Ask yourself: If my brand were a person, how would I describe them? Reliable? Caring? Trustworthy? Now ask yourself: How do I convey this brand to my clients? In addition to your logo, your website, and your social media, your team is one of the most important channels you can use to build your event company’s brand. When clients interact with your team members, are they seeing how reliable, caring, and trustworthy they are?
You might be wondering, “How do I create this dream team of loyal brand ambassadors for my business?” We sat down with Luna Tolunay, Owner of Fun Planners, to learn more about the different ways event business owners can cultivate a stellar team culture that shines outwardly as part of their brand.
Build trust within your team through transparency
If employees don’t trust the leadership team, your brand will pay the price. Clients can tell when there’s disorganization and bad blood behind the scenes. Mistrust from your team will ultimately lead to mistrust from your clients. The best way to be transparent and build trust within your team is to log and track everything.
Imagine a client wants a change at the last minute and a salesperson updates the contract, but they neglect to tell the warehouse team about the update. The wrong setup is delivered, and the client is unhappy. Your sales team blames your warehouse team for not being proactive, and your warehouse team blames your sales team for not communicating. To eliminate this finger pointing— which can hurt morale and be painfully obvious to clients— use event rental software with features such as an activity log to keep track of all actions different team members take.
When we asked Luna about how she uses smart technology to cultivate a transparent company culture, she told us, “Goodshuffle Pro helps with transparency because everything is tracked and logged, including all client conversations. If an issue does come up, it’s really easy to go back in time and see when something was changed [in a contract], or when a note was taken, and find out exactly what went wrong. You’re not finger pointing; you’re finding out where something went awry so you can solve it for the future.” With this approach, the issue is quickly fixed and the whole team is better off.
Create SOPs for your staff to build a consistent client experience
Your employees can only be proper brand ambassadors if you give them clear cut procedures to follow with clients. Empower your business to be consistent across the board with your new best friend: standardized operating procedures (SOPs). SOPs reduce the ability for team members to go rogue with tasks because they clearly list instructions for all processes of your business (think: how to build a quote, interact with customers, handle certain on-site activities, etc.).
Storing SOPs, event-specific documents, and diagrams in one location, such as organization-wide event rental software, allows everyone on your team to know 1) exactly what needs to be done and how, and 2) where to quickly and easily access what they need. This makes onboarding and training new employees significantly easier, as expectations are clearly defined. Think of it this way: When you train your software, you spend less time training your team because the software does so much of the heavy lifting.
At Fun Planners, Luna has built out a training manual with multiple SOPs that address their processes step by step for every situation. Additionally, she’s focused on cultivating consistency within her team to build their brand. Luna says, “Our clients always get the same experience [with our company], regardless of which staff member they get. For the brand side of things, we’re always in uniform for a consistent look, and the culture is consistent as well. Our team knows that we put customers first, and we are always friendly and helpful on the job site.”
Enhance the human element of your business with software
What’s great about smart event rental software is that it doesn’t replace the human element— it enhances it. How are you showing up for your team? Some great ways to foster team connection are:
- Having team huddles to connect and reflect
- Encouraging clear communication
- Creating a space where your team can speak up to get ahead of issues
At Fun Planners, an event report is created after each event the team does. Luna reviews the report in a small meeting post-event, where they discuss the good and the bad to see where they can improve. These reports are stored in Goodshuffle Pro, so that the team can easily access them when putting on similar or repeat events in the future. By referring to their past reports, they’re able to focus on improving their processes and growing the business.
Are you ready to build your brand?
What comes to mind for customers when they think of you and your business? Build the brand you want to showcase by starting at the team-level. If employees love their jobs, this will shine through in the work they do and in their interactions with clientele. Don’t wait to cultivate consistency and transparency— use smart event rental software to build your brand through your team today.
Fun Planners has been providing Florida with the finest entertainment, equipment, and services for over 15 years. They started out as a small Casino company in the 1980’s, providing only the best and highest quality equipment and staff. Over time (mostly by request from clients), they have expanded their services into many other areas.
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