The Question Corporate Event Buyers Forget to Ask
Many corporate event programmes fail because of something incredibly simple... nobody asks the right question at the beginning.
People think and ask about logistics, costs, dates, venues, catering, AV, but they almost never ask the question that would change everything: "What do we actually want this event to achieve?"
But asking this question needs to also be done in a specific and measurable way aligned with stakeholders, rather than in some vague and aspirational manner.
The Question Nobody Asks
An example of what happens in many companies:
Marketing wants more leads, HR wants better engagement, Sales wants to grow their pipeline, and Finance wants clear ROI. What does the event organiser want? Most of the time, they want execution without drama. Afterall, it has been regularly voted the fifth most stressful job in the world.
These departments aren't necessarily aligned, and because of this, they can often find themselves in conflict. Not what anyone wants.
A marketing-driven event might optimise for volume (as many attendees as possible), and a sales-driven event might optimise for quality (high-value prospects only), whereas an HR-driven event might optimise for experience (memorable, feel-good moments).
All three are valid outcomes from an event, but it’s extremely difficult to design for all three simultaneously without trade-offs, and that’s where conflict can invariably occur as different departments begin competing against one another or pulling in a slightly different direction.
So what happens? At best, the event becomes a compromise, but at worst, there’s no clear direction or identity, and it fails to deliver for everyone, including the attendees. If it tries to be everything to everyone, it cannot deliver on anybody's core objective. Everyone walks away either partially satisfied or completely dissatisfied and frustrated. And, nothing meaningful is measured. What a waste.
The Real Cost of Not Asking
This happens day in and day out in organisations across the world, even in some extremely well-run organisations. The consequences can vary, but here are some common costs:
Time: Hours spent in planning meetings, debating logistics because nobody knows what success looks like.
Money: Budget allocated inefficiently because there's no clear priority. You end up spending on nice-to-haves instead of need-to-haves.
Opportunity: You miss the chance to create something that actually delivers measurable value to your business.
Credibility: When the event doesn't deliver (because it wasn't designed to deliver anything specific), the event programme loses credibility with leadership.
This plays out hundreds, if not thousands, of times across many organisations. The same event can run for 10 years, with nobody ever asking why it exists or what it's actually supposed to do.
The One Question That Changes Everything
"What measurable business outcome does this event need to deliver?"
Notice that the question is not "what would be nice to happen," or "what might we get out of this event," but what needs to happen?
Is it:
Lead generation? (Then measure cost per lead and quality of leads)
Relationship building? (Then measure engagement and relationship depth post-event)
Employee engagement? (Then measure participation and retention)
Product launch? (Then measure awareness and purchase intent)
Thought leadership? (Then measure brand perception shift and media pickup)
Something else entirely?
One outcome that is clear, measurable, and known by all before you book the venue. Ideally, you would also be sharing these objectives with the venue as a trusted partner.
Why Corporate Event Buyers Don't Ask This Question
There may be various reasons why this question goes unasked:
1. It's uncomfortable.
Asking "what does this event actually need to achieve?" forces you to admit that some of your events might not have a clear answer, or that different stakeholders want different things. Not only is it a hard conversation, but if you’re an event planner and you start questioning the value of doing events, you may start to worry about whether you’ll have a job. But that’s reductionist thinking rather than the alternative, which is around how you can do things better and ensure events are maintained and even grow in volume because of what they then begin to deliver with clear, agreed-upon objectives.
2. It changes the conversation.
Once you define a specific outcome, you can be held accountable for it. Many event organisers prefer ambiguity because it's safer. See the previous explanation to understand why that may be. Whilst it’s human nature, it’s often a counter-intuitive aspect of human nature, rooted in self-preservation, but more likely to lead to the opposite.
3. It requires alignment across departments.
Marketing, Sales, HR, and Finance have to agree on what success looks like. That can get very messy in some organisations. It can also take time and require negotiation. Not everyone has the patience or will for that, and so silos and problems persist.
4. It's not how we've always done it.
"We've run this event for 10 years" may be a reason to continue doing something, but it’s not a good reason. Yes, the status quo is comfortable, but asking hard questions about why means potentially changing things.
5. Measurement is hard.
Once you define an outcome, you have to measure whether you achieved it. Many event programmes don't have the infrastructure or discipline to do this well.
On the face of it, these are all valid reasons, but they are all reasons why many corporate event programmes don’t deliver the value they should.
What Happens When You Ask the Question
This is a real example from a long-time ago, a previous life perhaps, way back in 2001, yet the pattern still remains true today. Progress hey?
I was brought in to help a Big Four professional services firm think about their UK training programme. They were spending £7.5M annually across a ‘preferred list’ of 120+ venues for their UK learning & development programme (training events).
The first question I asked: "What does this training programme need to achieve?"
The answer wasn't as simple as the younger, more naive version of me expected it would be. I learned that different business units wanted very different things, and this could pose no end of roadblocks and internal strife. However, after some uncomfortable conversations over a number of months, we got there:
Participants need to acquire specific competencies (measurable through assessments)
The organisation needed consistency in how training was delivered (measurable through quality metrics)
Attendees required a consistent brand experience (measurable through feedback)
The business needed efficiency in how training was purchased (measurable through cost per participant and programme outcomes)
Once we had clarity around these outcomes, everything changed for the better and not just for the client, but for the supply chain.
We didn't need 120 venues, many of whom went to the effort of negotiating a preferential rate every year on the basis that the client spent £7.5 million a year on external training, yet some of them only received one or two bookings at most. I immediately recognised this was a problem and had an impact on the clients’ reputation in the market. Not only their reputation, but ours as a venue sourcing agency. After much deliberation with the procurement team and the various internal departments, we agreed that we needed 4 preferred venues for the bulk of the programme, with whom we would negotiate a minimum volume of events in exchange for more favourable rates. Outside of those venues, we would have a reserve list of 8-10 venues that would pick up training courses that could not be delivered within the 4 preferred venues, which helped create standardised setups and delivery models.
We didn't need huge variability and flexibility in vendor selection, because what we needed was partnerships with vendors who understood our objectives.
We also didn't need to waste so much time and effort negotiating in the market every year, or with thepreferred vendors, as we could build longer-term agreements with those partners that were aligned to our outcomes.
The result: 25% cost reduction, improved participant experience, stronger vendor relationships, and measurable evidence that training was actually delivering competency development, and happier trainers.
However, none of that happens without asking the question at the beginning.
The Strategic Meetings Management Framework
This is at the core of what strategic meetings management (SMM) actually is, albeit SMM hadn’t been “invented” or codified as early as 2001, with the formal term and framework defined around 2003-2004 by the Global Business Travel Association (GBTA).
Most corporate event programmes don’t fail because people are lazy or incompetent. They fail because there is no shared framework for how meetings and events are planned, sourced, delivered, and measured.
Strategic Meetings Management (SMM) gives you that framework, and it has two parts:
What you manage – the nine core components of an events programme
How mature you are – the four stages of the SMM maturity journey
Both of these matter when looking at meetings and events across the whole organisation. You can’t claim to be “strategic” if you’re only strong in two or three components, and you can’t reach the higher stages of maturity if you’ve never defined what the programme is supposed to manage in the first place.
For the purposes of this article, you don’t need to memorise the model. It’s enough to know that:
A mature SMM programme manages strategy, policy, data, sourcing, delivery, risk, and spend as one system.
Many organisations are still somewhere between ad‑hoc events and partial consolidation, not truly strategic or optimised.
This is why the question corporate event buyers forget to ask is so important.
What This Means for Your Event Spend
If your organisation is spending millions on events annually — and most large corporates are — the question becomes urgent.
Are those millions buying you outcomes, or are they buying you events?
There’s clearly a difference, and you know which one those millions should be buying.
An outcome‑focused event programme is designed, executed, and measured around specific business results. It costs what it needs to cost to deliver those results, and you can justify every pound because you know what it’s buying.
A tradition‑focused programme runs the same way every year because “we’ve always done it.” It costs what it costs, and you hope it delivers something, but you don’t really know what.
One is defensible to the CFO, and the other one isn’t.
Starting the Conversation
If you’re a corporate event or travel buyer reading this and this appears new, here are some steps you can take:
Step 1: Pick one event. (People often picked the biggest, most expensive event. The one that’s been running longest.)
Step 2: Ask the question: “What measurable business outcome does this event need to deliver?”
Step 3: Get the key stakeholders in a room and make them answer it. Force agreement.
Step 4: Design the next iteration of the event to deliver that outcome.
Step 5: Measure it.
You’ll probably discover that the event isn’t currently designed to deliver the outcome you’ve identified. That’s fine. Well, it isn’t really, but it is in the sense that now you know and can do something about it.
Next year, you can design differently, and then start asking the same question across the wider programme.
This is one way for you to begin moving from a collection of events to a strategic meetings management approach, one decision at a time, and one event at a time. It’s not how you’d continue to apply the methodology across your entire event programmes, but it’s a starting point.
The Real Opportunity
I’ve learned that many corporate event programmes are being run because nobody ever took the time to ask the foundational question and get alignment around the answer. It’s important to note that events are not considered “sub-optimial” because the people running them are bad at their jobs. They’re not. Many event planners are smart, hardworking, and do their best, but the direction they’ve been asked to head in is often misguided.
If you fix the foundational issue, everything changes for the better:
Your budget becomes more efficient.
Your programmes become more effective.
Your leadership team trusts the event function more.
Your events actually deliver value instead of just happening.
You also stop spending millions on events and hoping they work, whilst simultaneously being unclear as to just what impact they’re delivering. This means you spend what you need to spend to deliver the outcomes you’ve defined and can measure.
This is a fundamental difference between tactical event management and Strategic Meetings Management.
It all starts with one question... "What measurable business outcome does this event need to deliver?"
If you’re navigating corporate event strategy and want to move from tactical to strategic, that’s what I do through NewtonSquared.
I help organisations define the outcomes, align stakeholders, and build the practical frameworks that turn an events calendar into a strategic meetings management programme.
If you suspect your events are busy, expensive, and under‑leveraged, let’s talk about where your programme stands today, and what’s actually possible.