As an event marketer, you probably spend most of your time working with your AV partner’s salesperson or project manager. But once your event moves into production, there’s an entire team working behind the scenes to keep things moving. That internal team is one answering contract questions, working with finance and procurement, updating invoices, and accommodating your team’s internal processes. They’re the ones making sure your team has what they need to keep your event moving forward.
We sat down with our Office Manager Liz Nelson to better understand what happens after a project moves beyond the sales process and into production, and how the people behind the scenes help make life easier for event marketers and their teams.
Liz Nelson at VCI Events headquarters in Lake Forest, California.
Q: Can you tell us a little about your role at VCI and what you do?
Liz: “As the Office Manager at VCI, my role consists of a little bit of everything. Everything from booking travel, ordering office supplies, and preparing all accounts receivable. Having been with the company for over 10 years, I have learned to anticipate the needs of our staff and our clients.”
Q: What do you enjoy most about working with clients?
Liz: “When working with multiple clients, I enjoy assisting with all the different personalities and building strong, positive relationships between them and our Accounting department. It’s such a joy when I can help them check more items off their never-ending list.”
Q: With Genuine Client Engagement as one of our 3 pillars of success, what does that actually look like in your day-to-day?
Liz: “Every event gets the same level of care from our team no matter the size or type of event. For example, every email I send is personal. Even though I may have sent the same email thousands of times, I personalize it as much as I can. It’s about communicating the way that works best for that client. I learn quickly how people want to be spoken to. Some people want bullets, and some people want all the details. Knowing how people want to be talked to goes a long way, as silly as it sounds.”
Q: You spend a lot of time working with finance, procurement, and payables teams. Why is that such an important part of your job?
Liz: “Because they’re part of the client experience too. We’re able to work directly with their payables team, since we’ve already built that rapport, and it helps everyone move faster. Behind the scenes, I might build a new invoice template just for one client. They don’t know I did that, but it makes their job easier because everything looks the way they’re used to seeing it.”
Q: What kinds of requests do clients make that people probably don’t think about?
Liz: “Contract revisions, payment terms, invoice formatting, those things happen all the time. We work with clients instead of immediately saying no. If there’s a way to accommodate the request, we’ll figure it out.”
Q: You’re often the new face a client meets after signing. What’s that first interaction like?
Liz: “I think it’s actually kind of fun. It’s like a second first impression. Sales already has their thing with the client, and then it’s like, ‘here’s the office people,’ a new person to meet. I don’t think it’s ever hard. It’s actually fun getting to introduce that new part of the team.”
Q: What’s one thing you wish more event marketers knew?
Liz: “A lot of what we do event marketers might not even see. For example, if there’s travel on a show and their team is handling it, we’ll work with them to gather our crew’s info. That might come to the PM, who funnels it through our Labor Manager, or I’ll jump in myself, because at that point I’m their point of contact. They don’t know Melanie, but they know me. I’m the one who funnels it through and facilitates it.”
Q: After everything we’ve talked about, invoices, contracts, the sales handoff, how would you sum up Genuine Client Engagement in one sentence?
Liz: “It’s meeting people where they are. Every client communicates differently, and there’s always an option to meet them where they’re at. It’s the same with the people behind the scenes, the office folks, the payables teams, even our vendors. If we can make it easier for whoever we’re talking to, that’s the job.”
