Should I choose a local agency or a bigger one from a metro?

For an event in Madhya Pradesh, local usually wins on the things that go wrong — vendor relationships, permissions, and being able to physically get to the venue when something needs solving. A metro agency brings scale and sometimes better production design. If the event is genuinely national, ask the metro agency who their local partner is, because there will be one.

How many agencies should I ask to pitch?

Three. More than that and you are making everyone do unpaid work for a decision you will make on other grounds anyway, and word gets around. Give all three the same written brief on the same day, including the budget range.

Is the cheapest quote ever the right one?

Sometimes, but check what is missing before deciding. The usual reasons one quote is much lower are a thinner crew, no rehearsal day, no contingency, or manpower counted at a level that will not cope. All three of those become visible on the day.

Should I pay an advance?

Yes, and expect to. Venues, artists and production vendors all take advances, and the agency is paying those on your behalf. What to insist on is a payment schedule tied to milestones rather than dates, and invoices for the vendor payments if the model is cost-plus.

Events

Choosing an event management company: eleven questions to ask

Every agency shows you the same photographs. These are the questions that actually tell you which one will be standing next to you at 6am on the setup day.

22 August 20267 min read

Why the showreel tells you nothing

Every event company in India has the same deck: a montage of stages, crowds, confetti, and a client list in a grid. It is genuinely impressive and it is genuinely useless for choosing between them, because the good ones and the bad ones have the same photographs.

What separates them is what happens when something goes wrong at 4pm on the day, and none of that is in the reel. These questions are designed to find it out beforehand.

The eleven questions

Ask all of them. The answers matter less than whether the person can answer without checking.

Who from this meeting will be on site on the day? The most common disappointment in Indian event management is a pitch by the director and an execution by a junior nobody introduced you to.
How many events are you running that week? A team stretched across three events in one week is not the team you saw the reel of.
Which of the vendors are yours and which are hired? Neither answer is wrong. Not knowing is.
Show me a run sheet from a real event. Not a template. A real one, cue to cue, with the times on it. If it does not exist, the events are being improvised.
What went wrong at your last event, and what did you do? An agency that says nothing goes wrong is either lying or not paying attention. The answer you want is specific, unflattering and recent.
Who owns the budget once it is approved? Ask what happens if a line item overruns — who absorbs it, and who is told.
Is the quote cost-plus, lump sum or element-wise? If they cannot answer this crisply, they have not thought about your money carefully.
What is the contingency, and where is it in the number? Five to ten per cent, stated. Not hidden inside line items.
When is the technical rehearsal? If the answer is vague, or "on the morning", the risk of a visible failure just went up sharply.
What is the backup for power and audio? These are the two failures your guests will actually notice.
Who calls the show? One person, named, with the authority to say no on the day.

What good answers sound like

Notice that none of these ask about creativity. Creativity is what you can judge from the reel; reliability is what you cannot.

A good answer is specific and includes a name or a number. A weak answer is a reassurance — "don't worry, we handle everything" — which tells you nothing and is what you will be given if you let it stand.

Ask the follow-up. "Handled how?" is the most useful two words in the whole meeting.

The one you should ask about yourself

Then ask them what they need from you. An agency that has run real events will have a list: a single decision-maker, content by a certain date, a final headcount by a certain date, sign-off on the stage design before fabrication starts.

An agency that says "nothing, leave it to us" has not run an event that went well. Every good event has a client who did their part on time, and the agency knows exactly what those parts are. It is, incidentally, the list we hand over at the start of any event management brief.

Questions people ask

Should I choose a local agency or a bigger one from a metro?: For an event in Madhya Pradesh, local usually wins on the things that go wrong — vendor relationships, permissions, and being able to physically get to the venue when something needs solving. A metro agency brings scale and sometimes better production design. If the event is genuinely national, ask the metro agency who their local partner is, because there will be one.
How many agencies should I ask to pitch?: Three. More than that and you are making everyone do unpaid work for a decision you will make on other grounds anyway, and word gets around. Give all three the same written brief on the same day, including the budget range.
Is the cheapest quote ever the right one?: Sometimes, but check what is missing before deciding. The usual reasons one quote is much lower are a thinner crew, no rehearsal day, no contingency, or manpower counted at a level that will not cope. All three of those become visible on the day.
Should I pay an advance?: Yes, and expect to. Venues, artists and production vendors all take advances, and the agency is paying those on your behalf. What to insist on is a payment schedule tied to milestones rather than dates, and invoices for the vendor payments if the model is cost-plus.