BUDGETING FOR A TEAM EVENT
How much should you budget for a team development or leadership development event, seminar or workshop?
The answer really depends upon a few primary factors:
* Who is attending/participating?
* What are the results you seek?
MOST PEOPLE BUDGET THE WRONG WAY
Isn’t it a little bit funny that often budgets are allocated in a vacuum and are virtually always round numbers – $200/participant, $50/participant, $75/ participant, $250/participant, $100/participant, $1000/participant. Total budget $25,000, $10,000, $5000, $15,000, $30,000. It is rare to have a budget initially set at $298.23/participant or $347.12/participant or 198.55/participant. And when does someone randomly say, “I’ve got $12,845.33 for an event or $37,194.08.
And when we think about it, budgeting a round number in a vacuum makes absolutely NO SENSE
Is a million dollars a lot of money? For most of us, you bet it is. It’s a huge amount of money.
But if you are building a quarter billion dollar Jumbo jet, or a three billion dollar skyscraper, a million dollars is a modest amount compared to the whole. An amount of money is large or small amount only relative to that which you are comparing it.
And for pricing and budgeting, any amount of money must be compared to what you receive in exchange for it.
A hamburger for $95 is expensive. A beach front house on 5 acres in Maui for under $10,000,000 would be an unheard of bargain.
The same applies to events, seminars, activities and training.
An event that drives no results and just fills time is expensive at whatever price, because of the missed opportunity for a valuable outcome. Your time and your team’s time is worth too much for simple entertainment or just bonding activities.
You need to get value for your time and money, not just an activity together.
An event that transforms your team, solves problems, drives skills and ultimately drives real world results worth hundreds of thousands of dollars is a tremendous bargain if you need only invest hundreds of dollars for each participant to gain those skills.
WHO IS PARTICIPATING IN THE EVENT?
Who is attending makes a big impact on the value of the results.
Who are the participants? And how much is their time invested in attending worth?
Do you invest differently in an hourly worker at a modest wage vs. a highly skilled and highly compensated team member?
Both are valuable and both worth investing in, but the cost of their time is different.
* Send an hourly worker out for an afternoon of fun at the bowling alley and the cost was three hours times their hourly wage and someone else did the work they would have done while out.
* Send a salesperson to the bowling alley for the day and you lose all the sales they would have made that day (not to mention they lose all of those commissions they would have made).
Whatever you do when offsite together, even for just a few hours, must drive some results or value upon return to work. You do not want to make the mistake of sending your team on a bowling outing that costs you $100,000 worth of time and makes no impact on the team going forward.
You want to match your investment of time with the appropriate money to get a program that serves your team and drives real world results to provide a return on your investment (ROI) of time, effort and money.
WHAT ARE THE RESULTS YOU SEEK? WHAT ARE YOUR EVENT GOALS.
What do you intend to get out of the event? What are your goals beyond fun, connection and bonding?
What skills, tools, insights, abilities or behaviors will be the result. And more importantly, what are those results worth to you in terms of more revenue or time savings or cost savings going forward?
Every day that passes without new skills, without solved problems, without a more effective team, is a day of lost revenues and missed opportunities.
The total budget for your event is:
Cost & Value of your time in planning and sourcing your event
+ Cost & Value of your team’s time being offsite at the event
+ Cost of any transportation for your team
+ Cost of any food & beverages for your team
+ Cost of your event venue
+ Cost of any of your leaders or team organizing on event day
+ Cost of any event planning services utilized
+ Cost of any activity including materials, staff, setup and cleanup
+ Cost of anything you could have gained but didn’t include new skills to drive new revenue and save costs through improvements in efficiency & effectiveness
+ Investment in the event leader’s expertise, topics & contents
(the most important part which drives the results and the value)
Most people pay all of the costs and forget that the final investment often drives most of the value and pays for all of the other costs by driving outcomes after the event.
PLANNING FOR RESULTS
We suggest you use our event-planning-questionnaire to clarify goals and outcomes for yourself and your team.
As little as 15 minutes of thoughtful consideration of your team’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats, can help you determine what you really need and what it will be worth to invest in those outcomes.
Click here to access the event planning questionnaire.
Or call us at 1-800-446-4742 to discuss your goals.
Together we can plan and deliver an event that will drive your results and deliver massive value.