It may seem like a no-brainer, but how you communicate with your sales team ultimately sets the tone for your working relationship and how you collaborate with them across projects, events, in-person, and remotely. If you're anything like me, you're also not necessarily a sales person but you are passionate about the project(s) at hand and want to help to ensure everyone succeeds. In a sense you can become a key tool for the sales team should you initiate positive, open-ended collaboration (and communication). The way to start this collaboration, specifically for events, will be described in more detail through different ticket types, creating a diverse audience, and managing your meetings with the sales team.

Ticket Types

Selling different types of tickets is twofold:

First, you have tiered ticket pricing. In this case, tiered ticket pricing is described as set ticket prices according to the number of days to the event, amount of event information available or published, and pricing that benefits group bookings. While each item here may change the event's projected budget, it can provide many incentives for attendees to purchase tickets early on and for companies to purchase a block of tickets rather than one-off tickets for their employees. The goal of tiered ticket pricing is to simply add to your audience.

Next, there are tickets sold to different groups of people. Simply put, you want to create a room of people who are able to create meaningful connections and conversations with one another. This ultimately creating a diverse audience, but more on audiences in the next section.

Diverse Audience = Better Event

It’s all quite simple: By selling tickets to various groups, you're inadvertently creating a diverse audience. With a diverse audience, you create a much better event for everyone involved. Better isn’t all-encompassing enough, with a diverse audience an event becomes more interesting and advantageous for all those who attend.

Specifically in the world of tech and continued-education events, I would assume that every sales person working in the sector is aware that a diverse audience is equally as important to the content of the event itself. Without a range of professionals, companies, volunteers, and students, the event may fall flat. One of the most enticing elements of any event is the ability to network, meet others, and create or find new opportunities. If nearly every person at the event was at the same professional level (for example, a director in the midst of their career or a software engineer just beginning their career), there's very little chance for them to grow or learn or even find new projects to work on from fellow attendees alongside the speakers and sponsors at the event.

To help mitigate the risk of not obtaining a diverse audience for your next event, there’s a simple solution to get and keep the ball rolling: your sales team! Let’s jump into how you can help them and vice versa.

Meeting Management

Having a regular, structured meeting between you, as the event manager, and the sales team will only benefit your event. It creates an open line of communication, an opportunity for each party to provide/receive updates, and a chance to get creative with how tickets are sold. 

A regular meeting with even a single sales person on the team can provide ample opportunity for you to become the ultimate marketer for the event. It means you are available to assist in delivering information to a potential customer or future client, you ensure that whatever is promised to sponsors is achievable without ruffling feathers, and (most importantly) you can meet customers/attendees/sponsors before the actual event giving them an key person to bring any concerns to during  the event.

In my experience, the “post-sales handoff” functioned wonderfully after being in someway involved with the sales team. The customer already knew they had more than one person to reach out to in case of further questions or concerns and the customer usually appreciated receiving above and beyond service between the sales team and the on-site event team.

While this may seem strange to some, I’ve had a great experience with past sales teams. We collaborated beautifully and would work together again at the drop of a hat.

Conclusion

Overall, the best thing you can do is to be present and available to help your sales team make their sales to new and returning customers of all types. By following the above points and information, you'll become a pseudo salesperson or the "ultimate marketer" for your event and an ally to any sales team. 

At the end of the day, you know your event (or project) best. In whichever way you can assist your sales team, never promise something more than you can handle to help make a sale. Keep additional features, promises, etc. manageable and doable. This will ensure each customer is satisfied and wants to return for future events, projects, etc.