EP 07: 4 Best Practices for a Smooth Checkout at Your Silent Auction

Jeff: Welcome to the Elevate Your Event podcast, where we talk about how to plan and execute an unforgettable event that will dazzle your guests and generate more income for your organization. From fundraising and securing trendy auction items to event production and logistics, get the best tips and advice from seasoned fundraising and event professionals who have been in your shoes.

Jeff: Welcome back to Elevate Your Event, where we talk about ways we can make fundraising events better.

Lori: And more fun.

Jeff: Way more fun. Or maybe less stressful. So we've got Elise, and we've got Lori back here with us. I'm Jeff Porter. Today we're going to talk about how these events can end well. In other episodes, we've talked about how events get started or the buildup to the actual event, but let's talk about how we get guests out the door with a smile on their face -- which is called checkout for most people. It's funny, we'll walk into a lot of events and you haven't even started with guest registration yet, and then the event manager comes up and says, "Can we talk about checkout?" Really, it's 4 o'clock, that's going to happen in five hours -- how about we talk about check-in? But it's actually good to talk about checkout. It's probably good to talk about checkout and how you want to handle it well before you even get to that point. Have a plan.

Lori: Have a plan.

Jeff: And there are some best practices. One of the ones that comes up frequently -- because we get this question a lot from the service team -- is, "How should I number my items?" It's funny, if you go to a lot of auctions, they number the items like, "European travels are the 100s, food and wine is the 200s." You can certainly do that and organize your items by category, but that's what categories are for. You don't really need the item codes or numbers to do that, but they can become a handy checkout method. One of the things I've learned -- my wife and her sister were involved in auctions well before I was ever involved. But one of the things they did, which I thought was a really unique and cool idea, was that they would use the item codes to organize for checkout. So they would make all the 100s certificates: 101, 102, 103. Those would go into a bin in numerical order. The 200s for them were all physical items.

Jeff: So when I saw item 214, I knew it was something I had to go get and bring back to the table. And then the 300s were usually some sort of combo -- a certificate with a physical item. A lot of times they would also put a note on the certificate saying, "Hey, there's also a physical item with this, don't forget it." Like, "There's a coffee basket along with the Starbucks gift cards," or whatever. And then from there it would vary. A lot of times the 400s might be consignment items, even though they still had a certificate -- they wanted to keep them separate. Or in some cases, they would number items that could not be shipped. So those had to be picked up or delivered. A lot of times that would be like a gas grill, or there was a snowblower in one auction we were in.

Lori: A golf cart.

Jeff: A golf cart. A truck. Drive home in your golf cart. So that was something I always thought was a really smart approach.

Jeff: Where are you going to do your checkout? I love it when you can have a room that is separate for silent auction items, and then you set tables in front of the doorway of that room and you don't have to move the items.

Elise: You mean not on the other side of the band that's playing for the after party?

Jeff: No. I've been there.

Lori: But you're screaming at the guests for their last name.

Elise: You mean runners aren't supposed to run to the items? We worked an event -- Jeff and I worked an event together where the items were on three different floors, and we did checkout and had to run upstairs.

Jeff: I got that out of my memory through several sessions of therapy and you've just brought it back. You had to run up the stairs, and then some of the volunteers were... inebriated and not helpful. Not helpful to the point where we were like, "It's okay. We'll just go do it ourselves."

Elise: Yes. You stay there.

Lori: And that is talking about Apple Watches and making sure we hit all our rings and close them.

Jeff: I definitely closed mine twice that night.

Lori: Easily. It was a good workout.

Jeff: Apple shamed me the next day when they said, "At this stage of the day, you are way further along than you are today." I was like, "I'm never going to do that again." I climbed about 500,000 steps that night.

Elise: The best part was we had no idea what floor the items were on.

Jeff: That was completely confusing. They did their silent auction by code, and then we didn't know which items were which, so you had to run all over the place. So in that regard, if you're going to have items distributed everywhere, item codes can help -- but maybe also think about a kind of subcode. A different way of noting this is on floor two, this one's on floor three, this one's on floor four. The building we were in was really neat, but their silent auction was spread throughout the entire thing. So it would have been nice to say B-200 versus C-201.

Lori: That would have been a great idea.

Elise: It sounds very complicated.

Jeff: Well, look, some auction software just starts numbering at 100 and goes up, but other auction software will allow you to be a little more creative. I've seen some really cool ways to do that. If you don't like the 100s, 200s, 300s approach -- I've seen C-101 for certificate. I've seen other types of codes you can put inside that item code that tell you specifically where the item is. Art. Gift card. For words, you could do CERT-100, CRT-101. But let's just make sure we all agree on something: your bidders don't care what the item codes are.

Lori: Truth.

Jeff: Now, don't make them super long, because if bidders are searching by item code, they may not love that. But B-1-1 is fine, or C-200.

Lori: Or to that point, when you're asking a runner to go get an item and you say, "Go get me item number 101, please," rather than, "Go get me item number 439-261XJ."

Jeff: Remember that one after a night of drinking wine.

Elise: Organization is key. Yes, and you have free rein to set it up however you want, but organization definitely helps.

Jeff: Okay, so that's our pre-checkout planning. We've got the items organized, we've got them numbered in a way that's going to help us at checkout, because we're super awesome plan-ahead types of people. We're on top of our game.

Lori: Because that's what makes checkout a lot smoother.

Jeff: So let's talk about where you're going to do it. When you're having a physical event, where have you seen the best place for checkout? And I get it's venue-specific, but where have you seen it's absolutely not the best place to do it -- besides next to the after-party band?

Lori: I like the room approach. In fact, our high school did their auction Friday night. We have a silent auction room, and we filter everyone through the room. When they enter, that's how we do check-in. And then when they exit, we actually block off the room, put tables right in front, have our runners work around the room. No one else has access to those items -- nobody can take the incorrect item, because that's a big one -- and everything is in a compact area. Those are the best checkouts for sure, when you don't have to redesign everything and the guests can walk to where they've already been accustomed to going. You're going to the same location you went to look at the items. It makes it really nice to set a table up front.

Elise: Then everybody's familiar with where the items are.

Lori: That is the best. The worst checkouts -- I think some of the worst ones are when you're trying to check people out and the items are not anywhere near you, and you have no control.

Elise: Yeah, or you don't even have runners. It's "Go check out over here," and then people are just grabbing items. I had a big event I worked where they didn't move the items. It was in a big open hallway and they wanted you to check out at this back area first. People weren't doing that -- they were just going right to their item and leaving.

Jeff: Think about how traffic is going to flow. I've been to an event at a hotel here in Colorado -- awesome hotel -- but their checkout was set up so people were like, "This is a huge waste of my time. I already know what I won," because if you're using mobile bidding software, it's going to tell you what you won. Whereas if you're using paper bid sheets, you have no idea what you won. So with mobile bidding, they would just say, "This is what I won, I'm going to grab my three things, I'm going to walk out the door and pay for it." And people are honest. We've been doing this a long time. I have not seen items stolen. I've seen people take the wrong things accidentally.

Lori: This has come up before -- are you an item mover or not an item mover? I don't love moving items. I think it's a lot of extra work, but there's a time and a place for it. I'm not an item mover unless you're giving out gift bags or something along with those items. Then you can kind of reorganize things, but you need time to do that. So that only works if maybe you have a nice big program. One of the events I work, they have a fashion show. So they'll close their silent auction, shut down the auction room, and then actually tear down the auction room and get it all set up for checkout with all their gift bags and everything. It's actually a really cool process because the guest walks in and it's right away -- "I'm number 100" -- and they have all their items in one spot together that that person won. So they have the time to do that.

Jeff: That'd be nice. I've been to some of those where I've seen rows of tables behind the check-in area, and they put all the 200s, then the 250s. The runners love that for sure. But to your point, you have to have enough time. We get this question a lot: "When should I close my silent auction?" Well, if you were talking to a benefit auctioneer four or five years ago, they would have been adamant you close it before the live auction starts, because they were used to paper bidding and didn't want people leaving the room to go bid on bid sheets. But most benefit auctioneers now are pretty comfortable with mobile bidding and people being on their phones and staying in the room. So we're big proponents of keeping a silent auction open as long as possible. First, it drives more revenue. But let's be honest -- when the silent auction closes, some people want to leave. And you may not want them to leave. We tell people that a lot: if you're going to run your program after your silent auction closes, you're going to have a distracted audience. You're going to have some people who are like, "Great, I won my item. Let's go."

Elise: Right. For sure.

Jeff: So you've got to be a little careful about that. But if you do have time to move items and you trust your volunteers enough to move some of this stuff -- and I've seen stuff break, so be careful -- then it certainly can help with the "where's all our stuff" problem.

Lori: Closing the silent auction early really only works if you have a reason for people to stay. That's worked out really well when you go through your whole program, you do your big ask, you do your emotional video or presentation, then you close the auction, and then out comes Thomas Rhett.

Jeff: Thomas Rhett. I've seen that, and that works. People stay, and it gives you time to organize the checkout.

Lori: Right. To give them a great experience. Then they can trickle through checkout as well, like if they have a concert. I'm going to an event this weekend that is a fashion show. So people are there for the fashion show, and they'll close the silent auction, then do the fashion show.

Jeff: They're there to support charity, don't get me wrong, but at the same time we also know they're there for the concert. So that helps you have a little bit of time to organize things and get into gear. One of the things I've seen -- and to me this is over the top, so I could never pull this off, but I'm going to share what some people do because they are just superwoman- and superman-type people, and I'm not. They will literally print out a manifest, which a lot of the software will do for you. They'll print out a manifest or a set of invoices for everybody, and they've got their gift bags, and they are literally assembling everything you need for checkout. It's ready for you when you walk out the door. It's impressive.

Lori: I love that.

Jeff: And along with that, I've seen people who are worried that guests will come back and say, "Oh, I didn't get this," or, "You didn't give me everything." They have their guests sign the printed-out receipt and confirm, "Yeah, I got everything." So if someone comes back, they can verify. That's being super organized.

Elise: Yes, I don't want anybody watching this podcast to feel bad if you're not doing that. I don't do it at my event.

Lori: I don't do it either.

Jeff: Don't worry about it. It's a pretty cool idea if you have the time, but it also involves a printer, time, and some sober volunteers -- which sounds awful, but at some events, they're hard to come by.

Lori: They are.

Jeff: So let's talk about volunteers for a second, because they're pretty key to a good checkout in a couple of areas. Obviously there are runners. That's really not a job where you have to do a lot of training. You just have to tell them how the items are organized and where to find them. And then you can give them -- what's your favorite?

Lori: I like sticky notes. I have a whole container of them in my bag.

Jeff: Note cards, whatever it is. It doesn't matter. If you're the type of person who just wants to hand somebody something, I've seen electronic methods too. Super easy.

Elise: Have enough runners. I think of some successful checkouts -- sober runners, yes. At least moderately. I do an event with about a thousand guests and they have some really cool items -- golf carts, snowboards, paddleboards, lots of big items -- but they have very strong volunteers who can get the items, and they're just super organized. And that checkout is so fast.

Jeff: That's good. Speaking of which, one of the things we like to mention in some of our coaching calls is one volunteer for every 10 items really helps push through checkout in an organized way. It also ensures that the auction managers understand you do need a team of people at checkout. And let's not forget about leaving a really good impression. There was a time when there was a lot of human error in the recording of winners. We were on paper bid sheets, obviously, because we hadn't built Handbid yet. One of the things that happened was we had a system where you would type in an item code and a paddle number. Like everybody else, our item codes started with 100 and went up, and our paddle numbers started with 100 and went up. Some of the volunteers would swap those. So instead of bidder 150 winning item 300, it was bidder 300 winning item 150. And there was some of that going on. There was also not calculating bid sheets correctly, or maybe there was a back page to the bid sheet with more bids on it because they ran out of space and the volunteer just looked at the bottom. There were a lot of those things that created chaos at checkout where you're trying to fumble around. It wasn't even a runner issue -- runners were standing around going, "I don't know what to do."

Lori: What Lori experienced -- making sure the invoices are right and people have paid them -- that's huge.

Jeff: So you've got your runners, ideally they're sober and capable of finding items, and we'll talk about some of the forbidden items in a second. But on the front end, somebody has to help make sure the invoices are correct by talking to the winning bidder and also making sure the payments are processed.

Lori: Yes, it's huge.

Jeff: So what happens when the auction closes? They get an alert that they won, and then they line up. Now, that's gotten better over the years. But in the beginning, when people were used to paper bid sheets, they all lined up because they had no idea what they won. They wanted to see, and they knew lines were going to be long and they didn't want to wait. So they'd drag their stuff back to their table for the after party or whatever. Today, they're like, "Oh, I won these items. I'll pick them up on my way out." So the mass assembly doesn't always happen. But when that line does happen, one of the things I love to do -- I'm sure with a lot of organizations they're going to have a string of laptops out with credit card readers, looking up your invoice, asking if you want to pay by cash or check or whatever. I love hitting the line and looking on people's phones. "Hey, what'd you win?" And you show them how to pull up their invoice, and it shows it's not paid, and would they like to go ahead and pay with the card they had on file? Yes? Hit the pay button. So you can literally go down the row and get people to process their own payment.

Lori: Oh, it saves so much time. And if your mobile bidding software allows for the bidder to cover your credit card fees by prompting them, they can take care of all that on their own. Then when they show up at the checkout counter, they're paid in full, ready to get their stuff. It takes about 30 seconds.

Elise: I don't any longer -- if somebody's paying with a credit card and I'm using the software I like to use, we definitely always train the volunteers to check the app, check the mobile device first if it's paying with a credit card. And then we set up a separate station for any kind of solutions -- anything above and beyond like split tender, splitting the item, checks and cash. Put those people off to a side station, not that they're second-class citizens, but because it just takes a little more attention.

Jeff: I love it. And the other thing I love to do is send out messages to those people who have an invoice, explaining that you only need to come to checkout if you have an item to pick up. Otherwise, we're going to run your card. You can go enjoy the after party. Thank you for your donation.

Lori: There's no reason for everybody to stand around and wait for you to charge their credit card when they can do it themselves.

Jeff: Very easy. So I mentioned earlier this concept of forbidden items. This doesn't come up often, but depending on who's doing your running, you might have certain items you don't want them to handle. Sometimes that can be a really expensive item that you want to make sure is properly re-boxed or carefully packaged, or something where you feel like someone who works for the organization should handle it rather than a volunteer. It could be a firearm -- I've seen that. You certainly don't want to send some 15-year-old up to grab a firearm and bring it back. Those things you definitely want to note -- where they are and how you want them handled.

Elise: I've seen $10,000 pieces of jewelry.

Jeff: Right, and that comes with a security guard who follows it everywhere. I've seen that. So for those types of things, make sure you have a plan for how you're handling them at checkout. You're not just handing it over and saying, "Bye, good luck."

Lori: Especially if a young runner knows exactly what it is. How do you know that was the right bottle of liquor? That's kind of scary if you're 12.

Jeff: And then the other thing is to start looking at how much stuff people have. What's the plan if somebody has a lot of things? Can you help carry items out to the car?

Lori: Or what about if people Uber or take public transportation?

Jeff: I did an event in New York once, and there was a lot of wine sold at this event. Everybody in New York takes public transportation. I'm sure maybe somebody drove, but they probably spent more on their parking space than the hotel room. So in most cases, they're Ubering, taking a taxi, or even the subway. In those cases, what's your plan? What this organization did, which I thought was brilliant, was they had a delivery service. You came to checkout, you paid, and then they would say, "Do you want to take your items home tonight, or would you like them delivered to your place of work? Here are the boroughs we're delivering to." They had them listed out. "Oh, I live outside of the city, but you can deliver to my work and I can take care of it from there." They charged a fee for that, and then they had a courier service pick up all the items that night with a manifest of where they went. I thought it was a cool idea.

Lori: I love that. I haven't heard of that one.

Jeff: The other thing is, for folks getting items to their car, it helps to have some people who are able to carry things. I was telling you earlier, I carried a case of wine up a flight of stairs for a pregnant lady who kept telling me the entire time, "Don't judge me. Just put it in the car."

Lori: She was not going to carry it.

Jeff: And I've been to other events where it's not even that things are heavy -- it's just that some guy won nine things. That was at the same event where we were climbing 1,500 flights of steps. I think we took three trips down to the sidewalk while he went and got his SUV to load all of his gear. So you've got to think about it -- it can be dollies, carts, whatever might help you move this stuff around. And what about those people that aren't at the event? If you're using mobile bidding software, you're going to have people all over the country bidding on your items, and they might not be there. If you've got software that tells you, "Hey, is this person on site?" -- otherwise you're sitting there going, "Where is Bob Smith? Why hasn't Bob Smith checked out?" Pull up the invoices and he's not even there. Filter by who's on site and say, "These are the people I've got to worry about tonight. Everybody else has taken off." And then the ability to add shipping, same as that courier service -- you can do that in the software or you can just have a plan for it.

Lori: For sure. I know after COVID there was quite an influx of people not even having items on site. I worked quite a few events where they didn't even have items on site. They might have a couple of things and some display sheets and QR codes, but no items. A lot of the schools did it.

Jeff: And why not? Because you could have checkout at school. I don't love that idea though. Maybe during COVID it made sense. But we did an event years ago where they decided, "It's going to be way easier if we don't bring any items on site." There were two issues with that. First, there were just display sheets everywhere. Auctions are a little bit like building a retail store, right? You have to sell this stuff, which means you have to take the gas grill out of the box and put it together, unfortunately. People walk around, they're shoppers. They want to see this stuff, touch it, feel it. "Oh, that's really cool." So when it's just a display sheet saying this is a Traeger Ironwood 850 grill -- that's cool, but I'd like to lift the hood and touch it. So that was one thing. And then you've got to deliver all this stuff.

Lori: Right.

Jeff: So Monday, this guy emails into the service team and says, "How do I get all these items to all the people that won them?" And of course, I'm thinking, "How about you bring them to your event next time?"

Lori: I agree. I like to see the items. If you've put together baskets, they're fun. There are always little odds and ends in there, and you're going to miss out if you just have display sheets. Or clothing -- you want to see it. Put it on a mannequin.

Jeff: It works. And somewhere in our archive of ebooks and marketing stuff, there's a picture that literally shows a hundred display sheets in plexiglass frames all just stacked in rows like tombstones in a cemetery. I was like, "Okay, that's the ugliest auction."

Lori: That doesn't sound fun.

Jeff: No. And checkout was weird because the only thing they had to give out were certificates. Everything else they had to ship. At that point, why bother building up an on-site auction? Commit to the fact that it's going to be online only. Go that route and skip the display sheets and all that. It did work during COVID, for sure. But part of the in-person event is the fun. It's fun to see the items, get excited, and get into bidding wars.

Elise: And I get it -- sometimes you're thinking, "How am I going to get this stuff re-boxed?" But it's really not that bad.

Jeff: I was at an event in Atlanta, and they're rabid football people down there. They had two tailgating packages -- a Georgia Tech one and a Georgia Bulldogs one. They put all the chairs and everything in boxes. We put our sticker on the outside -- we bought red ones because that's our brand. Put a sticker on the outside, and it was like, "Here you go."

Lori: It's like walking out of Nordstrom.

Elise: And if you're going to re-gift any of your things that you've won, they're already ready to go.

Jeff: Who re-gifts, Elise? Come on.

Elise: I do. I do a lot of shopping at the auction. A lot. Put a little tissue paper in and you've got a gift.

Jeff: But all in all, with checkout, the most important thing is to consider your guest experience. How can it be the best for your guest? Finish the event as well as you started it.

Lori: I agree.

Jeff: So let's quickly summarize. We talked about how you number your items and how that can be a huge benefit for checkout. Making sure you have capable and sober volunteers. Making sure you have a plan for how you're going to help people pay and organize where you put your checkout area.

Lori: Where your items are.

Jeff: And I do love your idea of keeping it in a similar place. So if I walked in this door to get to the event, maybe when I walk out I see the same thing -- that's a great spot for checkout. And if there are other challenges, think about how you're going to tackle those up front, whether it's logistics of how people get their items home or whatever.

Lori: It's been fun talking about this. I think there's been a lot of really good advice that's come out of this episode.

Jeff: I'm sure we'll have more as we do more of these events and come up with more stories. It's fun to think about the really good events and then maybe the ones that were a little more challenging.

Elise: Four stories of items. At least you got your exercise.

Jeff: Hey, you stand on the shoulders of giants, which means you learn from other people -- especially on the good side, but also the challenging side -- about how things work. So hopefully you found this episode helpful. Thank you, Lori. Thank you, Elise. See you guys next time.