Seminars: Education vs. Selling
If you're promoting your business with seminars, as opposed to holding a seminar solely to educate, you need to be clear that those are two different animals, but they're very related.
First, even if you're only educating your group - let's say you're bringing them up to speed on new laws that affect them, or teaching them about some area of expertise you have and so forth - really you are selling at least to the extent you have to sell them on the idea you know what you're talking about. If you have a well-known respected reputation, you may not have to sell yourself in the same was as you would if you're not well-known.
On the other hand, it's quite common to see various business people like financial planners, real estate brokers, insurance agents, chiropractors (and so forth) hold seminars to promote their business, and put together an educational seminar to do so. So far so good - but the missing piece is this:
Holding your educational seminar hoping to generate new business is a lot of wasted time and effort if
1. You're not 100% clear that the true purpose of your seminar is NOT really educating people, but getting them into enough of a comfort zone with you to want to do business with you, and
2. You don't tell people exactly what you want them to do. Usually called "closing the sale" in sales terminology, you need to close the sale at the end of your seminar, even if that just means getting someone to book an appointment.
More on closing the sale later.
First, even if you're only educating your group - let's say you're bringing them up to speed on new laws that affect them, or teaching them about some area of expertise you have and so forth - really you are selling at least to the extent you have to sell them on the idea you know what you're talking about. If you have a well-known respected reputation, you may not have to sell yourself in the same was as you would if you're not well-known.
On the other hand, it's quite common to see various business people like financial planners, real estate brokers, insurance agents, chiropractors (and so forth) hold seminars to promote their business, and put together an educational seminar to do so. So far so good - but the missing piece is this:
Holding your educational seminar hoping to generate new business is a lot of wasted time and effort if
1. You're not 100% clear that the true purpose of your seminar is NOT really educating people, but getting them into enough of a comfort zone with you to want to do business with you, and
2. You don't tell people exactly what you want them to do. Usually called "closing the sale" in sales terminology, you need to close the sale at the end of your seminar, even if that just means getting someone to book an appointment.
More on closing the sale later.
posted by David Portney at
11:51 AM
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