I have had the opportunity to speak to several auctioneers in regards to the topic: To be involved or not to be involved in pre-event planning. One of the things that I asked the opinion of my colleagues is why there is an importance to have your event auctioneer involved in all stages of planning of your event. There is so much more that a professional auctioneer can provide rather than just showing up an calling numbers.
One of the first and probably the greatest reason to have the auctioneer's participation in the planning is: experience. Many of the clients we work for plan for 1 auction per year. Some on rare occasions maybe 2 or 3. However, this gives a very limited view as to what things work well, what may be hurting the results of your auction, and other things that may go unnoticed. Why is that? It is because many of them don't attend other auctions planning committee meetings. On the other hand, the auctioneer you use will have been in attendance to several different events and more than likely has had input in the planning stages. A good auctioneer will provide you with the knowledge they have, based on the mistakes and more importantly the success's that they have seen in various types of settings.
You should never be afraid to make a suggestion to the auctioneer as to an idea you have for your event. The auctioneer will and should understand that each event is different and that you as the organization has an idea as to the type of people that will attend. That being said, you also have the choice to listen and implement the advise that is provided.
The second reason to have the auctioneer involved in your pre-auction planning: Support and Encouragement. A professional benefit auctioneer can provide you with support and encouragement through out the planning stages. Why is this important? It is important because with every event there is a proactive timeline and a reactive timeline. If you stay in the proactive time line, your event will follow a more direct planning path which leads to an overall better success rating for your event. When organizations start to fall off of that time line and things get out of sync, they cross over into the reactive timeline. This time line causes several amounts of stress levels to be raised, things don't work out as planned which causes unexpected changes.
A professional auctioneer can help to keep you from hitting those pitfalls that can cause the timeline change for your event. Many times again based on experience, they will see a potential challenge before it takes places and can give the advise to prevent it. This allows you and your organization to stay on the proactive timeline. In addition to that, the auctioneer may be able to share shortcuts that will save you time, money and in some cases stress.
What about those pre auction donation questions? Again through experience, the benefit auctioneer can help with suggestions on how to procure items, the order to sell them the night of your event, How to create the needed packages using the donations received, etc. This is often one of the most overlooked things in the planning stages of an event. Event Organizers often get excited about the items donated, but yet can be at times, blinded by the item without seeing the bigger picture. As crazy as this may sound, sometime the donations you get if not placed properly in a selling order can hurt your auction instead of helping it. This is something that you will definitely present to your event auctioneer for advice.
Keep this in mind, The benefit auctioneer is not there to take all the decision making out of your hands but rather enable you to have a greater amount of success for you event.
As always I welcome your comments and questions in regards to my post. Have a great day!
