Plan a Follow-up to Your Seminar

Last night I was listening to a teleseminar and the speaker talked about how people fail to make money when they don't follow-up with listeners after their calls. He said it perfectly, “Your future and your fortune is in your follow-up.” This is true of live seminars also.

I work with speakers to plan their seminar and their follow-up. But some speakers don’t make follow-up plans. If an attendee has not made an appointment or purchased a product or service, they don’t make any attempt to contact them again. Sometimes they don’t even contact the people who have made a purchase, they just move on to doing the next seminar. They have no follow-up plan in place and no time to create one after doing a seminar.

You must make your follow-up plans while you are planning the seminar itself. The seminar should be part of your bigger picture - to train people on your topic of expertise, get clients and market products and services.

Some ways to follow-up:

• Thank people for coming with a phone call, letter or e-mail.

• Send a copy of the audio you made of your presentation. This would be good to send to clients who were not able to attend.

• Send a monthly newsletter or e-zine.

• Create a “tips” sheet or series of “tips” sheets on your area of expertise and mail them out monthly.

You want to stay in touch with your attendees so they continue to get to know, like and trust you and remain or become loyal clients.

Make Recordings of Your Seminar Presentations

Are you recording your seminars? You should be. Experienced professional speakers have been doing this for years. They used the audio recording to evaluate their performance. Now, they edit the recordings, put them on CDs or make them into MP3s and use them as products to sell or give to clients. At larger seminars, you would need the help of an audio engineer and special equipment. However, if you are doing a small event at a small venue, you may be able to record your presentation with a digital recorder and edit it yourself with audio editing software such as Sony Sound Forge.

Video taping your seminars are a great idea too. Use clips on your website or post them on YouTube to help market your products and services.

Planning a Seminar? Be Sure to Centralized Your Registration Process

My financial planner’s assistant called to invite me to an exclusive event. I told her I would be happy to attend. A week later I received an invitation in the mail from the financial planner’s corporate office for this same event and a request to RSVP to someone I did not know. I called to ask my planner’ assistant if I needed to also confirm my attendance with this second person, she told me not to worry about it.

When I attended the event, there were so many people in attendance it was hard to breathe. We were seated at round tables and it was impossible for everyone to comfortably see the speaker and his presentation because not everyone could turn their chair in the direction of the podium. I had to inhale and push my chair into the dinner table in order to let waitpeople walk behind me. What happened? There was confusion about the number of people actually attending because there were multiple people in multiple offices accepting RSVPs.

Don’t let this happen to your seminar. Have one central place where all the information on RSVPs or registrations are kept and put one member of your staff in charge of keeping it up-to-date. If you don’t have available staff, you can invest in a registration system which allows you to set up an account and have people register for your seminar online. Or, if you prefer your attendees speak to a live person, you can use a 24-hour call center that has operators who can register callers, process their credit cards, gather information and answer questions.

Seminar Speaking Tips

Because I work with speakers, I often have people asking me for tips about doing presentations. Here are some things I’ve noticed successful speakers do:

They rehearse, rehearse and rehearse
They know their material backwards and forwards. They do full-blown on-site dress rehearsals of their presentations prior to the event even if they’ve done the same presentation many times. This includes testing technology they will use – projectors, Internet connections, microphones and video.

They arrive early for their presentation
Very few speakers can run in at the last minute, get up on stage and speak successfully. Those that appear they can usually have someone taking care of details, such as testing audio/visuals and getting a feeling of the audience, for them. I know because I’ve been that person!

They are prepared for anything and everything to happen.
They know how to cut their presentations short if they suddenly are given less time. They know how to alter their speech if it appears their audience needs more or less information than they originally had anticipated. They can give their presentation without their slides if, for some reason, technology and all back-up plans fail them.

They have an event planner
Ok, this is a shameless plug for my seminar planning services but it’s true. Successful speakers know the value of having someone else handle the details of planning a seminar. They want to be able to concentrate on giving a successful presentation and connecting with their audience.

You Are Here, But Where is Your Presentation?

I attended an event in which the speaker was flown to California from the East Coast. He decided to make a mini-vacation out of the trip and flew in early so he could spend time touring the Napa Valley wine country, just 45 minutes. He left his laptop in the back seat of his rental car while he stayed overnight in a hotel. The morning he was scheduled to give his dinner presentation, he discovered his car had been vandalized and the laptop, with his presentation, and his flash drive, with the back-up cop, had been stolen.

First, never leave a laptop or any other piece of equipment in your car. Don’t even leave a laptop bag that doesn’t have a laptop in it. I had a client do that and the bag and all of the contents were taken even though there wasn’t a computer in it.

Second, if your presentation is dependent on PowerPoint slides, or any other information, which is on your computer, make sure you are not the only one with a copy. If you have an assistant helping you, give that person a copy on a flash drive or CD or, if they have a laptop, have them load it on their computer. If you are traveling out of your area to give a presentation, see if there is a local contact who would be willing let you e-mail a copy to them as a back up. Some of my clients still travel with slides they can place on an overhead projector in case modern technology fails them.

The speaker in my example ended up recreating his presentation from scratch on someone else’s laptop. The events of the day had left him little time to do this so his presentation was disorganized and confusing. Unfortunately, he had not planned his travel schedule well and did not have time to stay and answer a lot of questions.

Don’t let this happen to you. Be prepared for things to go wrong so if and when they do, you can rise above the problems and present yourself professionally.

Planning Seminars Outside Your Local Area

Are you experiencing success with the seminars you are holding in your local area and feel ready to expand? Great! Time to sit down and decide which cities you want to conquer next.

First, look at your database. Do you have a good following, a number of prospects and existing clients, in any one area? If so, survey them to see if they would be interested in attending a live event.

Are there speakers in other cities with whom you can partner and do joint seminars? This way you have access to multiple databases of potential attendees and everyone has the opportunity to pick up new clients.

What you don’t want to do is just pick a city, let’s say, San Francisco, Atlanta, Chicago, etc. without first doing a lot of research to make sure you can draw a qualified audience. If you do, you will be wasting a lot of time and money. Also be aware that costs can vary greatly from city-to-city. Check with local Convention and Visitors Bureaus or venues to get ideas about pricing for rooms, food, parking, audio/visual equipment transportation and labor.

Seminar Goals

Many people decide to have an event and without setting clear goals. Don’t be like them! Determining the goals for your seminar is a top priority when starting to plan. Your goals will help you select your seminar date, location, content and keep you and your staff focused on success.

Here are some of the questions I ask clients to answer to help them determine their goals:

• What do you want to achieve by having this seminar?

• Are you planning to sell a product or service? If so, what? How much are you charging?

• Are you planning to educate? If so, are you offering CEU (Continuing Education Units)?

• Have you held this seminar before? What were the results?

• What would have to happen for you to consider your seminar a success?

• Do you have enough time to promote, invite, organize, advertise your event and plan your presentations so you will be successful?

It takes a little time to sit down and write out your goals but your event will have a greater chance for success if you do it.