Corporate event planning Events that earn their budget
Tracie Crites founded Events Authority after more than fifteen years in the IT channel, buying sponsorships as a Chief Channel Officer and owning a festival's sponsor relationships. CRN 2025 Channel Chief and Woman of the Channel.
Corporate event planning for customer dinners, partner days and product launches. We plan them backwards from one question: what should be true 30 days after the event?
What you get
- Scope. We plan the whole event, from the first brief to the run of show to the debrief afterwards: customer and partner events, launches, and executive programs.
- Outcome. One result agreed before anything is booked, and a written read afterwards on whether the event delivered it.
- Timeline. We start about 12 weeks out. Less than that is workable; it costs you choices on venue and on who can attend.
- Who it’s for. B2B companies whose customers or partners are worth getting in a room.
- Who it’s not for. Public conferences you are running as a business line, and events where the only goal is attendance numbers.
What are you planning?
- Customer and partner events. Thank-you days, dinners and hosted programs where the relationship is the point.
- Launches. Events where the room needs to understand one thing and remember it.
- Executive programs. Small rooms where who comes matters more than how many.
What happens, and when?
- Start with the result. Pick what should be true 30 days out. Meetings booked. A partner renewed. A deal moved forward.
- Invite the right people. Decide who has to be in the room, and give them a reason to give up an evening.
- Plan what guests do. Build the event around the result, not around what the venue sells.
- Run the day. Everyone knows where to be, and the one thing each guest should leave with.
- Follow up and count. Every relationship has an owner before the event starts. Afterwards you get a written read on what worked.
What does a partner day look like?
Disclosure
Tracie Crites ran Breach Secure Now's trade show and channel event program from 2020 to 2025, first as VP of Sales & Marketing and then as Chief Channel Officer.
The day before IT Nation Connect 2024, Breach Secure Now took its partners to the Epcot Food and Wine Festival. Each partner got a ticket for themselves and a guest. The invitation was a thank-you. The partners who came walked into the show having already spent a day with the team.
Read the Cheers Around the World case study
Most event planning starts with logistics. The best event planning starts with outcomes. Before you plan anything, ask one question. What do you want to be true 30 days after this event? When you reverse engineer from that answer, everything else becomes easier.
Tracie Crites · Founder, Events Authority
Events Authority is led by Tracie Crites. She leads every engagement.
Common questions
What does a corporate event planning engagement cover? The brief, the guest list, the experience, the run of show, and the follow-up plan. We hand over a plan your team can run, and we run the day with you when you want that.
How far ahead should we start? About 12 weeks before the event. It is the planning horizon we use, and it is what makes venue, invitation and follow-up decisions real choices rather than whatever is still available.
Do you work in our industry? Every industry runs customer and partner events, and the questions are the same whoever is in the room: what should be true afterwards, who has to be there, what makes them come. The method came out of running one B2B company’s event program.
What if we already have a venue and a date? That is normal, and it does not waste the work. We start from the result you need and fit the plan to what is booked.
Where do you start?
Tell us about the event, who it’s for and what it needs to do. You get a written read on where the plan is likely to leak.