Tampa events organizers are always hindered by their inabilities to handle stressful situations with the event suppliers. Managing a team, reserving he event place and the caterer, and finding florists and other suppliers are easy enough. What makes the job hard is having to negotiate with these people and finding a middle ground where everyone can get what they want.
As an event organizer, your main job is to negotiate with suppliers and find the perfect location, food, flowers, photographers, videographers, etc. for your clients. Working under a strict budget, an event organizer has to make everything work for his/her client.
Be reasonable
You cannot ask the supplier to cut half the price of the amount of their products or their services. Be reasonable when you are asking for a discount. A couple of hundreds of dollars should be enough discount for a service. If you want to save on suppliers, you can purchase the products (like flowers) on your own and simply hired the services of a florist for the arrangement. But if you choose to hire the florist and have him/her provide the flowers, understand that it would cost a lot more.
Work on your strengths
Are you organizing the event for a big company? If so, use that as your leverage. If it’s a big company you are working for, you can tell the suppliers that you will promote their services and products during the event proper, so the guests will know about their businesses. That is one way of getting a better discount from the suppliers since a lot of them are looking for ways to promote and advertise their businesses. You can also negotiate where in the future, if they have an event to produce, you will also be providing a discount in exchange for a good deal now.
Build a good relationship
If you are an event organizer or you want to become one, you have to build a good relationship with your suppliers as early as now. Do not burn bridges and if there are arguments that cannot be avoided, make sure that you handle it with as much class and decency as you can. There are a lot of organizers and suppliers who bring their arguments to social media. Avoid doing that because it will not help your business and your reputation as an event organizer. Always work to build relationships rather than destroy them.