Hosting a Corporate Quiz event

Many of the SpeedQuizzing hosts in both the UK and the US host quizzes for corporate clients and I get asked regularly how you go about pitching the quiz to corporates and also how they are run in comparison to regular quizzes. In this article I decided to share some advice on how I have run successful events in the past for corporate clients.

How to make yourself known to corporate clients

With a standard weekly quiz people discover the quiz usually through advertising or chance, in the corporate world this is simply not the case. There are still many ways you can make yourself known to a corporate client however.

Firstly the best place to target is cities or large towns where there are likely to be offices full of people.  In small offices of one or two people, you don’t have enough people for a quiz so you need to appeal to the larger buildings and most likely the larger companies. Take note of what sort of companies there are around in there area and then do some research.  In my case, there are a vast amount of financial companies and legal companies in Birmingham all located in one area.  After doing some research I found that many of the professionals belong to an overall body called the Birmingham Insurance Institute and frequently organise events for companies involved to network. First off here is a perfect opportunity to pitch your quiz.

Unless they have already found  a venue it is also worth hunting about to find out what sort of facilities other venues have in the area. Hotels and conference centres work well but for smaller quizzes a function room is worth noting.  The more venues you talk to about corporate events and that you can recommend, the better it looks to a client.  Oddly one of the best venues I have found in Birmingham City Centre is a posh Chinese that have a great PA system and lots of screens. Off the back of getting to know the owners of this restaurant, I have had many referrals and recommendations.

Another way is to work on the SEO keywords on your website as well (assuming you have one).  A fair few clients have enquired through my website because they have simply searched “Quiz hire Birmingham” in Google.  If you think about it the concept of hiring a quiz is not exactly the same as hiring a DJ, there simply aren’t as many about and therefore word-of-mouth doesn’t work in quite the same way.  People are just going to Google it and therefore you need to be there on the front page at the receiving end of that Google search.

Another place to appeal to is large and local charities.  These can work as a great starting block for various other future corporate bookings due to the fact that if they do start a quiz with you, they are likely to invite a variety of businesses to the event itself, therefore allowing you to showcase it different corporates all in one go.  Recently I hosted a quiz for Birmingham St Mary’s Hospice, off the back of that one quiz, I have been booked for three other individual events, one of which is now a monthly quiz in one of Birmingham’s high end hotels (no, it’s not a Premier Inn).

Putting together a good corporate quiz

One thing that some hosts might not realise is that it’s better to structure a quiz differently when hosting to corporates.  The quiz is less likely to be as enjoyable if your structure it the same way as you do a regular pub quiz.  So what type of questions is it best to go for?

People attending a corporate quiz are only doing so as a one off event so you want to deliver them the best all in one go.  At least with regular weekly venues you are allowed to have a week of getting the questions wrong.  It’s best to have a look through all the questions that you have asked before at your regular venues and pick out the best ones, the ones that went down really well, the fun ones that might have got a laugh then essentially you are delivering the client a “best of” compilation of questions and the whole quiz itself is going to be fun.

It is also important to bear in mind that people attending your weekly quiz are competing for a prize, one that might be a nice bonus to them but with a corporate quiz, most of the time they are winning a bottle of champagne / wine or maybe even just for the glory of winning.  With this in mind, do they really want to be answering serious or stuffy questions on history and politics?

The above is not a definitive however, you obviously have to gauge your client based on your own personal knowledge, there may well be situations where the clients request a serious quiz where they want pressing questions, but I don’t tend to see these very often.

How to appeal to future corporates

I usually find that after hosting one corporate, there is another person in the room that will spy the potential for another event they are due to attend so why not place business cards down on all the tables at the start of the event (or even a couple in case there is more than one person).

It would be important to make yourself a slide to fit into the device adverts and Live Screen in the SpeedQuizzing software as well.  Say something along the lines of “available for hire at all types of events – see the host after the quiz for more information”.  This might even remind them about an upcoming event that requires entertainment.  I have been approached by people many times saying that they belong to a rugby club etc that might want you for a charity fundraiser.

Important ideas to note

Finally, remember to take photos and talk about the event afterwards, blog, tweet, anything really.  You need to show off to other corporates that it’s a good fun way for people to team build or spend their company down time.  If they can see this in visual form it really helps to build a picture of what it could be like for their event.

Corporate gigs also come in various sizes.  I’ve done events that range from 30 people up to 150 people and they all work on their own merit.  Make sure you take this into consideration when quoting to your client.  The small ones are lovely and intimate however the larger ones can be a lot of work and in some circumstances you may require assistance from someone else in order to be able to make it work efficiently.

Last but not least, have fun, with a brand new format like this people will always look sceptical in the same way people question you when they have never played it for the first time at a venue that has never had SpeedQuizzing before. If you reassure them and have a laugh with it, they soon lighten up and have a great time.

If you have any corporate event stories to tell us we always want to hear about these, drop us an email and let us know how yours went, attach photos if you have any too: stoo@speedquizzing.com.