Effective Seminar and Conference Marketing

By Kathy Yeager

It is true the economy is rebounding at glacier speed!  Yes, prospects are still cautious about spending money.  And absolutely there have been college and state budget cuts.  The fact still remains you, as the college salesperson, are expected to find and bring in new business, increase revenue, and meet your sales goals.  Here are 10 ways to become a better college salesperson:

1. Say I Will, Not I’ll Try – This is a key step to becoming a better salesperson.  Saying I will lose weight is much stronger than I’ll try to lose weight.  The same is true for sales.  By saying “I Will”, you close the escape door.  You look for creative ways to find the right prospects, for getting referrals/recommendations into those prospects, for asking better questions, and making your sales goals.
2. Be Prepared – Have a process and a plan to determine your top prospects to call.  Research those prospects using their website, Google and another search engine.  Have your approach ready and non-scripted.  Be yourself, and grab that prospect’s attention with what’s in it for them if they do business with your college.
3. Be Personally Accountable – Stop blaming the economy, college administration, or marketing for low sales volume.  Start saying, “How Can I” get more business—even in this economy?  “What Can I” do to help prospects understand what a great solution-provider the college can be for them.  Set aside time to prospect—and do it!  Follow up on a regular basis.
4. Evaluate Your Last Successful Sales Call – Determine why it worked and the prospect bought your products and services.  What process did you follow?  What questions did you ask?  How did you gain trust?  Then replicate those things again.
5. Schedule Prospecting Time Each Week –Set aside 2-4 hours per week to make outbound prospecting calls with the purpose of scheduling a face-to-face meeting.  Guard this time and make those prospecting calls happen.  Make calls when you are energetic and fresh.  Make sure all the pre-research has been done and these are the prospects who could actually buy from you.  Smile, and have fun with this.
6. Try Different Approaches –Identify yourself and immediately go into how you have helped other companies in their market to increase productivity, save money, or become more competitive.  State a fact you learned from their company research.  See what works and replicate it.  Practice your approach on your co-workers or on your voicemail.  How do you sound?  Would you schedule an appointment with you?
7. Call on Higher Level Decision Makers –If you enter on the “C” level, you will obtain larger contracts, shorter decision-making time, and larger buy-in for future business.  It may take a referral or additional research to open the door, but it will be worth it.
8. Ask Better Questions –Create a list of 20-25 questions that your prospect hasn’t heard before and your competition isn’t asking.  Probe deeper to uncover the true need and issue of the company.  Ask what outcomes they are expecting and the areas they want to change.  Ask what will be the cost if they don’t “fix” this problem.
9. Engage the Prospect –Smile, listen, build trust and rapport, show knowledge from research and above all, talk about why they should do business with your college.  When you smile, it shows confidence.  An engaged prospect is looking for ways to make your products and services work for them.  An unengaged prospect is looking for ways to get rid of you!
10. Ask for the Business – Follow all the steps of Solution Selling, and after you have hand-delivered the proposal, answered objections and set aside their fears—ask for the business.  Utilize trial closes up to this point.  Then ask them “How Does This Look?”  If they say great—move to the contract stage and fulfillment.  If they are still hesitating, or have to think about it—the true value wasn’t revealed for the prospect, or all of their objections weren’t answered.

Kathy Yeager

How to Avoid the Seven Deadly Sins of Selling

By Kathy Yeager

Today’s college or university sales person has to deal with the economy, competition, wearing many hats internally, lack of sales training and territories.  If that wasn’t enough, committing even one of the Seven Deadly Sins of Selling could stop the sale or lengthen the sales cycle.  What are those seven deadly sins and what can you do to avoid them?

1. Talk too much and listen too little– Do your company research and then create a list of questions to uncover the specific needs.  Don’t assume anything—ask more questions, probe deeper, listen and takes notes.
2. No processes or systems in place for selling – Automate beyond technology. Create new habits, scripts, typical questions to ask, pipeline reports, follow-up systems, top customer tracking forms, proposal and contract templates, and company research sites.
3. Fail to build trust before trying to sell your products and services – Customers won’t buy from a sales person unless they trust them. Slowly build trust and rapport with your prospects.  Show you have done your homework.  Tell stories about other companies you have helped in their market.  Erase the prospect’s fear of doing business with you.
4. Sells features instead of benefits or value – Don’t discuss what your products and services do—discuss what they will do for the prospect.  Talk about the difference it will make in the prospect’s organization such as increased productivity, build better leaders, improve a process, become more competitive, or increase their bottom line.
5. Being discouraged by the amount of work it takes to succeed in sales, excessive rejection and college bureaucracy – Control your attitude by practicing good self-talk, reading positive selling books, and saying daily affirmations.  Concentrate on what is going well instead of what isn’t, and utilize a mentor or a coach.
6. Rushing the prospect to buy and selling the wrong solution – Understand your prospect’s buying style and generation and sell accordingly.  You can’t rush a prospect to a decision if they aren’t ready.  Make sure you have asked all the probing questions needed to uncover the true customer need and then prescribe the right solution.  Become a trusted advisor with good information, resources and solutions.
7. Not separating your college or university from the rest of the competition – Identify how you are better and different from the competition.  Why should companies buy from you?  Determine your Value Proposition Statement and use it everywhere.  Differentiate yourself by focusing on the specific needs of the prospect, delivering an outstanding solution and following up to reinforce learning and sell additional products and services.

Lorrie Ross will be speaking at the next session of Ralph Elliott’s Continuing Education Marketing Conference being held on Monday-Tuesday, August 29-30, in Chicago on the Magnificent Mile at the Downtown Marriott Courtyard Hotel. Incidentally, there is an optional pre-conference workshop on Sunday, August 28.

In today’s time-crunched, tech-centric, world, we tend to feel overwhelmed by the plethora of web marketing tools out there. The key is to remember that it is not the tools but how we use the tools that make our marketing matter. Here’s a healthy dose of web marketing advice: her top five favorite Web Marketing Tips. She’ll cover more and go into more detail at the conference!

#1- Stop selling and start serving your prospective customer. Customer service via well-managed websites, educational content,  blogs, email newsletters, etc… that have VALUABLE content will allow you to do what marketing is really all about, build relationships. Relationships (via service first) equal sales to fill seats and boost attendance!

#2 – Be an educator. Teach to build trust and credibility. Seminar marketers are experts in their field.

• Use the web to engage in marEDing! (Marketing from an EDucational vs. overtly promotional approach).
• Share educational materials, content and tips to funnel people into signing up for your events.

Being an educator via authoring online content can help you go from being an expert to being an AUTHORity and that is where credibility kicks in. Utilize social media networks, email, blogs and micro blogging as a platform to reach consumers and educate them with your expertise.

#3 – Craft valuable content that also multi-tasks to boost search visibility. The slogan “content is king” still holds true. Content is an important element to web marketing because it fuels search indexing, builds indexed pages for a website, serves customers, and boosts
visibility.

#4 – Re-purpose your marketing assets and collateral online.  Recycling is not only good for the planet, but it is also good for  your marketing!

• Videos can be edited and hosted  on video-sharing sites,
• Photos can be posted on your  blog, and
• Great content can be re-purposed  on your website and shared on ezine sites, newsletters and on social media  sites.

No need to reinvent the  wheel, be creative and recycle marketing collateral!

#5 -  Build a successful email marketing campaign. Make  sure your email marketing execution SO is on brand, on purpose, and offers  relevant value. Do not let tools like social media dissuade you from making  email a priority in your marketing planning. Email marketing works!

We hope to see you in  Chicago so I can give you step-by-step tips to leverage the power of web  marketing to boost your seminar business! Join Lorrie and host Clemson University by  booking your hotel room now at the Downtown Marriott Courtyard Hotel. There is also an  optional pre-conference workshop on Sunday, August 28. You can see  more conference details at: Continuing Education Marketing Conference. Register on-line or call  Clemson’s Kay James at 864.656.2200!

“How to get  60% of Your Bottom Line in Contract/Customized In-Company Training” is Pat Hall’s topic as a speaker at the next session of Ralph Elliott’s Continuing Education Marketing Conference. The dates are Monday and Tuesday, August 29-30, in Chicago on the Magnificent Mile at the Marriott Courtyard Downtown Hotel. There is also an optional pre-conference workshop on Sunday, August 28.

Getting to the right decision maker in an organization is one way to increase your in-house profitability. Here are 10 ways to get to the right person so you can initiate or close a sale.

1. Find out who are your Alums/Members – How many are C-Level people at Fortune 1,000 companies? If you are a college, your Development Office will have a list.
2. Network with the attendees at your public events – find out who is the right person to contact and establish the specifics on when you will follow-up.
3. Your evaluation form should ask for an in-house contact person - Remember there is often more than one decision maker in an organization, so find out who some of the others are.
4. Send speaking proposals to industry meetings - offer to conduct ‘lunch and learn’ sessions as well as breakout presentations. Impress the C-Level attendees.
5. Offer to let a prospect sit in on your public classes – either for free, or offer to refund the fee if they book an in-house.
6. Always ask for higher authority – often the person sending out the RFP is not the decision maker. Mention that your subject matter expert wants to speak to the decision maker as a justification for getting past the gatekeeper.
7. Track organizations that are expanding or locating in your market  - identify the top leaders and set up a face-to-face visit.
8. Don’t just collect the business cards – get the name of at least one other person on the back of the same card. Also, bend your business card at the edge so it stands out when the prospect reviews your card.
9. Pay a referral fee to your instructors – when they do a program for an organization… give your speakers an incentive to identify other topics for
   in-house training.
10. Don’t be afraid of rejection – if you are not getting at least 3 or 4 ‘nos’ a day, you are not asking for enough so push forward.

Once you reach the decision maker, be effective by listening 90% of the time and by talking 10% of the time.

Get lots of additional ideas at Pat’s session in August at the Clemson University Continuing Education Marketing Conference being held on August 28-30, in Chicago on the Magnificent Mile at the Marriott Courtyard Downtown Hotel. Register on-line or call Clemson’s Kay James at 864.656.2200!

Tracy Wazac is a network speaker at the next session of Ralph Elliott’s Continuing Education Marketing Conference being held on Monday and Tuesday, August 29-30, in Chicago on the Magnificent Mile at the Marriott Courtyard Downtown Hotel. There is an optional pre-conference workshop on Sunday, August 28.

One issue she will be discussing is “Six Ways to Get World Class Speakers for Your Conferences and Seminars.” Here are some ideas to help you find the right people for your audience:

1.  Go outside your immediate region. You know exactly who to call when you need a good presenter on certain topics in your geographic area; but chances are local audiences have heard them speak as well. You may save on travel costs, but would a “new” expert generate more overall revenue?
2. Check with other conference providers. Try to locate someone who has hosted a similar conference or seminar in another regional area, but just different enough to not be considered a competitor. Most are willing to help and will let you know which presenters were successful and which were not.
3. Contact an ASTD chapter or another club or association.  They will be more than happy to provide names for you. If you take this route however, be sure to get references!
4. Work with a content provider or speakers bureau. These providers do their best to make the speaker side of things the least of your conference planning worries. Some provide extra services to help you market your event and most of the time, the instructors or speakers have been screened and have a proven track record.
5. Take advantage of social media. Facebook and LinkedIn are excellent resources to find potential presenters. Join some groups or send messages to see who is buzzing about whom.
6. Don’t be afraid to “go big.” Have you ever desired to hear the author of a book you found to be invaluable speak? Chances are you’re not the only one. They may cost more, but you will have leverage to charge more. Check out the website of the author and get in contact with their representative.

Learn more about the value of conference and seminar content at Ralph Elliott’s Continuing Education Marketing Conference being held on August 28-30, in Chicago on the Magnificent Mile at the Marriott Courtyard Downtown Hotel. Register on-line or call Clemson’s Kay James at 864.656.2200!

Brad Kleinman, Digital Strategy Planner at [wire] stone and speaker at Clemson’s Continuing Education Marketing Conference (see Clemson Conferences) offers these six tips on using Facebook to market your programs:

1. 1. Make your Facebook event page as complete as possible. Doing so will make your event easier to find, and the more details you give, the more likely people will actually register and attend.
2. You will most likely want to make your event public, which will allow anyone to view and RSVP. It also enables people to invite their own Facebook friends to the event. The algorithm in the Facebook News Feed places a lot of emphasis on pushing events to users when several other friends RSVP for an upcoming conference. With a high RSVP response, it’s highly likely for your event to creep into my feed a few times over the course of time! The same goes for pictures.
3. Once you are up and running with your Facebook event, be sure to post event updates frequently on the event wall and message periodic reminders to the RSVP’d guests. Not too frequently, though! While the wall posts won’t alert anyone unless they proactively look at the event wall, messages to guests will send out alerts to their email inboxes (depending on their Facebook settings).
4. A good rule of thumb is to send three reminders for the event out through Facebook; one message should encourage attendees to invite their connections and spread the word through Facebook by sharing the event on their profiles; the second message should be sent a few weeks prior to the event as a reminder to make sure people have updated their calendar and prompt some activity on your event wall; and, the third message should be sent a couple of days before the event with final details and instructions. The key here is staying in the forefront of people’s minds so they not only remember to attend but also spread the word about your event to their Facebook friends as well.
5. You can post on your event wall more frequently (a post per day is a good benchmark). Some recommendations for items to share on your event wall can include: (1) Links to the event agenda (2) Information about speakers  (3) Articles or blog posts about your event topic (4) Video links and (5) Photos of a previous event.
6. Try Facebook Advertisements: Facebook Ads do not have a large CTR or click-through-rate, which means they don’t perform very well in terms of users clicking on the ads. However, your payment is based upon CPC or cost-per-click, which means you only pay when someone actually clicks. Therefore, Facebook Ads are a great option when you are running more of a branding campaign for your organization.

Get more ideas on social media as well as all aspects of marketing at the Chicago conference. See Clemson Conferences for a detailed agenda. Register on-line now at Clemson Registration or just call Clemson’s Kay James at 864.656.2200!

Frank Colantonio will be speaking at the next session of Ralph Elliott’s Continuing Education Marketing Conference being held on Monday-Tuesday, August 29-30, in Chicago on the Magnificent Mile at the Downtown Marriott Courtyard Hotel. Incidentally, there is an optional pre-conference workshop on Sunday, August 28.

A couple of years ago, after more than two decades in the business of marketing continuing education products, two things were really starting to concern me.

First, is the ROI from all the work that goes into assembling faculty, developing content, and delivering a conference should really be measured exclusively by the number of participants that showed up (or at least paid their registration fee). Did the revenue really end when the last participant left our annual conference? Was all that valuable content destined to just sit in our e-bookshelf at the office….forever?

Secondly, could we  use contemporary technology to build a central hub for all our activities. Could we achieve multiple objectives in one web space?

• We needed to effectively market and sell our products, transact e-commerce, and deliver e-Learning programs.
• We needed a user friendly community for existing and potential customers, faculty and partners.
• The community had to be engaging, supportive and important to our stakeholders.
• We wanted them to visit often; to dialogue, access their personal e-libraries, make topic submissions, and read the latest news from experts in their discipline.
• We wanted a busy community that would attract sponsor and partner dollars.

As it turns out, we built it…and they came! You can do the same thing, no matter how big or small your operation. Join me and host Clemson University by booking your hotel room now at the Downtown Marriott Courtyard Hotel. There is also an optional pre-conference workshop on Sunday, August 28. You can see more conference details at: Continuing Education Marketing Conference. Register on-line or call Clemson’s Kay James at 864.656.2200!

Stewart Gandolf is a panelist at the next session of Ralph Elliott’s Continuing Education Marketing Conference being held on August 28-30, in the Chicago Courtyard by Marriott-Magnificent Mile. He will share insights gleaned from 15 years in the field, convincing one of the toughest audiences on the planet to do something they do not want to do, i.e., convince doctors to attend a seminar about marketing.

Selling seminars and conferences is always hard but selling any product to Doctors is brutal. The trouble is EVERYONE wants a piece of Doctors….financial services reps, pharma reps, manufacturers, suppliers, realtors, etc. As a result, they have vicious gatekeepers to “protect them.” What’s more, unlike most other business owners, the majority of doctors feel marketing is beneath them.

The good news is, while selling to doctors is always challenging, the experience gained from the process is priceless.

So here is a preview to a few best practices Stewart has learned, honed from years of slugging it out in the brutal “real world.”

1. Credibility is key. If you don’t have it, you better figure out a way to build it. Otherwise, you are doomed from the start.
2. Rolling out big too fast can kill you. Sometimes losing tactics can give “false positives” early on, and wind up costing you many thousands.
3. Getting past admin people is crucial (come to the Chicago Conference and let me tell you how).
4. Remember that people will only go if they perceive your event is 100% relevant to their needs. 80% is not good enough to convince them to pull the trigger. Speaking of which, check out the terrific agenda in Chicago:
1. Sunday Agenda
2. Monday Agenda
3. Tuesday Agenda
5. Venue choice is critical to move the “fence sitters” into the “yes” column. Check out the Chicago Courtyard by Marriott – it’s comfortable and right in the middle of Chicago’s famous Miracle Mile.
6. You need to test and adopt new channels of distribution. What used to work for us is now dead…constant innovation is critical.
7.  Remember, your audience is looking for excuses NOT to go. You’ve got to convince your audience that your event is highly relevant to their needs, worth the hassle and expense, and that they’ll enjoy their time while they are there.

In closing our recommendation is that you join us and the other speakers in Chicago so we can discuss how you can promote your events more effectively. You can see more conference details at Clemson Conference Chicago.

So to be successful in selling seminars and conferences to Doctors, there is zero tolerance for error. One missed “best practice” and your marketing program will spin off the road and into a cliff.

Jenny Hamby will be sharing tips and ideas for developing more compelling marketing copy for your web pages, social media, and mobile environments. The event is being held on Monday-Tuesday, August 29-30, in Chicago on the Magnificent Mile at the Downtown Marriott Courtyard Hotel. There is also an optional pre-conference workshop on Sunday, August 28. I look forward to meeting you there! 

Today, Jenny will share an idea on using rented mailing lists. Renting mailing lists is a time-proven, but costly, way to reach new prospective seminar attendees. One way to maximize the return on your list rental investment is using two-step marketing.

With two-step marketing, your seminar is not what you promote initially. Instead, you offer a free or low cost resource, such as a report or webinar, to entice prospects to sign up for your list. For the second step, you promote your seminar to the prospects who responded to your initial offer.

 Here are 7 tips for creating a successful two-step marketing campaign.  

1. Create a free resource that is related to the topic of your seminar. For example, offer a free report that identifies the most common mistakes your audience makes related to your subject matter or a teleseminar outlining a 5-step process to achieving a specific result.
2. Promote only your free resource. Don’t confuse prospects by trying to market both your seminar and the free resource in the same marketing piece. If you want to know which offer will generate the biggest response, split your test list. Offer half of the list your free resource; promote your seminar to the second half.
3. Make it easy to respond to your offer. The easiest way to gather responses is by instructing prospects to sign-up for the resource at your web site. However, you may want to test letting prospects call, email, or text you as well.
4. Deliver instant gratification. Deliver the free resource online, so that prospects can get instant access to your high-quality information while they are still ‘hot’.
5. Have a follow-up system ready to go before you launch your lead-generation campaign. This helps to ensure that hot prospects don’t fall through the cracks.
6. Encourage consumption. Your free resource will contain valuable information. Use your follow-up series not only to promote your seminar, but also to remind prospects to go back and ‘consume’ the free resource. By doing so, they will have a chance to experience the type of quality education you deliver.
7. Spend extra time following up with these leads. By taking action to request your free resource, your new prospects have indicated that they are more motivated than the average seminar prospect. Devote extra time and marketing dollars to reach out to them before your seminar. 

Finding new prospects for your seminars is an ongoing challenge for seminar organizers, particularly when marketing budgets are tight. The next time you rent a list, consider testing a two-step marketing campaign to see if this approach helps you generate a bigger return on your list investment.

Get lots of additional ideas at Jenny’s session in August at the Clemson University Continuing Education Marketing Conference being held on August 28-30, in Chicago on the Magnificent Mile at the Marriott Courtyard Downtown Hotel. Register on-line or call Clemson’s Kay James at 864.656.2200!

Kirko Papajanis will be sponsoring the Sunday, evening social on August 28th, after the optional pre-conference workshop at the next session of Ralph Elliott’s Continuing Education Marketing Conference being held on Monday and Tuesday, August 29-30, in Chicago on the Magnificent Mile at the Marriott Courtyard Downtown Hotel.   

Kirko’s topic for the conference is “How to add a human voice to your website, social media, and email marketing to promote any type of event.” 

Websites, Social Media, and Email are terrific ways to promote your events, but what about human contact? I have been working with clients for the last ten years driving registrations and attendance to seminars, conferences, road shows, and webinars – paid and unpaid alike. The one thing we have found that can always boost the numbers is something simple: human contact!  

The fastest,easiest,and by the far most affordable way to add human contact is to add a real human voice to your event communications!

A study was just released from the Missouri School of Journalism that verifies how social pages with a human voice…as opposed to a purely institutional presence… were better able to build a sense of trust and improve communications with contacts and page visitors.  Satisfaction scores were higher too, and in fact the entire interaction was ranked higher.

So, he recommends that you put a human voice to your email, social programs, and web pages. You can increas trust, improve communication and satisfaction. Your event enrollments will increase dramatically. Here are 8 simple steps to get you started: 

1. Identify the right “voice” people in your organization 
2. Feature them in your blogs and social pages using audio and video files
3. Link your Tweets so you have more comprehensive content in audio form
4. Offer an audio option on your forums and social conversations
5. Offer and collect phone information for personal follow-up
6. Ensure your audio content matches the quality of your written content
7. Use the phone to support your email invitations and remainders
8. Use “guided” voicemail to communicate without intrusion

We look forward to seeing you in Chicago so we can discuss how you can get better registration and attendance numbers for all your events by putting a human voice in your marketing mix. You can see more conference details at: Continuing Education Marketing Conference. Register on-line or call Clemson’s Kay James at 864.656.2200!