When I first wrote this book, I was a senior trainer for Xerox Corporation. In that capacity, I felt I had created a program that taught individuals everything they needed to know about corporate training. In fact, that might have been the case for a corporate trainer whose audiences came from within the corporation. However, it has now been over 25 years since I left Xerox to open my own training business. In those years I have certainly learned one simple fact about how to run seminars and workshops. If you can't populate a room with participants, you don't stay in business.
In the following chapters you will learn everything you need to know about how to grab an audience and take them for one terrific ride. In this chapter you will learn how to run a seminar business. Every speaking professional has his or her own way of doing things, and I'm a creature of habit as well. My goal is to provide you with choices and opinions that go along with those choices and then ultimately equip you with enough knowledge to let you decide how to run your own seminar business.
Branding Yourself
Before we start working on putting participants into the seats, referred to as “populating the room,” you must figure out what these participants are coming to hear. The concept of branding yourself sounds a little rough, but not to worry. It isn't as bad as it sounds. You see, rarely are you the only person on the face of the earth who will be talking about the subject you profess to be an expert in. The term “branding” refers to how you will differentiate yourself within your industry.
For instance, there are many who lecture on selling, one of the topics I lecture on. Go to the bookstore and you will notice that there are a few people who claim to know as much, if not more, than I do. However, my branding has been threefold:
- I teach a classic Xerox sales approach.
- I teach from “repeatable, predictable processes.”
- I teach the art of creating urgency.
This becomes my branding, or my niche. It allows clients to differentiate what I do from what others do. It might differentiate me into a job, or it might differentiate me out of a job. Clients can decipher what makes me unique.
What will be your branding? It may be one of the most important questions you ask yourself. Do not rush into a quick answer. In a sense, you may be married to this concept for quite some time. Whatever you decide, I suggest you follow a couple of simple rules.
Rule #1—Think Outside of the Box
That can be a tired phrase, but the fact of the matter is that many geniuses of today are working with ideas that have been around for quite some time. What initially makes them different and employed is the creativity they use to attract their clients.
One of my colleagues, Eric Hargens, works with salespeople as well. He's spent time as a consultant and sales manager, and he struggled with this for a while. He wanted to focus on the initial conversation that goes on between client and salesperson. That doesn't sound much like a branding, now does it? After a few long walks and a couple of cigars, he came up with a different way of articulating this concept. He calls it “the art of chitchat.” Now he has a simple way of explaining what makes what he does unique. That's what I call thinking out of the box.
Rule #2—Keep It Simple
I hear from many people working on their consulting businesses who are trying to brand themselves. When I ask them what they speak on, often the next sentence out of their mouths tells me all I need to know.
When I hear someone take five minutes to answer the question, there is a problem. If you can't explain it, how in the world are you going to sell it? Most people are not interested in hearing a dissertation or pieces of your seminar. They just want to know what you are going to teach them. My rule of thumb is simple: If it takes you more than five words to say it, it's not simple enough.
Please understand that “simple” doesn't mean “obvious.” “Simple” means “easy to understand.” My suggestion is to write out and practice little sound bites that would interest prospective clients.
Rule #3—Don't Underestimate the Basics…Just Don't Advertise It!
Now that you will be thinking out of the box and trying to keep the concept simple, you are probably asking yourself, “How do I come up with the next hula hoop?” You don't have to. You need to put your own slant on your topic and surround it with solid presentation skills that you will learn in abundance as you read through this book. If it were me, I'd start with the basics.
When I left Xerox and started my consulting business, I felt I was on the cutting edge of every process that related to selling. During one of my seminars an individual came up and complimented me on how I was defining the art of selling. I wasn't that surprised because I felt this was one of the most unique definitions I had created.
He then told me he had seen a similar definition in a book he had read. I was flabbergasted and immediately challenged him to give me the name of the book. I had read plenty of books and had never seen anything close to my definition. The book he was quoting was Salesmanship and Sales Management, written by John G. Jones from the Alexander Hamilton Institute. Jones's definition of selling went this way:
Salesmanship, in its broadest sense, is essentially the selling of one's point of view—the ability to start with the other fellow's point of view and to lead his mind to the viewpoint of the seller.
I must apologize for the indifference to gender within Jones's definition, but that is how they referred to many things in 1917, when this passage was written. You see, this is not new information; this is information that has been around…it has simply been forgotten.
Rule #4—Be Passionate
The quickest way out of the seminar business is to lack passion for the topic you are building your business around. Experience is very important, but experience can be attained. Passion cannot be attained. It must be felt.
What do you truly love to study and talk about? You and your topic are going to be together for quite some time; my suggestion is to think long and hard about this. You and your audiences will be a lot happier if you do!
General versus Closed Seminars
Now that you are branded, you have a second major decision to make. Will your seminar business run general sessions, or will you run closed seminars? The answer to this question will go a long way to determining how you go about marketing yourself. Let's spend a moment or two looking at the pros and cons of each.
General Sessions
A general session seminar is one that is put on for a mixed audience. Such seminars typically are attended by multiple companies and accommodate large audiences. If you have ever attended one, you'd know it. Frequently these seminars are held in hotels or facilities that hold large audiences.
The biggest strength of building a seminar business with general sessions in mind is profit. When I decided to go into the seminar business, one of the contributing factors was my attendance in a general session seminar. The program I attended was a one-day coping-with-conflict seminar, and the cost was a measly $175. Of course, I wasn't the only one attending. My guess is there were more than 500 people in attendance. I'm not a math major, but I believe that represents a one-day total of $87,500. There were other costs, like renting of the room, marketing of the seminar, snacks, and coffee, but any way you stack it, that was one heck of a day in the seminar business.
These types of seminars are typically marketed by utilizing key elements of social media, email blasts, and mass mailing flyers sent to selected mailing list clients. This list is determined by the topic. For instance, the session I just described was marketed to human resources professionals. In the sales industry where many of my sessions are delivered, if I were to mass market, I'd aim for a mailing list of sales managers. If I were to put on a general session for training professionals, I'd mass mail to training managers and possibly human resources professionals where training often resides.
If the profit is so high, why would anyone ever want to create a seminar business with any other marketing approach in mind? The answer lies in the topic and the techniques you choose to deliver that topic. As you lean back and decide if this is an approach that you want to consider, ask yourself these questions:
- Is my topic generic enough to deliver competently to multiple customers?
When conducting a general session seminar, you may have well over 100 different companies represented in the room. Your topic has to be generic enough to provide examples that will be pertinent to all. Sometimes this isn't possible, and speakers begin to move to multiple industry examples. This is done by highlighting various industries represented by participants in the room, and providing direct examples that relate to them. Once you begin to do this, just be careful to have a wide range of examples to include as many different industries as possible.
- Will my message be lost in a large audience seminar format?
Delivering seminars to large audiences requires more lecture than many speakers would like. This doesn't mean there can't be small-group activities sprinkled throughout. However, some topics don't lend themselves to smaller group activities. I'm a little stubborn regarding this topic because I believe any size audience can participate in certain types of activities. However, your exercise has to be conducive to the topic. There's nothing worse than attending a seminar where a forced group exercise is inserted that doesn't add any value to the session.
- Are you prepared to dedicate your business to this marketing approach?
Populating a room of up to 300 strangers requires a lot of work and expense. If this is the type of business you will choose, then prepare to be committed to it. This is a year-round marketing approach that will place you in large cities all across the country. Each year in business will allow you to reap the rewards of return customers and word-of-mouth attendees. It is essential that a professional handle the marketing. Personally, I wouldn't skimp one penny on professional marketing, because they are the ones who will get those rooms populated with attendees.
Listen and learn from the professionals.
The costs to put on open sessions can creep up on you. When you look at up-front costs that can include the marketing, mailing lists, hotel, travel, breaks, and AV support, it's not unusual to see a breakeven cost hovering around $10,000 a seminar.
The profit is high, and it's an exciting way to conduct business. If you do choose to conduct your seminar business this way, you will have a head start in providing closed sessions based on specific requests from clients. You see, general sessions always have the potential to create leads toward closed sessions; however, closed sessions never create the potential for general sessions.
Closed Sessions
For many professional speakers like myself, general sessions can be a challenge because the application of what we teach is specific. My topic is not generic enough to deliver competently to multiple customers. When I teach people to sell, I need to know exactly what they sell to provide real-world examples. My techniques do not work generically. I also need to ro...
