Corporate clients and procurement

Corporate events are bought by people who must defend the decision to someone else, through processes built to reduce risk. Learn who the real buyers are, what a procurement-ready planner package contains, how to time your marketing to budget cycles, and how to price for payment terms.

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Corporate clients and procurement.

A couple hires a planner with their heart.

A company hires a planner with a purchase order, after three people have checked whether you are a safe choice.

The corporate events planners actually win.

Small and mid-sized planning studios rarely win the national sales conference of a large bank.

They win the events that are too big for an executive assistant to run alone and too small for an agency retainer.

Three people, three different worries.

Most corporate purchases involve at least three roles, even in a small company.

You must market to all three.

The procurement-ready vendor package.

Have this package ready as a single PDF and a folder of separate files before any corporate buyer asks.

Sending it within an hour of the request tells the gatekeeper you are an established business.

Marketing to corporate buyers.

Corporate buyers search differently from couples.

They search for the job to be done: holiday party planner Toronto, corporate retreat planning Muskoka, team offsite venues near Pearson.

Worked example: pricing for payment terms.

Companies often pay on terms, such as 30 or 60 days after invoice, and may refuse deposits altogether.

That is a marketing issue as well as a finance one, because the terms you accept shape the price you can afford to quote.

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

What you will be able to do

• Identify the sponsor, the coordinator and the gatekeeper in a corporate event purchase
• Assemble a procurement-ready vendor package with the documents buyers ask for
• Calculate the cash-flow effect of corporate payment terms and build it into your pricing

A couple hires a planner with their heart. A company hires a planner with a purchase order, after three people have checked whether you are a safe choice. If your marketing speaks only to the heart, it never reaches the people who sign.

The corporate events planners actually win

Small and mid-sized planning studios rarely win the national sales conference of a large bank. They win the events that are too big for an executive assistant to run alone and too small for an agency retainer. Those events have a pattern.

Choose one or two of these to lead with. A planner who markets as the holiday party specialist for professional firms of 50 to 200 people is easier to remember, and easier to justify internally, than one who does everything.

Three people, three different worries

Most corporate purchases involve at least three roles, even in a small company. You must market to all three.

• The sponsor owns the budget and the outcome. A director of marketing or the head of HR. Their worry: will this make me look good, and is it worth the money?
• The coordinator does the legwork. Often an executive assistant or an office manager. Their worry: will this planner make more work for me, and will they answer my emails?
• The gatekeeper approves the vendor. Procurement, finance or legal. Their worry: is this vendor insured, registered, compliant and on acceptable terms?

Your website and proposals usually speak to the sponsor. Your responsiveness speaks to the coordinator. Your paperwork speaks to the gatekeeper. Lose any one of them and the deal stalls.

The procurement-ready vendor package

Have this package ready as a single PDF and a folder of separate files before any corporate buyer asks. Sending it within an hour of the request tells the gatekeeper you are an established business.

A vendor package checklist you can copy:

• Legal business name, operating name, address and the name of the person who signs contracts
• Your business number and HST registration number, if you are registered
• A certificate of insurance for commercial general liability, with the limit stated, and willingness to name the client as additional insured on request
• A WSIB clearance certificate if you have WSIB coverage, or a note on your status
• Your written accessibility customer service policy
• Your privacy policy and a short note on how you handle attendee data
• Banking details on letterhead for direct deposit, provided only through the client’s secure process
• Standard payment terms and your deposit schedule
• Two corporate references with permission to contact
• A one-page capability statement

The capability statement is the corporate cousin of your planner sheet. In one page: what you do, the event types and sizes you handle, three past corporate events with one line each, your team, your insurance and your contact details. Write it in the plain, factual tone of a business document. No mood boards, no script fonts.

Marketing to corporate buyers

Corporate buyers search differently from couples. They search for the job to be done: holiday party planner Toronto, corporate retreat planning Muskoka, team offsite venues near Pearson. They look for evidence that you have done it before for a company like theirs, and they look on LinkedIn to see whether you are real.

• Build a corporate services page on your website for each event type you lead with, with a short event story, a guest count and the client’s industry, even if you cannot name the client
• Write a short guide that answers a coordinator’s real question, such as how to plan a holiday party for 120 people in eight weeks
• Keep a complete LinkedIn profile for the studio and for each founder, with the same capability statement in the About section
• After every corporate event, ask the coordinator for a LinkedIn recommendation or a written reference. Coordinators move between companies and take good vendors with them

Lantern & Lane found that its first three corporate clients all came through one executive assistant who changed jobs twice. Marco now sends every corporate coordinator a short note each September asking about holiday plans. It is the most profitable email the studio sends all year.

Worked example: pricing for payment terms

Couples pay deposits. Companies often pay on terms, such as 30 or 60 days after invoice, and may refuse deposits altogether. That is a marketing issue as well as a finance one, because the terms you accept shape the price you can afford to quote.

Take an illustrative client appreciation evening with a $38,000 total budget, of which $6,500 is the planning fee and $31,500 is vendor costs the studio pays and re-bills.

The studio carries $31,500 of vendor costs for up to four months. On a line of credit at an illustrative 9 percent a year, four months costs about $945, which is 14.5 percent of the planning fee. Most planners never see that number until the overdraft arrives.

You have three options, and you should choose before you quote, not after:

1. Ask for a deposit that covers vendor deposits, explained as standard for events with third-party costs. Many companies agree when it is in the first proposal
2. Have vendors contract and invoice the client directly, so you carry only your own fee
3. Price the terms in, by adding a financing or administration amount to the fee itself, shown as part of an all-in price rather than as a surprise line

State your terms in the vendor package and the proposal. Buyers expect to negotiate terms. They do not expect a vendor to raise them after the purchase order is cut.

In Canada and the GTA

The GTA’s corporate market is concentrated in financial services, professional firms, technology, pharmaceuticals and the head offices along the 401 and 404 corridors and in downtown Toronto. Budget cycles matter more than seasons. Many companies set the following year’s event budgets in the fall, and holiday parties for December are often booked between August and October. A planner who markets holiday party services in November has usually missed the year. Summer is the season for offsites, client golf days and patio events, and spring is busy with conferences and awards evenings.

Invoices and HST. Corporate finance teams reject invoices that are missing information. The CRA sets out what an invoice must show to support a business’s input tax credit claims. For sales of $100 to $499.99, include an indication of the GST/HST charged and your GST/HST registration number. For $500 or more, also include the buyer’s name, a brief description of the services and the payment terms. In Ontario, show the total HST rate of 13 percent rather than federal and provincial parts. If you are not yet registered, the CRA’s small supplier rule lets you stay unregistered while your worldwide taxable supplies are $30,000 or less in any single calendar quarter and over the last four consecutive quarters. Once you pass the threshold, you must register within 29 days. Corporate work can move a new planner toward that threshold quickly, so ask an accountant how your invoicing model affects it before you take on a large event. The CRA’s RC4022 guide has the details.

Insurance and safety paperwork. Corporate and institutional buyers commonly ask for a certificate of insurance before they issue a purchase order, and some ask to be named as an additional insured. Ask your broker how quickly they can issue a certificate for a specific event, because a request that arrives on Thursday for a Monday offsite is normal in this market. If you hire staff for events, ask the WSIB whether you need coverage, since some buyers will ask for a clearance certificate.

Accessibility. Buyers increasingly ask for an accessibility policy. Under the AODA’s customer service standard, every organization in Ontario with one or more employees must have accessible customer service policies, welcome service animals and support persons, train staff and volunteers, and provide information in accessible formats on request. Organizations with 50 or more employees must also document their policies and keep training records. A one-page written policy, even if you are a small studio, answers the procurement question in seconds. See Ontario’s accessibility rules for businesses.

Attendee data. Corporate events often involve guest lists, dietary needs and sometimes accessibility requirements. PIPEDA’s principles of limiting collection, safeguards and limiting retention apply. Collect only what the event needs, store it securely, and delete it when the event is closed out. Say so in your vendor package.

Public-sector and association buyers. Municipalities, school boards, hospitals, universities and the Province buy events too, but they follow formal procurement rules and usually post larger opportunities publicly. The Province’s procurement agency says businesses can register for free on the Ontario Tenders Portal to find and bid on open government opportunities. Most municipalities and institutions run their own bid portals. Read the full bid document before you respond, and answer every mandatory requirement, because an incomplete submission is usually disqualified without discussion.

Outreach. Emails to corporate contacts are commercial electronic messages under CASL. The business-to-business exemption applies only where the two organizations already have a relationship. For cold outreach, rely on conspicuously published addresses where your message relates to the person’s role, or on business cards exchanged at events, and always include identification and an unsubscribe mechanism. The track on selling to corporate clients covers prospecting in depth.

This is general information, not legal or tax advice. Check the official sources, an accountant or a lawyer for your own situation.

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)