The 1st type of call.“I cant believe the production costs are so high, I wasn’t expecting that and there is no way I can afford that kind of money”.
This is the company that put the cart before the horse. A properly executed event starts with the planning stages with a proper event budget. A budget in my opinion starts with the revenue side. How many general admission, VIP and Live Streaming tickets can you sell and at what ticket prices? This will give you a total revenue number to use for your budget.
The next piece is understanding the true needs for you event and what the costs are. You should be considering Venue, Food and Beverage, Event Planner, Staging, Audio Visual, Travel Expenses, Awards, Printing, Signage, Photography, etc.
We use an event calculator that we developed to help our customers through these murky waters and keep them from having a bad experience. We used our twenty years of experience and have broken down budgets based on a percentage of revenue and our numbers are pretty accurate.