How to Build a Killer Event Team for Business Promotion
In the excitement of a product launch or promotional event, a solid team of brand representatives keeps the event running smoothly and ensures a maximum number of positive engagements with potential customers.
Great teams, however, don’t often appear out of thin air. While brands or staffing agencies must build their dream teams from the ground up, the effort is always worth the tangible results these teams deliver.
Follow our six-step guide to building a team that slays your brand goals at every event.
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Hire competent event staff
Depending on your needs, it may be beneficial to retain successful staff for multiple events. If you can pull event staff from a pool of former brand representatives, you’ll already know what to expect from each individual.
Alternatively, use a promotional staffing agency like PromoPeople to supply your staff. Agencies only retain those brand representatives that have proven they are reliable, hardworking, well-groomed, and professional.
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Make brand goals group goals
Every event team needs its #squadgoals. Once you’ve hired a competent group of representatives, unite them behind your brand goals.
Depending on the nature of the event, these could include giving away so many promotional gifts, building an email list of so many people, serving so many visitors, pulling off a successful stunt, etc.
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Delegate roles
Ensure that, whatever your group goal is, each member of your team knows what he or she needs to do as an individual for the team to achieve that goal. Clearly define the role of each brand representative.
Every great team is made up of accountable members. Make each brand representative responsible for a specific task and hold him or her accountable for it. This protects against resentment directed towards “coasters.”
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Build team spirit
Teams are better promoters than individuals because group energy is infectious. At events, visitors are drawn to an energetic team faster than they are to a charismatic individual.
Make the most of group energy by bolstering the excitement and morale of your brand representatives with positive feedback (but make it honest). For example, update your team when they make progress towards achieving your brand goals.
Keep the overall energy light by encouraging rapport between team members.
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Communicate
An open channel of communication between supervisors and brand representatives allows supervisors to give real-time feedback to your team as the event unfolds and allows brand representatives to pass customer feedback on to supervisors as soon as possible.
Encourage event staff to communicate problems with each other so that the right person can resolve the issue in a timely manner. Even if it’s just an “I got this,” communication keeps teams running efficiently.
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Encourage cooperation, not competition
Competition can be a great motivator, but cooperation ultimately yields better, more sustainable results at events. Hold your team members accountable for specific responsibilities, but encourage them to collaborate on brand goals.
This is especially important when there are numbers involved. Resist the urge to break down brand goals by, for example, changing “distribute 100 gifts” to “distribute 10 gifts each.”