provide that data, not for free, but with a very, very minimal amount of of interaction for yourself.

So if you're running a let's say a generic logger system, you shouldn't, it should be to, personalize, but If it was generic, it will capture what that customer is spending on. How often are they there? Are they buying house wine?

Are they buying premium wine with that kind of data or are they buying no wine at all? Are they drinking beer or spirits or whatever? That's the kind of data that you will just assimilate through running a very standard scheme that you can then use that when it comes around to a birthday and anniversary, etcetera. When you're prompting that person that maybe they want to spend that, that occasion in your venue, that email isn't there, Hey, have you thought about having your birthday with us?

It's like, Hey, we know your birth occurring up in six weeks. We thought you might like this one, etcetera. You can do things there that elevate the the level of connection between you as a venue and the customer with very little extra work for yourselves because that data that you're basing on is already being collated behind the scenes by the technology that you got in place. Yeah.

I value my Christmas card from the local curry house.

No. I I I know what you're saying. Like, it's it's it's, it it, again, it just ties it all back together to that that personalized touch. And mean, I I think from here maybe with the increasing reliance on data for targeted strategies.

These are, you know, it's a targeted strategy. That's that you know, a basic example of it, but I guess how can event sales teams conduct sort of these regular data audits without disrupting day to day operations. So is is that, you know, we kinda touched on AI before. Is there is there automation to be haves?

Yeah. It's it's it's not AI. I'm sorry. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's it's it's automation. Yeah.

And it's process driven data ingestion.

So with a loyalty scheme, the way that that would work is at some point during the buying journey when that customer is just in your venue. They will identify themselves to your serving staff that will then link their transactions to their profile and it will then give you some analytics on that person how much they spend, how often they spend days of the week, venues they go to products they buy, etcetera.

There's not a lot you have to do for that. That's that is just there. That is that is up to date, that is what they are buying at the moment. The use of that is how that comes down to the skill of your sales professional.

Because if they want to send out generally well, they they can do. But the better that experience that you can give the person the more likely they are to pick you over. Yeah. Data helps with personalization, and it's one on the curry house thing.

There's a theory that you get given like the after eight minutes at the end or a Bailey's or whatever it is because you then will increase your tip So even if the Mill's rubbish, you're like, oh, so personalization through data builds on that sort of theory where you can make it really bespoke.

So through lockdown again, like we spent a lot of time changing the narrative to our clients and creating a two way relationship where we weren't just talking to them about inquiries. We were talking to them about their dog or, like, I had a client who was updating me on her phone that smashed and I was writing all those notes down, but I have it there. So when I go and see her, I'm like, oh, have you got that puppy yet? Like, and it just creates that two way personal situation that isn't just transactional.

Yeah. Absolutely.

Which I think was the first point we we brought up. It's it's it's not transactional. It's it's about that relationship and being being that trusted, trusted supplier. I mean, really. Yeah. So thank you for that.

So, I guess, I mean, we're we're getting close to the end here. So maybe it's it's time to sum and and summarize. And I think really what it is is the the bedrock of this is is data from there. It is you can build, you know, you can personalize things.

You can build those lasting relationships. You can make sure you're you have those touch points moving forward. You have all the information you need to show that, you know, you are you are trusted and and you you care about that client. So I think with with that being said, is there anything else you'd like to add?

Or The only thing that I would say is that things have moved very quickly technologically wise in the post COVID era and that level of development will probably speed up over the next five years or so.

AI will be the the buzzword that underpins all of those changes.

So don't worry if you don't know what you're doing today with things, the future will show you how that's gonna be used. Yeah. I like your points about even even though you're not maybe quite sure what to do with this data. Today.

Yeah. It could be crucial in a year's time. Exactly. Two years time. So that's great.

Thank you very much to both of you, Sean. James, It's been a pleasure. Thank you. With that being said, thank you for tuning in.

And, we will see you at the next one. Thanks.