WHAT WE DO
We are here to help
Let’s start with Unlimited Consulting
When you are in charge of a fundraising event, whether this is your first or your twenty-first, you already know it’s nice to have a partner in planning. It’s even nicer to phone a friend that you might call “expert.” When you sign on with us, you get unlimited support from our consultants.
con.sul.tant
A person who provides expert advice professionally. Similar: adviser, guide, counselor, expert, specialist, authority, ace
We pull from our experience, industry understanding, and problem solving abilities to offer valuable advice.
Interested in our consulting services?
Make no mistake about it: without your talents as a committed, passionate organizer, a successful consensus-builder, a time-manager extraordinaire and an all-around creative, clever person, the benefit you seek to support would be challenged. If we had a Hollywood walk of fame for auction organizers, we’d put your name on it. (But first you’ll have to call us and tell us your name.)
SEASONED VETERANS
Our house of talent includes dozens of seasoned veterans of the auctioneer craft. We call it a craft because it takes a special talent to get folks to open their wallets. It’s a high-energy, high-excitement, charged atmosphere and being experienced means our auctioneers know exactly how to manage the flow of energy, pushing it from one side of the room to another, slowing things down to clarify a moment, swinging to the folks in the back of the room who think they’ll be ignored, and ramping everyone up for a big-ticket item.
PULSE OF THE CROWD
Reading the pulse of the crowd and responding to it appropriately is imperative. People are not born knowing how to do this. But watching our team of emcees and auctioneers in action, you’d never guess they didn’t start doing this at birth.
ENLISTING OUR SERVICES
Enlisting our services means you get to review our roster of auctioneers and emcees. We’re not being secretive because we’re hoity-toity. It’s just that our auctioneers and emcees are actual people with ideas of their own and not everybody wants video images of themselves sailing around the Internet all willy-nilly. So for the time being we keep that stuff under password.
There’s a funny thing about seeing and hearing: everything is better with both of these elements. No doubt you could make do at your auction with a megaphone and a couple of poster boards, but what are you communicating with that? Are you communicating at all? Creating a successful auction requires a robust audio and visual experience for your audience. Events that take the time to ensure a strong audio and visual set-up for their auction consistently show higher returns, happier audiences and less stressed-out auction workers. We’re in favor of all these things.
The audio/visual experience is so important, we’ve got a person on staff who does nothing but manage audio and visual all the time. As a result, he’s awfully good at what he does. He tells us there are some common questions he gets when an auction organizer contacts him to discuss audio/visual needs. Check them out below, along with our contact info if you’d like SAG to be your go-to A/V Service!
HOUSE SYSTEMS: “The hotel has speakers in the ceiling that we can plug into for free. Can’t we just use the house system?”
For a live auction, house sound does not provide necessary power to provide clear and crisp sound in a fundraising environment. Your auctioneer might sound like s/he’s speaking from the bottom of a long, dark hole. A hole that’s very far away. With intermittent jets passing overhead.
For a silent auction, house sound is adequate in some cases. This is because the auction is silent, of course.
We can’t wait to help you make your Audio Visual set up the best that it can be. We’re looking forward to hearing from you and helping make your auction night a success!
TALENT NEEDS: “What kind of microphone does the auctioneer need?”
Our auctioneers use cordless hand held microphones. This is because they hop and leap and skip and jump while they’re entertaining the crowd. On occasion, there might be a sommersault. But we’re not making any promises. Please have a set of back-up batteries for the cordless microphone.
We can’t wait to help you make your Audio Visual set up the best that it can be. We’re looking forward to hearing from you and helping make your auction night a success!
WHY RENT: “The band said we can use their microphones. Isn’t that cheaper than renting equipment?”
Of course it’s cheaper, in much the same way hot dogs are cheaper than a t-bone steak. Band sound systems are set up so that the sound is loud in front and the bass tones are maximized. People sitting in the front of the room or near the speakers – probably your VIP guests – will have an uncomfortably loud experience. Guests toward the back won’t be able to hear the auctioneer or emcee clearly. For that reason, the band’s system is going to hurt your bottom line in the long run. Frankly, it’s a hot dog.
We can’t wait to help you make your Audio Visual set up the best that it can be. We’re looking forward to hearing from you and helping make your auction night a success!
WE’RE HERE TO HELP
If it’s the case that you’re not going to use our audio/visual services, we’re actually ok with that. Just be sure you’ve tested all of your audio/visual systems thoroughly before the doors open to guests. Be sure also that you have an audio/visual expert on site during the entire event.
Every venue has its own acoustical and visual challenges. Stokes Auction Group tracks information on nearly 100 venues in Washington and Oregon – chances are we’re already familiar with your selected venue and can tell you what will or won’t work best there.
We can’t wait to help you make your Audio Visual set up the best that it can be.
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