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The 1st National Survey of Event Sales Professionals
It’s hard to know if you are getting paid fairly - let alone what is standard for commission rates, benefits, and PTO days. In this report we hope to add some transparency on this important topic. For employers, this report can help you put together a competitive offer for when you’re hiring event sales professionals.
Annual salaries for both Event Sales Directors and Directors of Events range from $20,800 to $94,000 with the average salary sitting at $62,844. To see a more detailed breakdown of salaries by geography and by seniority, continue reading the report below.
Trend towards cocktail-style events with more activations for large-scale (400+) person events, over traditional seated dinners.
Breaking down salary by seniority, on average we see Event Sales Managers making $56,864 and Director of Events who manage multiple Event Sales Managers making $73,243.
Since the pandemic, groups have been booking on shorter and shorter notice making it difficult to forecast. This year I am seeing corporate groups starting to plan farther ahead getting back to pre-pandemic planning.
Factoring in cost of living, we see salaries tend to go up in more expensive cities and lower salaries in more affordable cities.
Our guests have been asking about beverage education; wine tastings, cocktail classes, etc.
When it comes to Commission, we see about half of Event Sales Managers receive a commission of 4.3%, which generally comes out to $19,000 per year. Of the Event Sales Managers that don’t receive commission, we saw no difference in salary. For Director of Events, we see 60% receive a commission with an average percentage of 3.3%, coming out to a total amount of $47,000 per year on average.
Tip: If you’re not currently getting a commission, you could discuss with your manager adding an Admin Fee to cover the commission.
For event sales professionals that have both a salary and commission the average total compensation by role and cost of living are below, which combine the salary and commission data.
Lots of casual weddings and people being flexible! Casual cocktail mixers (vs. formal dinners). The desire to think outside the box!
Benefits were similar across both Event Sales Managers and Director of Events roles, with 87% of all respondents receiving some benefits, 57% receive Health Insurance and PTO and 8% have a 401k.
Despite the lingering effects of Covid, we see more positive increase in event sales than decrease, which is good news. We also saw mention of more larger and corporate events coming back, along with more casual and creative weddings. Guests also appear to be asking for more educational events, including cocktail making and wine education. Over 25% of respondents said they are seing a large increase in sales of 10% or more.
Seeing more..
While managing events on spreadsheets and using handwritten credit card authorizations used to be the norm, more venues are using event management software than ever before to increase sales, save time, and offer a modern guest experience.
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