The success of a small business ultimately comes down to making money. The customer, however, has all kinds of needs, and not one of them involves paying you money. So how do you unlock an opportunity to make money by satisfying someone’s need if they aren’t willing to pay you? Convince the customer of a need they didn’t realize they had, then get a third party to pay you to fulfill it. That’s the way we roll at EventPrep®, a home-based, life-style franchise opportunity. We are a forward-thinking, full-service event planning and management company, headquartered in Central Florida. And that’s how we tapped into and managed to capture the number one spot in a $25 billion dollar industry.
Wait…that model sounds unbelievable! How can you get a customer to buy something and get someone else to pay for it, you ask? Well, that business model is exactly what real estate and event planning have in common.
Think about what a real estate agent does for the home buyer when brokering a deal. They meet with the future homeowners, then they shut up and listen to their needs. The realtor takes notes, asks more questions, takes more notes, and finally creates a vision of the perfect house that their clients are looking for. Then they put together a list of homes that meets the client’s needs and take them house hunting.
Once the perfect house is selected, the agent starts the next phase of their representation of their clients by pulling comps, sorting through the details, and negotiating a fair asking price based not only on the market, but on the realtor’s invaluable experience. They walk their clients through every single step of the process, explaining every detail, and acting in their best interest all the way through the closing. And how does that agent get paid for all that hard work? From the seller’s agent, a nice five or six percent commission. The clients never had to pay a penny extra for the services.
That’s exactly the model we have perfected to serve our clients through Federal Conference and EventPrep. We listen to our clients’ needs, use our experience and knowledge to bring them options to review, leverage our industry connections to sweeten their experience and the deal, negotiate on their behalf, act as a trusted advisor, and close the deal, with our payment coming from the hotel or venue.
Just like a homeowner might purchase just two or three homes over their lifetime, most event clients, no matter how large, are only going to do an event once or twice a year at a Hyatt or a Hilton or Marriott. Over the years, we have spent hundreds of millions of dollars with the major hotel chains, so when we call to plan an event at a hotel, we receive an entirely different welcome than the occasional customer. We can unlock doors, negotiate terms, and get perks thrown in that the average event customer could never get.
The bottom line is, when it comes to serving the client, with both real estate and event planning, it all comes down to the power of relationships.