Account management and repeat business

The real value of a corporate client appears in the second, third and tenth event, not the first. Learn to calculate what an account is worth, write an account plan, report results after every event, and keep the relationship alive when your contact changes jobs.

Read the transcript

Account management and repeat business.

Winning a corporate client is expensive.

You researched them, sent a sequence of messages, wrote a proposal, survived onboarding and delivered an event.

What an account is worth.

A corporate client rarely runs just one event.

A mid-sized firm may hold a holiday party, a summer team day, a client appreciation evening, a sales kick-off and several smaller lunches and launches.

The one-page account plan.

Write a plan for every corporate client worth more than a set amount a year, and review it each quarter.

A template you can copy:

The post-event report.

Your champion has to explain to someone senior whether the event was worth the money.

Do that work for them.

A rhythm of contact.

Accounts drift when the only contact is a quote request.

Set a rhythm and put it in your calendar:

Growing into other departments.

In larger organizations, events are bought by several departments that rarely talk to each other.

HR runs the holiday party, sales runs client evenings, marketing runs launches, and each regional office has its own budget.

That is the lesson. The worksheet and the quiz are just below this video.

What you will be able to do

• Calculate the annual and lifetime value of a corporate account
• Write a one-page account plan with the client's event calendar, people and growth opportunities
• Produce a post-event report that makes rebooking the obvious decision

Winning a corporate client is expensive. You researched them, sent a sequence of messages, wrote a proposal, survived onboarding and delivered an event. If you then wait for them to call next year, you have paid full price for one sale. The vendors who thrive in corporate work treat the first event as the start of an account, and manage it on purpose.

What an account is worth

A corporate client rarely runs just one event. A mid-sized firm may hold a holiday party, a summer team day, a client appreciation evening, a sales kick-off and several smaller lunches and launches. Your first booking is usually one of these. The account is all of them, for as many years as you keep the relationship.

A worked example from Lantern & Lane, the illustrative west-end Toronto studio. In year one, an engineering firm booked only its holiday party, for $24,000. Marco managed the account deliberately. The numbers are illustrative.

Three years produced $114,500 in bookings from one client that cost about 40 hours to win. If the account holds at year-three levels for two more years, five years total $226,500. That number is what you are protecting every time you answer an email from this client, and it is what you can afford to invest in keeping them.

The one-page account plan

Write a plan for every corporate client worth more than a set amount a year, and review it each quarter. A template you can copy:

• The client: industry, size, offices, fiscal year-end and how they buy, including approval limits and procurement rules.
• The people: your champion, the decision maker, procurement and accounts payable contacts, and anyone else who attends or influences events. Note what each cares about.
• The event calendar: every event the client runs in a year, who runs it, who supplies it now and when the decision is made.
• History: what you have delivered, budgets, results, feedback and anything that went wrong.
• Opportunities: the next event you could take on, and the one idea that would improve an event you already run.
• Risks: a champion likely to leave, a merger, a budget cut, a competitor already supplying another department.
• Next actions: three dated actions for the coming quarter.

The post-event report

Your champion has to explain to someone senior whether the event was worth the money. Do that work for them. Within a week of every event, send a short report the champion can forward unchanged.

1. Headline results: attendance against RSVPs, timings met, and anything the client set as a goal, such as client meetings booked or survey scores.
2. Budget: the approved budget, the final cost and any variances explained in one line each.
3. Feedback: a few comments from attendees or the client’s team, quoted with permission, and survey results if there was a survey.
4. Photos: eight to ten strong images, with the licence terms the client needs for internal or external use.
5. Lessons and recommendations: what you would change next time, honestly, including what went wrong.
6. Next year: a suggested date, the decision deadline and an early booking option.

The report does more selling than any proposal. It shows the decision maker results, it gives the champion credit, and it puts next year’s date on the table while everyone is still pleased.

A rhythm of contact

Accounts drift when the only contact is a quote request. Set a rhythm and put it in your calendar:

• After each event: the report within a week, and a thank-you to the champion’s manager if appropriate.
• Each quarter: a short check-in call or coffee with the champion. Ask what is coming up, not what you can sell.
• Before each decision window: a reminder two months ahead of the date the client usually decides, with a proposed plan.
• Once a year: a review meeting with the champion and, if possible, the decision maker, covering the year’s events, results and next year’s calendar.

Growing into other departments

In larger organizations, events are bought by several departments that rarely talk to each other. HR runs the holiday party, sales runs client evenings, marketing runs launches, and each regional office has its own budget. Your best route into the next department is a warm introduction from the one you already serve. Ask for it directly, after a good result, not in the middle of planning.

A script you can adapt: “Thank you again for the kind words about the party. You mentioned the sales team runs a client evening each spring. Would you be comfortable introducing me to whoever organizes it? I would send them a short note and our report from your event, so they can see how we work.” Then follow through within two days, and tell your champion how the conversation went. Champions like to see their introductions treated with care.

When your champion leaves

The most common way to lose a corporate account is not a bad event. It is a champion who changes jobs and a replacement who has a favourite vendor of their own. Protect against it by building relationships with more than one person, sometimes called multi-threading. Meet the decision maker at the annual review, know the assistant who handles logistics, and copy a second contact on reports with the champion’s agreement.

When a champion does leave, act within a week. Ask them for an introduction to their replacement, send the replacement your account summary and last event report, and offer a short meeting to explain how the events have run. Then stay in touch with the champion at their new employer. A good champion who moves to a new company is one of the warmest leads you will ever have.

Formalize the relationship

Once an account books several events a year, propose a simple framework: a master services agreement or standing terms, agreed rates or a rate card for common services, and a named account contact on your side. It reduces paperwork for procurement, makes each booking faster and makes it harder for a competitor to step in.

In Canada and the GTA

Staying in touch under CASL. Once a company has bought from you, CASL gives you an existing business relationship based on that purchase, which supports implied consent to send commercial electronic messages for two years from the purchase. An inquiry creates a shorter relationship of six months. Each new booking restarts the two-year period, which is one more reason to keep accounts active. In addition, CASL’s business-to-business exemption covers messages from your employees to employees of an organization you already have a relationship with, when the message concerns that organization’s activities, such as next year’s holiday party. When the exemption applies, the consent, identification and unsubscribe requirements do not, but including your business details and an unsubscribe link anyway is a good habit. See the CRTC’s CASL FAQ.

When a champion moves. Your relationship is with the organization, not the person. When a champion joins a new employer, the new company has no relationship with you yet, so the business-to-business exemption does not cover it. A personal message congratulating them on the new role, with no offer in it, is not a commercial message, because none of its purposes is to encourage them to buy. Once you want to promote your services to the new employer, rely on an address they have conspicuously published in a way that relates to their role, a business card, or their express consent, and include full identification and an unsubscribe mechanism.

Testimonials from corporate clients. Post-event feedback is valuable marketing, but many companies restrict employees from endorsing suppliers publicly. Ask the champion for permission before quoting anyone, and say exactly where the quote will appear. The Canadian Code of Advertising Standards requires testimonials to reflect the genuine, reasonably current opinion of the person giving them, based on adequate experience of the service. Refresh corporate testimonials every couple of years and remove those from contacts who have left, unless they agree to remain quoted.

Attendee information between events. Repeat accounts tempt you to keep last year’s guest lists, dietary needs and accessibility requests for next year. Under PIPEDA’s principles, keep personal information only as long as it is needed for the identified purpose, protect it with appropriate safeguards and be ready to explain your practices. Agree with the client whether you hold the data between events or return it, and delete what you do not need. Read the OPC’s summary of PIPEDA’s principles. This is general information, not legal advice.

Payment terms and HST. Larger accounts often push for longer payment terms. Ontario’s HST rate is 13%, and corporate finance teams expect your registration number, a brief description, their name and your payment terms on invoices of $500 or more. Agree payment terms once, in the master services agreement, rather than event by event. Put the client’s purchase order number on every invoice, and confirm early in each fiscal year whether a new purchase order is needed.

The GTA account calendar

Many GTA companies set next year’s budgets in September and October, which makes the fall annual review the most important meeting of the year: it is where your events get written into next year’s plan. Holiday party decisions are usually made between August and October, sales kick-offs in the fall for January, and summer team days in the spring. Large organizations also review supplier arrangements every few years, sometimes through a formal re-tender, so ask your champion when the next review is due and make sure your post-event reports have built the evidence you will need to win it again. Avoid scheduling annual reviews in the last two weeks of December or in August, when many decision makers are away and approvals stall until they return.

Worksheet

Download the worksheet and complete it for your own business, using Lantern & Lane as the model where it helps. Keep it with your marketing plan. It takes about 10 minutes.

Download the worksheet (PDF)