Corporate Events Plus

It’s been a quiet month for us in terms of conferences and events although we’ve just completed a team building day at Towcester Race Course for a new customer; Sandie and Alistair organised the day, which went well.

It’s good to see a client recognising how valuable these events are for their business. Good team morale and positive attitudes seem ever more important but sadly this is an easy target area for cutbacks. We’ve been coming under increasing pressure from desperate competitors in our market who are buying business at a loss to either secure a new customer or they are making promises they can’t deliver. It’s no good us saying “we did tell you …..” but it is frustrating when we know that what we are offering is deliverable, our service level is good and we are competitive on price, only to find ourselves edged out of work in that way.

Does this mean it is going to be survival only by those who can sit tight and ride out the recession? I just do not see how it is sustainable to be delivering on high value, high challenge projects without making profit on the work you are doing. Fortunately, we’re in a good place in terms of sustainability. The relocation to home turf in Suffolk came at the right time and we can work anywhere nationally and internationally from here. Being flexible and adaptable with costs is just so important, now more than ever.

Obviously the Conference market is in a trough in this period so I was interested to see how other related industries are trading, I have past work contacts in the world of TV and I was able to visit them at Sky and take in the amazing buzz of the News and Sports studios first hand, an incredible atmosphere to work in.

I’ve also been able to spend more time networking this month and made the time to visit the ‘Destination Growth ‘09’ event held at Duxford and organised by EEDA, the East of England Development Agency. A great opportunity to hear from a range of well known business professionals such as Lord Sugar, Greg Dyke, former Director General BBC and Michelle Mone, creator of Ultimo. Other speakers I particularly enjoyed listening to were Professor McDonald talking about buying and Max McKeown, an innovation guru, on “Innovate Your Way Out of Recession.” I’m currently reading his book and it really is inspiring, The event was a fantastic opportunity to network and soak up advice and tips on business in general. I shall definitely return in 2 years time when the project is run again. It will be interesting to hear what we’re talking then. Let’s hope that by then recession is a distant memory!