Meeting Planner

You can have a great career as a meeting planner if you like handling the myriad of details involved in planning formal events and if you have the organization, negotiation, and communication skills necessary to pull it off . Corporations, associations, conventions, and trade shows are all potential sources of business. As companies become leaner, employees can no longer be spared to plan meetings.


Also, meetings and events are increasingly viewed as great sales and marketing opportunities. Therefore, creative, talented meeting planners are in demand. You will need to be knowledgeable about many areas, everything from hotels and catering to travel. You may need to negotiate a block of hotel rooms, find exotic locales for company meetings, book speakers and entertainers, set up promotions, and handle all the many small and large details that make for a successful event. In return, you may get to travel and stay at exclusive resorts and hotels, you will meet interesting people from many walks of life, and you will have the satisfaction of seeing people enjoy the event.


A computer will cost from $1,000 to $3,000. Additional software, printer, telephone, and fax will add from $900 to $3,000 or more. Office equipment, reference books, insurance, letterhead, and so on will bring the total costs to $2,700 to $8,500. Fees are typically $40 to $50 per hour or $400 to $600 per day. To get more assignments from the get-go, you should do a few “free” events to give potential clients a good idea of how spectacular your meetings really are.


Meeting planning can be very rewarding, but it often requires long days and hard work. If you are good at handling details, you’re halfway to success already, because all of those little pieces of the puzzle are crucially important. To hear about conferences and conventions, plan a civic or charitable event on a volunteer basis to gain experience. In addition to making sure you have adequate money for your start-up, bear in mind that a meeting planner’s livelihood is often tied to economic conditions, since companies may tighten their meeting budgets to cut costs. However small they may become as a result, meetings and conventions will always be around, and the trend toward outsourcing them to professional meeting planners will continue—good news for you!


Approx. cost of start-up: $2,500 to $6,500


Approx. potential earnings: $25,000 to start; possibly as high as $100,000 once established


Typical fees: $40 to $60 per hour or $400 to $500 per day; planners handling large events such as conventions may get 15 to 20 percent of the overall projected budget for the entire event


Where to promote: Networking with convention and visitors’ bureaus, caterers, and travel agents; ads in meeting trade publications; Web site with tips, resources and testimonials


Qualifications: Excellent organizational and negotiation skills; attention to detail; good business background; good communication and troubleshooting skills


Things needed: Office and computer equipment, high-speed Internet access (for using online meeting resources such as WebEx. com), fax, cell phone, PDA, reference books, business cards, stationery, envelopes


Required staff: No


Hidden costs:Phone calls