What to look for in a corporate AV proposal (and what to ignore)

When you ask three AV vendors to quote the same event, you get three documents that look about the same. Same gear list shapes. Same “trusted by” logos. Same fixed-price line at the bottom. The trick is reading them for what’s actually different, and most of the difference is in details that aren’t even on most marketing checklists.

We’ve sent and received hundreds of these. Here’s what we’ve learned to look at first, and what we’ve learned to stop reading.

The five things that signal a real proposal

Named people, not “a crew”

Proposals that say “our experienced team” are hiding something. Either the vendor doesn’t know yet who’s actually running your show, or they don’t want you to.

A real proposal names the people. Not titles, names. “FOH engineer: Sarah. Lighting designer: Marc. Production manager and your single point of contact: Jimmy.” Sometimes with two-line bios, sometimes just names and a link to a team page. Either way, the company is taking accountability for who’ll be in front of you on the day.

The version of this you should worry about: a proposal that names the senior people on the sales call but then doesn’t put them on the gig. We’ve watched clients sign with a vendor based on the impressive director who pitched them, then meet a freelance crew on bump-in day. Ask explicitly whether the people quoted in the proposal are the same people who’ll run the show. Get it in writing.

Specific gear lists, not “professional equipment”

“Professional-grade audio system” tells you nothing. “L-Acoustics K2 main hangs with KS28 subs flown left and right; A&H dLive S5000 console at FOH; six DPA 4099 instrument mics; full Shure ULX-D wireless package, 12 channels” tells you the vendor has thought about the room and what’s going in.

The point isn’t that you need to know what an A&H dLive is. The point is that a vendor specifying their gear at this level has actually thought about whether their gear suits your venue. A proposal that just lists “audio equipment as required” is a vendor who hasn’t done the work yet. They’re betting they can sort it out later.

This is also where you find sub-hire vs owned gear. Most production companies sub-hire something for any given event: LED walls, broadcast cameras, specialist lighting. That’s normal. But the proposal should say which items are sub-hired and from whom. A vendor sub-hiring everything from a single trade-rental house is closer to a broker than a production company.

Redundancy plans for failure modes

Most things don’t go wrong. The things that do go wrong tend to be predictable: a wireless mic battery dies, a stream encoder crashes, the venue’s internet drops out at the worst moment, an LED panel goes dark mid-presentation.

A proposal that names the failure modes and what’s in place for each is one written by people who’ve watched things go wrong. “Audio: redundant transmitter packs swapped every 90 minutes, spare receivers on standby.” “Streaming: primary encoder plus hot-spare encoder on bonded 4G/5G if venue uplink drops below 8 Mbps.” “Vision: spare PTZ camera pre-rigged at FOH as backup for main locked-off shot.”

If the proposal doesn’t mention redundancy, ask. The answer reveals a lot. “Our gear is reliable” is the wrong answer. The right answer involves specific contingency plans for the things that have bitten the vendor before.

Site visit or specific venue knowledge

If a vendor sends you a proposal without having been to the venue (or at least having worked there before), you’re paying for guesswork.

Site visits should be in the proposal: when it’ll happen, who from the vendor side will attend, what they’ll cover (rigging points, power phases, sight lines, dock access, bump-in times with the venue ops team). For venues the vendor has worked before, the proposal should reference specific rooms and any known constraints. “We’ve worked Carriageworks Bay 17 four times in 2024 and 2025. Note the heritage-listed rigging restriction on the south wall. Our usual front-of-house position is offset 4m to the east, which our drawings reflect.”

A vendor who can name three things about your specific venue without prompting has done events at scale. A vendor who can’t is going to find out the hard way, with your event as the test.

Fixed price with explicit scope (and what’s out of it)

This is the boring one and it matters the most. A proposal that’s $32,400 ex GST with bullet points listing what’s in is much harder to argue about on the day than a proposal that’s $24,000 plus “additional crew and equipment as required.”

Specifically check for: what’s the day-rate if the venue gives you extra rehearsal time and the crew stays late? Who pays for parking and venue access fees? What happens if the run-of-show changes the week before? What happens if it changes on the day? Are travel, accommodation, and per-diems quoted in or out?

The vendor that’s done this work before will have a clean answer to all of the above. The vendor that hasn’t will give you a number that grows.

The three things that don’t matter (you can skip past)

“Trusted by” logo walls

A logo wall tells you the vendor’s PR team is functional. It does not tell you whether the vendor delivered a good event for that brand, or whether the people who delivered it still work there. It also doesn’t tell you whether the proposal you’re holding will be staffed by the same people who handled that named brand.

Ask for specific past-event references instead. A vendor with a real story will tell you which event they did at ANZ in 2023, who the contact at ANZ was, and offer to put you in touch. A vendor with a logo wall but no specifics is hoping you don’t ask.

Vague experience claims

“50 years of combined experience” is a math trick. Five people with ten years each. It tells you nothing about whether any of them have run an event like yours.

What you actually want to know: how many events of roughly this shape (your size, your venue type, your scope) did the vendor run in the last 12 months? Two? Twelve? The ratio matters more than the cumulative headline.

Glossy design and length

A 47-page proposal isn’t more thorough than a 4-page one. Usually it’s less. The 47-page version is doing work to look like it’s done work. The 4-page version is often the one where every line is load-bearing.

Read for signal density: how many actual decisions are made per page? “We will use line array PA appropriate to the room” makes one decision (use line array). “L-Acoustics K2 with two KS28 subs flown above each main, delay column at row 28, 100ms aligned” makes five decisions. Length is independent of either.

If all three vendors hit all five

Sometimes you’ll get three good proposals. That’s a nice problem to have, and the deciding factor at that point usually isn’t the proposal. It’s the discovery call. The vendor who asks the sharpest questions about your event is the one to pick.

Sharp questions sound like: “What’s the actual goal of this event for the business, not just for the attendees?” “What’s the one moment in the run-of-show that has to go right, and what’s the cost if it doesn’t?” “Who’s the back-channel decision-maker in your team we should sync with two weeks out?”

Vendors that ask these are reading the brief properly. Vendors that don’t will give you a fine event. The vendors that do will save you something on the day you didn’t see coming.

A short footer

We send proposals in this shape because it’s the proposal we’d want to receive. If you want a sample, ask, and we’ll send one with a real fake event in it so you can see the format without identifying any of our actual clients. And if you’re comparing us against a competitor whose proposal is unclear on any of the above, we’ll happily help you read theirs.