Plan, run and follow up a small event for clients and their guests.
Most client events end with a pleasant morning and nothing after it. The guests go home, the host means to write, and two weeks later the names on the sign-in sheet are hard to place. The work that makes an event worth running happens before and after it: most of your time goes on the invitations and the follow-up, and that is where the value is.
This project brings together three things you have already produced: your three event ideas from lesson 7.1, your one-page event plan from lesson 7.2, Plan and run a client event, and your decision about keeping clients connected from lesson 7.3. It is for your clients and the guests they bring. Expect about an hour of focused work spread over a few weeks, plus the event itself.
The brief is to run one small client event within the next four to six weeks. Invite a small group of clients, each with a plus-one, meaning a guest the client brings along. Run the event to your plan and talk to every guest. Follow up within two days. Then record attendance, guests, follow-ups sent, the contacts you made with the consent status of each new contact, and any referral that results. A small event is one small enough that you personally talk to every person there, which usually means between six and fifteen guests including plus-ones.
Start from the plan you wrote in lesson 7.2 and confirm the date, venue and topic. If you work in a regulated industry, get your firm's approval for the event and any materials before you send invitations, and allow time for that approval within your four to six weeks.
Invite clients who would find the topic useful and who are likely to bring a good guest. The referrers in your tracker from lesson 6.4, Build your referral system, are a natural place to start the list. Send each invitation personally, and name the kind of plus-one you have in mind, for example a practice manager from another clinic who might find it useful. Ask about dietary needs only if you are serving food. Tell guests how their contact details will be used. Send a reminder a few days before the event.
Arrive early and greet each person as they come in. Introduce guests to each other by what they have in common. If you plan to take photos to post, say so at the start and respect anyone who does not want to appear.
Keep your talk short and practical, with no selling, and leave plenty of time for discussion. Your main job on the day is to talk to every guest, not only the clients you know best. Ask plus-ones about their work and listen more than you talk. Note what each person mentioned, either after the event or discreetly during a break, so your follow-up can be personal.
Wei Ling (an invented example) runs an event aimed at clinic practice managers. She invited eight practice managers to a breakfast on handling the Monday rush, each with a plus-one. Six said yes and four of them brought a guest, so she planned for ten (6 + 4 = 10). The breakfast ran 75 minutes. She gave a 15-minute talk, then moved between the tables and had a proper conversation with all ten guests. Among other things, she noted that one guest's clinic was about to open a second branch.
Follow up within two days, while the event is fresh in everyone's mind. Each guest gets a thank-you with one personal line based on your conversation, plus anything you promised, such as your slides or a checklist. Each client who brought a guest gets a personal thank-you of their own. Guests who showed interest in your work get a short, separate message proposing a further conversation, with a reason centred on them.
Wei Ling wrote to the practice manager whose clinic was opening a second branch. Her message mentioned meeting on Tuesday and the second branch opening in March, and offered about 20 minutes in the next few weeks to talk through how other clinics handled bookings across two sites. That guest booked a meeting with her.
Before you add any guest to a CRM, a group or a mailing list, check that they have agreed to it.
Record the event in one place, in your tracker or a simple sheet:
who attended which clients brought guests, and who those guests were the follow-up sent to each person, and the date it went out each new contact and their consent status any referral or meeting that came from the event
Wei Ling's record showed ten attendees, four guests, ten thank-yous sent the next day, three guests who agreed to stay in touch, and one meeting booked with the clinic opening a second branch. She added the four guests to her referral tracker, each with the client who brought them as the referrer, so the thank-you and update process from module 6 would follow for each of those clients.
The project is finished when the event has actually happened, you have an attendance list, you have recorded which guests came and who brought them, your follow-up messages went out within two days, and every new contact is recorded with their consent status. Add two lines on what you would change next time. The activity below asks you to run the event and keep that record.
Run a small client event. Afterwards, record who attended, the guests they brought, the follow-ups you sent and the contacts you made, with each one's consent status.
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