Gotta Love a Party!
Three Steps to Help You Increase Group Events & Parties
Beth Standlee
By Beth Standlee, CEO, TrainerTainment
Don’t you love a month that has the theme of love? I sure do. Why not leverage all that love this season and focus on teaching your team the value of having a lot of parties in your center?
How many team members are employed at your facility? Have you thought about their family members and how their mom, dad, brother, sister, aunt, uncle, spouse, best friend or other kin or close pal might LOVE to hold their next company party, team event, or Sunday School outing at your family entertainment center? Well, I have! These are some of the things that keep me up at night.
I’m always thinking about how to find more leads for events. And I am obsessed with winning. I want to make sure the effort put forth creates results. So, there is a lot of efficiency in having the team help create a party focus. Here’s what I think I’d do if I were you.
1. Make sure you have compelling party options that are simple and easy to understand. Notice I did not say cheap. I love packages that target categories like adults, youth teams, field trips, and of course birthday parties. Less is always more. If you find you have more than three packages per category I encourage you to look at upsell items to include as add-ons to your small, medium or large offerings.
2. Hold a party for your team. Make it a BIG deal. Everyone plays, eats and has a lot of fun. Modeling the experience of what your guests feel when they’re at your center is not only great training, but is a super way to enhance future guest experiences.
After the food and fun, gather your troops and have them give feedback about their own experience. Then ask your team to join you in providing this type of fun for their friends and family. Have them work in small groups of three to come up with as many names and group affiliations as possible and then fill that out (hopefully) with contact information or a commitment to help with introductions. You might want to award the team with the most leads a cash prize or gift cards.
Finally, you could run a contest to see which team could bring in the most number of events to the center in the next 30 days! Can you imagine how you might kickstart your group and party sales?
3. Have the sales team follow up on the leads. Communicate with those team members who have leads that become event guests.
I realize how simple all this may sound. But honestly, I think we underutilize opportunity that is right under our feet.
I would love to know if you implement this concept and, of course, I really want to hear about the results. By the way, I happen to think every month is a great month to fall in love with group events and birthday parties.
Beth is the CEO of TrainerTainment LLC, a training company devoted to the family entertainment and hospitality industries. Beth and her team are focused on helping the companies they serve make more money through sales, guest service, leadership and social media marketing training. Training products and services are delivered in person, through books and DVDs, and virtually with e-learning courses, webinar development and 24/7 online access. Visit her company’s website at www.trainertainment.com.
