Seminars are a powerful business building strategy when done right. They are a great way to strengthen relationships with existing clients and showcase your expertise to new ones.

If done well you can also create an environment where existing happy customers “sell” your services to prospective customers naturally and unobtrusively.

Recently I was privileged to attend such an event run by one of my clients, a large accountancy firm. I had been helping one of the partners put together a presentation including developing powerful visual aids rather than boring bullet points

The event was a great success and here are some of the key things that made it so:

They started with a clear outcome for the event.

They created content that was relevant to their target audience.

They invested in professional advice on how to present the content in the most effective and memorable manner and then implemented the recommendations.

The speakers rehearsed their presentations in advance, sought external feedback and adjusted their presentations as a result.

Their presentations were clear and concise and used examples and case studies to help audience relate to the strategies being discussed

They ran a short panel discussion with 3 clients who gave concrete examples of the approaches discussed in the presentations

They invited a mix of existing customers and prospective ones.

They had sufficient staff present to ensure that registration went smoothly and that there were people on hand to answer questions afterwards in the drinks reception.

In conclusion:
Seminars are a great business development tool but you need to invest a little time and effort as well as money to create an effective event.

If you are not prepared then my advice would be to steer clear as the risk of creating a poor impression to a large number of people is real.

Seeking professional advice to ensure that the content is relevant, interesting and well presented can make all the difference.

If you have any questions or ideas please post your comments below.

Gavin Meikle
The Presentation and communication doctor.

Recently I was having a conversation with a fellow sales trainer about why some people find selling such a challenge. One reason we agreed on was that the words “sales” and “selling” have a ton of unhelpful mental baggage associated with them.

Just test this out for yourself right now. Grab a piece of paper and a pen and write down or draw all the associations that spring to mind when you think of the words sales or selling.

• What words come to mind?
• What images pop unbidden into your minds eye?

I’ll make a confident prediction that some, if not all of the following ideas appear in your list;

• Sharp suit,
• Flash car,
• Smooth talker,
• Used cars,
• Market traders,
• Foot in door,
• High pressure,
• Sales pitch,
• Con man,
• Pushy,
• Dishonest.

Was I right?

The problem is that all these concepts are negative, unhelpful and frankly out-dated so perhaps we need to update our sales vocabulary.

So what other more positive words would I personally associate with sales? What phrases better represent an effective buyer-seller relationship?

• Buying facilitator,
• Trusted advisor,
• Consultant,
• Expert,
• Listener,
• Questioner,
• Understanding,
• Helpful,
• Decision support,
• Honest & ethical.

Is it possible to change the public’s perception of sales?   I believe so. After all, if Skoda can go from being the butt of all bad car jokes to an award winning and highly sought after brand then the mental associations linked to selling can surely be changed too. It’s up to all of us to demonstrate the value of sales through our actions.

What do you think?

It’s my experience, from networking with hundreds of businesses here in Hampshire, that most people rely on telephone and 1:1 face to face selling to close new business.

Now that’s fine and dandy but 1:1 selling can be expensive, specially in terms of time. You have the time to get to the client, then you have the meeting time, then the travel time back and then the time to write a proposal.

Imagine the benefits of being able to reduce all these costs and sell to more people at the same time. If you could get 10, 20, or even 200 interested people in the room at the same time wouldn’t you have a much greater chance of generating at least 10 times more business for the same initial time outlay.

That’s what we call seminar selling. Putting on an event and inviting your warm leads to attend.
What better way to demonstrate your expertise than in front of the group? If you are a coaching you could do a demonstration of a coaching session. If you are a financial planner you could showcase examples of how you have helped your existing clients. If you are a web expert you could present a few of your top tips for web design or search engine optimisation.

In short seminar presentations are a very time efficient way to demonstrate your expertise in your specialist area.

So why don’t more people put on events?
Here are the most common excuses!

• I don’t have time to organise them
• My product or service isn’t interesting enough
• People are too busy to attend
• I can’t afford it
• I am afraid of making a fool of myself
• I don’t know what to say

Do any of this reasons resonate with you?

Yes?

I thought so. That’s why I am planning a series of no-nonsense weekly articles to answer each of these specific questions and show you how and why you can’t afford to ignore this important new business channel. If you haven’t already done so, subscribe to this blog to receive these valuable reports automatically.

Gavin Meikle
The sales presentation doctor

In my book, presentation skills and selling skills go hand and hand.   The principles of effective selling will help you to produce powerful persuasive presentation and the principles of great presenting will help you sell much better face to face.

Almost every type of presentation is about persuasion.   You want your audience to do something as a result of your presentation.  So to do this you need to consider the same sort of things you do when planning a sales call.

1. What is your outcome
2. Who is your customer(audience)
3. What are their needs and wants?
4. What is there initial attitude to your message (product)
5. What features of your product or message can you turn into relevant benefits for the audience
6. What are the potential pitfalls of staying with their existing behaviour or supplier and how can you use these to “disturb” the status quo?

The answers to these questions will allow you to develop an effective and tailored sales proposition for your audience which you can then bring to life with great presentation skills.

Remember most of the skills needed to be a great presenter or speaker work whether you are speaking to 1 person or 1000!

1. Establish rapport through mirroring non-verbal signals, tonality, volume and vocabulary
2. Engage with confident eye contact
3. Vary your vocal delivery to maintain interest and build enthusiasm
4. Ensure that your body language and gestures are congruent with your message
5. Use silence effectively to allow your audience time to process your proposals

So if you are just a good salesman, polish your presentation skills and you will become great!

And if you are just a confident presenter, learn how to use the techniques of selling and influencing to supercharge your presentations.

Update:  if you want to read more great articles on this topic visit the Angela DeFinis’s blogcarnival

I spent some time in George Best International airport in Belfast recently coming back from a fundraising workshop with the charity Concern Worldwide UK

When I entered the airport departure lounge I saw the usual television screens with departure and arrival information but I also saw something I had never seen before…

Normally, when your flight has not been called, the screens show the message “Please wait in lounge”  but in Belfast airport thy had a different message!   Somebody had clearly thought about the impact of words and had harnessed their knowledge to see if they could increase the amount of money people spend whilst waiting for their flight.

Can you guess what they did?

They changed the message from “Please wait in the lounge” to “Relax and shop”

To me this is a classic example of how changing the words people read can have a major impact on their behaviour.   If you want your audience to do something, then tell them what it is you want them to do!

How could you use this simple lesson to become more persuasive and influential

I’d love to hear your examples or comments!

Today I was phoned by a guy who I have met on a couple of occasions at local networking events.  he works for a company called the disc directory, a local on-line business directory covering Portsmouth and Southampton.

Now I’m pretty hard on tele-sales people but his approach was so refreshing that I just had to post on it.   He called me up, started by saying something like ” Remember the good looking guy who’s been bumping into  you around the local networking scene regularly> – Well that’s not me!  I’m the ugly one and I promised to call you”  – So far so good, he made me laugh and his tone and delivery were congruent.

Then he said”   I’m going to be really direct, it’s Friday afternoon and I’ve got my targets to hit  so I am prepared to offer you a great deal.  Three categories for half price?  How does that sound?”

I paused and he said ” I know you are just wondering which of my arms you are going to bite off to take this great deal.  Well I can tell you that they are both equally tender so it doesn’t have to be difficult.  What do you say?”

Again he made me laugh and I was hooked and after a bit more discussion I agreed.

Now I am not saying that this irreverent and cheeky approach is the one to use all the time but it has it’s place.  He had ready my right and decided to give it ago and it paid off!

What’s the cheekiest sales pitch you have used or had used on you that has worked?

I was running an influencing skills workshop earlier this week and part of the course involved a presentation by me on Prof Robert Cialdini’s six principles of influence.  (NB: If you haven’t read professor Cialdini’s book on Influence, you really should!)

One of the principles is called consensus and it embodies the idea that we are more likely to take an action if we hear, see or read about other people like us doing the recommended action.    During the Q& A one of my delegates asked a great question – could one use this principle to change the culture of an organisation?  In other words, could you use the consensus principle to change the current predominating group consensus?                                

Not immediately knowing an answer, I opened the question up to the group for discussion, and together we decided that yes it probably could.    The trick would be to identify “rebels” “mavericks” and “early adopters” who were already demonstrating some of the principles of the new, desired cultural approach.  Having identified these internal “champions for change” one would need to consistently raise the profile of their activities, especially to people of a similar role or grade.

Over time the idea would be, that by giving repeated attention to the “role models” , the others, who were stuck in the “old approach” would be influenced to change simply because others like them were doing it.   

Do you have any examples of this principle in practice in your businesses?

Whether you are speaking one to one woth a prospective customer or one to many in the form of a group sales presentation you need to learn how to change their state…

By state I mean the the combination of thinking, emotion and physiology that characterises how we are at any given moment of time.  States are often given labels like fearful, sceptical, curious, excited etc.  Every good presenter and influencer, consciously or unconsciously takes their audience on a journey from a starting state to a desired state. 

So for instance if you know that you audience are initially sceptical about your idea, proposal or product, they won’t buy if they remain sceptical throughout the pitch.   You need to get them to a more resourceful state if they are going to say “Yes!”

If you feel that you need to get them from suspicious to enthusiastic before they will buy, that it quite a big change.   The likelyhood is that you may need to lead them through a number of intermediate statges in order to get to enthusiastic.

For example

1. Suspicious (starting state)
2. Curious
3. Interested
4. Open
5. Enthusiastic (desired state)

So far so good but how do you lead them on this journey?  Well there are a number of ways you can change an audiences state.  I’m sure you can think of lots yourself if you set your mind to it but here are a few to get you going.

• Model the state yourself  (if you want them to be curious at a certain point then you need to look and sound curious too)
• Get them to remember a time or a situation when they would naturally have been feeling the state you want them to feel now.  (I’m sure you can remember as a child seeing something interesting for the first time and wondering what it was and how it worked) Have I made you curious?
• Tell a story or give an example where the protagonist in the story demonstrates the state you want your audience to feel now.

Last week I was listening to the radio and I happened to hear an interview with a Dave Alred, a coach who specialises in helping people perform well under pressure. He has studied a wide range of people in many different contexts including world class athletes, rugby players, army personnel and business executives and has coached the England Rugby Squad.  

One of the attributes of the top performers was the ability to cultivate an attitude of inevitability and he illustrated this by talking about a clip from the old Clint Eastwood spaghetti western, A Fistfull of Dollars.   In the film, Clint’s character is walking down the main street en route to a showdown with a group of bad guys.  As he passes the undertaker he tells gives him some  money and tells him to get three coffins ready before continuing on the the gunfight. 

Afterwards, when all the baddies are dead, he walks back to the undertaker, apologises and says, better make that four coffins. In other words, Clint went into the situation as if the outcome where he would win and the bad guys wouldn’t was inevitable. How could you apply this principle to your sales presentations?  What would you need to be thinking?   How would you need to be feeling about that outcome in order to make it inevitable?