If you are still doing business as usual you may want to consider changing it up. While seminars continue to be a viable source of new business you must stay fresh and rethink how you can attract more qualified prospects to your events to get new business.
Many advisors use a direct marketing company to promote their seminars and events. While this is an effortless way of filling the room it can also be costly if not managed properly. The biggest frustration to this process is buying lunch for someone who is only there for the meal. But there are two strategic methods to get the benefits of a direct marketing process without the unnecessary expense. The key is making sure your guests are all qualified.
Two Strategic Methods To Get The Benefits Of Direct Marketing
1. The first most common method of qualifying your guests is to put a qualifier right on the invitation. While this may screen out most unqualified prospects (at least the honest ones) there is no guarantee that everyone is adhering to your guidelines. What I like about a qualifier on the invitation is that about 80%+ who attend your event will have the necessary assets. The only negative is that while they may have the assets they may have little to no need much less commitment to doing business with you.
2. The second option is to qualify the leads yourself, this not only allows you to identify those with money but learn their status and potential commitment to making a change to do business with you. Instead of placing a qualifier on the invitation you can have the RSVP company tell all those that RSVP that the event is already full BUT they would take their name and contact information and have the advisor call them in case there was a cancellation. This is where you step in:
- That same day, you as the advisor call the prospects reconfirming that the event is full but also giving yourself the opportunity to engage in conversation and screen or qualify the prospect.
- If after a brief phone conversation (which is already building the relationship) they qualify then the advisor would call back the next day to say a spot had opened up.
- If the prospect did NOT qualify she would maintain that the event was full.
The benefit to option two is that you are able to maintain more leads and contact information thereby continue dripping on these prospects even if they are not currently qualified or truly interested. The value of this is that at some point they may become interested, inherit money or change jobs giving them the liquid assets. In addition by continuing to drip on these prospects there is the possibility that they will forward your information to another qualified party. The second option, while providing you with fewer leads you are automatically dealing with a smaller number of potential qualified prospects without the additional commitment of time to call each one.
Seminars are alive and well you just have to keep rethinking how to make them work BETTER. Many Advisors are using my Savvy Women Seminar + Seminar Tool Kit for their seminar success.
“I have been doing the Savvy Women Invest ON PURPOSE © seminar consistently for over a year now and it never gets old! I just did another one yesterday (in my conference room at my office with a catered lunch – not expensive and not super fancy) and out of the 7 women that showed I booked appointments with all 7!”