Supplier Corner
November 2009
Wouldn’t it be nice if all your events were Superb Live Events?
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| Superb Live Events management team: (left to right) Dawn Evans, Director; Andy Paterson, Director; Nigel Empson, Operations Manager |
Motivation . Recognition. Reward. Retention. Anyone involved in direct sales will recognise the power of those four words - and nowhere are they more effectively applied than through the rallies, conferences and meetings that underpin the ongoing development of a direct sales business.
However, to anyone who’s also been directly involved in organising these events, other contrasting words may also spring to mind. Pressure? Time? Resource? Cost?
So when you need to create effective events, you’ll recognise that you need people who can offset the pressure; who can maintain and keep to time schedules; who can manage themselves (and others) efficiently and do it all effectively from within existing budgets.
Clearly a primary need would be for a viable and competent partner who can provide hard evidence of capability in all those areas; who can complement your in-house resources and who can demonstrate this through the work they already do across a variety of sectors, including direct sales.
Superb Live Events has been in the events business for over 15 years, working from rural offices near Lichfield in Staffordshire, UK. From there, the small but perfectly formed team have created superb live events throughout the UK and Europe for audiences ranging from simple seminars for 20 through conferences for up to 700 and roadshows which have reached over 7,000 people.
As DSA supplier members, Superb Live Events wear their hearts on their sleeves when it comes to their brand and nowhere is this philosophy more evident in the decision taken over five years ago to rebrand the company, as Director Dawn Evans explains, “We were previously called The HUB, hip and trendy at the time, but it didn’t really say a lot about what we did - so our rebrand was designed to provide the strongest guarantee we could offer to our clients. And it’s not buried in the small print somewhere, Superb Live Events is written large on everything we do, with our gold star logo representing a job exceptionally well done.”
Co-Director Andy Paterson adds, “Successful achievers are the ones who focus on getting the detail right; who recognise what their individual customers actually want (often before the customers themselves have done so) and then, with quiet efficiency, deliver a solution to match or exceed those expectations.
“There’s a current, wryly amusing trend to deliver business communications in important sounding technobabble, but we respond to this with the simple fact that we’re not superhumans capable of traversing the globe at a moment’s notice to leverage key performance objectives on behalf of strategic event partners. We’re just normal people, doing a job we’re exceptionally good at and delivering a rewarding experience for everyone involved as a result.
“Our clients appreciate our approachability and understanding; they rely on our expertise and capabilities. They trust us to deliver and our scalability, coupled with a low cost base and our own personal commitment, means we can fulfil a wide range of briefs and objectives. If you take a look at the case studies on our website at http://www.superbliveevents.com, they really do the talking for us - and the results speak for themselves.
They do indeed. As Hellen Priest, Senior HR & Event Manager of Forever Living Products says, “There’s something very reassuring about SLE’s approach. We all know that the success of any event depends on a number of elements working closely together: venue, content, technical support and logistics – but it’s the way they’re knitted together that creates a truly successful event. SLE’s service embraces all these areas holistically and includes free venue sourcing along with detailed working schedules for both the preproduction and onsite stages of any event, which are a great help.
“They anticipate our needs and have normally fulfilled them before we’ve had to ask. Inevitable changes are always met with good humour and are readily absorbed – and they always take a proactive approach. We’ve developed such a rapport over the past few years that I know I can leave them to get on with what they’re good at.”
Capability is clearly an important element of successful delivery, but how do Superb Live Events address the issues of budgets and cost? Dawn again, “We take the view that profit is a result, not an objective, so our business focus is on fulfilling a requirement to such an extent that the client has no reason to go elsewhere for their next event.
“We know budgets are tight, so on a tactical level we work proactively to squeeze more value wherever we can, typified by a recent event, where we recognised that if the client re-engineered their conference programme they could save over eight per cent of their venue budget by making better
use of fewer rooms at their chosen venue.
“In respect of the overall budget, we strive to manage this on a client’s behalf and to also provide transparent, detailed and dynamic spreadsheets which can be updated continually during the life of a project. This keeps everyone cost-aware,facilitates approvals and works effectively for the commissioning client, their finance department and any other interested parties.
“On a strategic level, we find that as we develop relationships with clients, they’re as keen as we are to establish longer term cost benefits. They’ll take us on a test drive first, perhaps with a smaller event, and as a result of that success we’ll get a brief for the next one. Subsequently, we’ll then seek to negotiate a contract that secures a specified discount plan for the client in return for their longer-term commitment to us. So far, it’s proved to be an innovative win-win business model and we’d like the opportunity to share it with other DSA members.”
In summary, if you want them to, Superb Live Events can:
- Source venues (a FREE service)
- Develop event content
- Design build and install sets and staging
- Provide failsafe technical equipment and support
- Plan and implement logistics
- Provide entertainment
- Monitor budgets
- Measure success
