Are your seminar attendees
starting to look like this?
By Tammy de Leeuw
The Financial Advisor Netzone
No doubt about it- survival in the financial services industry requires nerves of titanium, an affinity for roller coaster rides, creativity to rival Leonardo Davinci's, and superb networking skills. It also requires the ability to effectively reach more than one person at a time with your compelling message.
The general whine these days is that seminars aren't working anymore- they cost way too much and take up too much of an advisor's precious time. Advisors getting ready to ditch the seminar model of prospecting tell me their seminars are only attended by a sub-species of humans fondly referred to as "platelickers," "buffet bunnies" or "info junkies."
Listening to the seminar horror stories of numerous advisors gave me nightmares in which organized gangs of under 50's go on seminar rampages- eating everything in sight and putting bogus information on evaluation sheets. YIKES!
Instead of helping grow an advisor's business, seminars seem to seem to have de-evolved to the point where they are little more than "Feed A Starving Senior" sessions.
But... does this mean that seminars are dead?...au contraire..
No one and I mean NO ONE I have personally met who is successful in this business gets that way without doing some kind of seminar or presentation. Until you get to the point to where you can legitimately print "by referral only" on your business cards, you have to do something that multiplies your efforts.
On -on- ones need to be reserved for your active clients and not used to pursue Aunt Jenny's uncle's cousin's $3,500 IRA account. Otherwise, you will spend more time in your car than doing things which make money for you and your clients. Seminars and their variants get you in front of more people than you could possibly reach dragging yourself from house to house.
If you are doing the same old things and getting the same lackluster results perhaps it's time to try something different. Something as simple as changing your list provider, your invitation provider, the restaurant you are using, or the day of the week on which you give your seminar can make a world of difference.
Before you throw in the towel completely, email me at: advisorresource@aggies.com and I will send you a free seminar planning calendar, plus samples from a printing company you may have never tried before which does beautiful invitations that GET OPENED. Please be sure to include your full name, a mailing address and postal code. Tell me a little about your current seminar situation and what has or has not worked for you in the past.
Another not-so-ubiquitous (yet) alternative is webinars. Until very recently, webinars were almost exclusively used as sales tools for corporations. However, a lot of advisors (especially ones with far-flung clients) are discovering webinars as a viable method of reaching LOTS of new people and also to keep up with exisiting clients.
Contrary to popular belief- webinars do not require any special software or training. If you are doing seminars now- you can do webinars. In fact, webinars can be a terrific tool to enhance your current live presentations. Email me if you have an interest in trying out webinars. I have done them myself and I KNOW they work.
Again, welcome to FAN. I hope you will find something valuable here and I urge all of you to contribute your own articles, personal experiences and tips and tricks. I am pursuaded that helping each become successful is the key to growth in our industry.
Thanks!
Tammy de Leeuw
AD Radiant Communications
www.radiantcom.com
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