Plate Licker's or, Quality Prospects?

Putting On A LIVE Event Is The Most Powerful Way To Fill Your Pipeline With New Customers, or Clients. Dan Kennedy

sI picked up a very funny book recently, you may appreciate it or be annoyed by it, not sure. It’s called “The Adventures of a Free Lunch Junkie.”

It’s a very funny book about a retiree who attended 50 Free Lunch (or, Dinner) events in and around Boca Raton, Florida over a 10-month period and then wrote this book about the experience of being fed, pitched, and not buying.

Is this your idea of what live events are all about???

$50 a head for a number of people with no capability to become a client or no interest? Perhaps, retirees like the gentlemen mentioned above who are bored and looking for literally a “Free Lunch” or “Free Dinner.”

There certainly are a variety of “free loaders,” or as they are known in our industry, even more pejoratively “plate lickers.”

Thinking that way sabotages you if you’re trying to be effective with any sort of live event whether it includes a free lunch or not.

In another of my businesses I work with martial arts school owners. One of them had quadrupled his business under my tutelage and had increased his net income by more than ten times. Even with this growth he was struggling with a minor aspect of his business. In looking at his operating “statistics” he started complaining about his volume of introductory students (first meeting/class) that failed to become students.?

His comment to me was something to the effect of being tired of broke people coming in to collect “free pajamas.”???The backstory is that among the other “bribes” for attending his free introductory sessions, I had suggested that he provide free uniforms and several other items. He got hung up on the $10 to $15 in hard cost of the stuff he was giving away to prospects who didn’t enroll.

With my review of his results, I reminded him that all that mattered was the ratios and the return on investment. In this case, a new student was worth over $5,000 lifetime and a bit over $500 on day one. He was converting 50% of those who attended the free session to students. Working backwards it was costing $50 to generate a lead, $100 to generate an appointment, $200 to generate a prospect who attended a free class, and then $400 to create a new enrollment. With the hard cost of the free gifts including the unform he was annoyed by giving away, each attendee cost him a bit less than $225 and each new student enrollment therefore cost less than $450.?

By the time it was all said and done he was creating over an 11:1 return on that marketing channel and was at better than break-even the day they enrolled. His added cost for “free stuff” was minor in the context both of the cost to get someone in the door and in context of their return on investment.

You have to look at your numbers in exactly the same way. Cost to create a lead. Cost to fill the seat. Cost per qualified prospect. Cost per meeting. Cost per new client. Every marketing channel must justify its existence. The ultimate cost per new client from that channel should be weighed against the client’s immediate and short-term revenue, and their likely lifetime revenue.

I’ve worked with a number of business owners who host lunch or dinner meetings aimed at upscale audiences ranging from a very successful high end Med Spas, a pain clinic, a high-end plastic surgeon, and of course any number of financial planners, wealth managers, life agents, annuity salespeople, and on and on.

It’s often common to host live seminars in any number of different fields. An associate ran a HUGE business specifically hosting Bankruptcy recovery seminars with a focus on rebuilding credit. They were VERY productive for him.

Another friend who I’ve mentioned before hosted live seminars for Dentists with a presentation about how to replace their dental practice income with outside investments (in this case with a focus on real estate.)

To start off, I’d suggest that are any number of various live and in-person events that can be utilized very successfully if you do them right.

One thing I hear regularly about live events is that they simply don’t work anymore. That is the biggest lie anyone could ever tell you! When someone says live events don’t work, what they really mean is that?they don’t know how to do them correctly. Another thing I hear quite often is it’s getting harder and harder to fill a room when it comes to live events.?

While I would say to that is it’s harder to fill a room if you carry on doing it the way you used to, or if you only use one method of media to get the word out. In short, sending a bunch of emails is not going to fill your live event—not these days. I keep seeing advisors who try to fill their events only using Facebook and/or LinkedIn. While those work well, you’ll rarely scale to the size you’re hoping to accomplish using only those methods. You can get a few participants likely at a reasonable cost, but usually not enough.

However, if you do it properly and utilize lots of different media and methods, with the right focus, you can easily fill a room or a webinar and get great results from the event. You’ll hear me talking often about using a “Marketing Parthenon.”???It’s essential to use multiple media to fill any and all live events that you host—even those aimed primarily at your current clients (and their friends.)

In-person live events of various types can be a great source of new clients.?

Before you move forward with hosting events, it’s essential that you keep track of and understand the underlying marketing numbers. With each and every marketing channel you start at the end point and work your way backwards through the marketing funnel of new prospects.

Near the end of that pipeline, you need to know how these numbers line up and the cost to get to each point, as well as the ratio from one step to the next.

·??????Registration

·??????Attendee

·??????Appointment

·??????Client

The numbers prior to registration are just as important. Let’s say that you’re tracking traffic from a series of Facebook ads. Then I need to know:

·??????Clicks

·??????Opt-Ins

·??????Registrations

If I were tracking Television advertising, while certainly I’d buy the media based upon cost per thousand and effective cost per thousand but I’m certainly focusing as well on the ratios and cost per:

·??????Call

·??????Prospect (completed prospect information)

·??????Registration.

I may also be or alternatively be, driving them directly online to register or to text as their response. If so, each of those need to be tracked.

For an advisor who’s already been running live events, often with inadequate results, I like to start by going back and looking through the stats in order to analyze what’s really happening. What I am looking for here is the person’s ratio from each step to the next as well as the cost to get to each step.?

For example, they could have a great ratio from prospect to registration—but the ratio from attendee to appointment was really low. Too many people complain about their new client results or their live event results without actually exploring the data and finding out what is going wrong. In this example, as is common with advisors the follow up from the time someone registered to getting them to show up for the live event was in mediocre shape.

For instance, for the live event I hold most often, there will be the follow up steps, especially if it’s more than a few days away:

1.??????A reminder sequence (automated) that will sequentially remind them of the event, expectations, driving directions, etc. by email, text, and voice mail (X4 or more times.)

2.?????A direct mail sequence that often will include:

a.?????Personalized often “fake handwritten” note thanking them for participating.

b.?????A “shock and awe” package including a copy of my book or multiple books, background information, and preparatory information.

3.?????A live call by my assistant who’s going to answer questions, give directions, pre-qualify (as will all of the other steps) and, if qualified set an appointment for my first one-on-one “discovery meeting.”

4.?????I’ll also ask them to fill out a background information form that’s going to help me understand their financial situation and their primary needs (and allow us to pre-qualify (or disqualify) them as a prospective client.

After all, if you throw a live event and the ratio from prospect down to appointment is incredible, but the ratio from first meeting to new client is awful, it can make it seem as though the live event was a disaster. In this example, the sales process was troubled. In the actual situation the advisor complained about the “flakey” prospects. Reality was his sales process was crappy. If you are used to small traffic of highly qualified direct client referrals, and then “open the spigot” with a lot more prospects from “colder sources,” then it’s often true that your sales processes will turn out to be inadequate.

With one of our latest clients, they had around 10 appointments from the live event and got six or seven new clients—a very good closing rate. However, he was disappointed in the live event because he was only looking at the final number – six or seven new clients. His issue was getting the attendees to actually make appointments, rather than convincing them to become clients once they had an appointment. Our conclusion was that if he could get more people through the door and more people to sign up for appointments, that six or seven could turn into 35 or 40 new clients.?

That would be a huge difference for him.?

Notice in the above example that I was having a staff member contact the registrants IMMEDIATELY upon registration to build rapport, confirm the time, place, structure, to pre-qualify and if qualified to schedule a one-one-one meeting (often before the live event.)?

With all live events, I move the time to schedule the follow up to earlier in the process AND eliminate places where they can fall through the cracks.

Often, I hear advisors I coach complain that their live events do not work because of the cost of acquiring a new client. Way too often they really aren’t sure what their near-term value per client is or what the lifetime value of that client is going to be on average. If they don’t know that, they haven’t taken the time to re-evaluate who they are targeting for the meetings.?

The simple answer to all of this is that you MUST first know your numbers.?What is a new client worth to you? What is it currently costing you to get a new client? How much does it cost you to get an appointment? How much does it cost you to get an attendee? How much does it cost you to get a registration? You need to know those numbers from each media and source. While you are at it, never fail to account for the cost of your time and of your staff.

The success of a live event ultimately comes down to the cost of creating a new client as compared to the expected value from those clients. And the value of clients isn’t equal. A very small number of very high-quality clients is better than a bunch of high maintenance, low value clients.?

With the client I mentioned above, each of her six or seven new clients is worth $5,000 in the first year. So that was around $35,000 value of new clients—compared to the live event costs which were less than $4,000 total. So, these events were costing her $600 more or less per new client or an 8:1 return. And in this example, there were “holes” at every step of the process.

Just as a “for instance.” It’s always a mistake to wait to, or only set appointments, with people who attend the event live. With online events, such as webinars, at least a third of the new clients often come from those who?no showed to the live event.

The other problem she was facing was that the event was being marketed on Facebook. What I know about social media, especially Facebook, is that cost per lead and cost per registration are often lowest out of all the various methods. The marketing mistake that people make is looking for the cheapest source of a new process and then stopping there. You want EVERY new lead, registration, appointment, and new client that you can get with a positive return on investment. You don’t ONLY want the ones that were least expensive to get. While that may intuitively feel right, it’s a major limitation to speed of growth.

Unfortunately, in a geographically targeted area, it’s hard to scale the online marketing at any reasonable level. You have to add other forms of advertising, certainly to include direct mail in order to get enough attendees.?

There is a real limit to how much you can do with just Facebook marketing, so expand it and add to it. Perfect marketing combines different methods and sources. Again, note back to the idea of the “Parthenon” applied to each effort. There are so many ways you can bump up your advertising campaign.?

Even if she did get more people interested, she didn’t have a reminder system set up to get people to turn up on the day. If someone signs up to an event two months before it happens, it is extremely likely they will forget about it. Not only this, but the system to get attendees to sign up for appointments was also very weak. Basically, she had all the pieces there to make it a very successful and lucrative event, but she failed to fine-tune the links between each key part.?

·??????Prospect

·??????Registration

·??????Attendee

·??????Appointment

·??????Client

How many Attendees (and “No-Shows”) made a follow up appointment?

This is a very important part of the process, but most people seem to trip up here. In fact, across the hundreds of advisors I have talked to in the past few months, I don’t think I have heard anyone doing a particularly good job of follow up.?

You should actually first look to secure appointments for follow ups after the attendance way back at the registration stage. The main objection to this is that the prospect has not heard your live presentation yet, so how would they know whether they want to talk to you or not??

The truth is that in some cases they are ready to book the meeting right then and there when they register (and, frankly without registering to attend a group event.) They were interested in your work or your seminar and may already have their mind set on a one-on-one appointment.?

As an aside, the higher income and higher net worth the individual is, the less likely they want to attend a live event and certainly the less likely they are to be “bribed easily to show up with a free meal.” Personally, I’d be one of those. Just show me the bottom line and let’s get on with it.

You would be foolish to miss out on getting them signed up nice and early. In fact, sometimes you will get people who register and would like to set up an appointment, but then don’t attend the live event. Signing them up early means you don’t miss out on them altogether.?

When it comes to registration, most people default to online. Let’s say you have a registration page (landing page) online where they can register for the event itself. I’d always suggest giving them an option of calling or encouraging that directly. A trained person on the phone that pre-qualifies, builds rapport, and schedules follow up immediately can’t be easily replaced by a web page, no matter how well designed.?

Here are some considerations with regards to online registration:

A.????Do you have an “alternative path” where highly qualified prospects can essentially skip the line and get through to a discovery meeting without going through all of the other steps?

B.????Do you have a multi-step registration page that collects their contact information prior to completing registration? A huge percentage of shopping carts are abandoned online before completing the sale. A registration page has a similar dynamic where many may bail out before confirming their registration. This shows in part, the value to “retargeting” online, but if you already have a name, email, phone number perhaps more, you can follow up regardless of whether they completed the registration.

C.?????What do you do with the “success page?”???I might suggest:

a.?????Alternative paths depending on their assets or other qualifiers.

b.?????An encouragement to set an appointment with a scheduling link to add a time to your office’s calendar as well as explicit instructions on contacting your office directly (who, when, how with direct phone number.)

c.?????Additional information about your upcoming event including a pre-event workbook, questionnaire to be submitted to your office as soon as possible, valuable information that could include a digital download of your book, various reports, a pre-event video presentation.

Again, with the registration, and perhaps with follow up steps, gain as much relevant information as possible. The investable assets they have available, their current occupation, their current income, their time until retirement, and more.

While you could fill a room with unqualified people, you could also take these extra steps and qualify them at an early stage. If you get someone who is completely unqualified, you could put them on a different path rather than spending a lot of time and money on them. Perhaps sharing digital information and pointing them in a different direction for solving their problems.

However, those who are highly qualified should be separately categorized and have a more robust follow up system. I’ve designed follow up campaigns for myself and others where highly qualified prospects get an immediate package by FedEx, Cookies with a note sent by Mrs. Fields, my “shock and awe” package, then a series of personalized notes, and more.

A prospect with $50,000,000.00 to invest certainly shouldn’t be thrown into the same barrel as someone who doesn’t even meet your firm’s minimum. And as always, differentiate your budget for follow up by likely lifetime value.

At the end of?the registration, you should then inform the prospect that they should come and take part in the live event where they can set up an individual meeting to go over their specific information individually and privately. This adds extra value to them actually showing up.?

The ideal scenario is getting them to sign up for that follow up appointment before they set foot at the live event, preferably while registering. However, if they chose to register and not set up an appointment, you should not stop there. Build a new sequence to remind them of the attendance of the live event itself and the opportunity to book an appointment. Put a live person on the phone early (preferably while they are still looking at the registration page.) Never be afraid to keep following up.

A quick aside with an example I’ve brought up before is that of an advisor who diligently follows up with all prospects for 30 days and then drops them. The reality is always that just because they don’t respond right away doesn’t mean that in three months, nine months, or in a couple of years that they won’t. Keep “dripping on them” essentially forever.

Moving on to the live event itself, a common problem is with getting attendees to set up the follow up appointment. Let’s say you stand up and give the best presentation they have ever seen. They are applauding you!??You’ve even gotten a few laughs. The audience seems engaged. So, prompt people and tell them:?"Oh, by the way, if I said anything that you think would be interesting, go see Marg at the back desk and she'll set a time for us to meet personally."?

You might get some people who do just that and go schedule a follow up one-on-one appointment. However, many or at least some will think they have your information, and they can contact you later. Often in that moment they really look forward to reaching out to you tomorrow. Perhaps they are late for another event. Maybe they don’t want to wait in line to schedule. Whatever the case, many will leave with the intention of contacting you; most never will. Life gets in the way, and by tomorrow morning you are far from “top of mind.”

If you don’t have them set up for a follow up appointment yet, you may have missed your chance. This is exactly why I always say that you want to make sure that you work HARD to get the follow up appointment, for qualified prospects, at the time of registration, and if not then as soon as possible thereafter.?

Once you get to the day of the event, screen all attendees at the front door, and confirm that each have a follow up step and schedule appointments for anyone who doesn’t have one already.?

Just make sure to have the person at the front door or front desk on your script because people will come up with all kinds of excuses. I’ve got to do this. I’ve got to do that. I have to check with the wife/husband. You need to make sure your staff is fully trained to get the appointment regardless of those excuses.?

The ‘pencil in’ tentative conversation is king here. That’s how people go from 25% ratios to 90% ratios. Find a date they have free and ‘pencil in’ an appointment. It gets their name down and takes the pressure off. Happy to share with you our full scripting. Feel free to give my office a call with those questions, 303-808-8719.

However, as I said before, the very best situation is having them set up an appointment before they even arrive. That way, your front desk team can simply confirm the appointment with them on the day, rather than have to talk them into making one on the spot. The script becomes a lot easier then:

"Good, I see that we're scheduled on Wednesday at 2:30, we're going to look forward to seeing you then, don't forget. We're going to be..." Then remind them whatever other information they need to complete and any free information that they should review ahead of that meeting.”

By the way, we use a simple app that reminds them of the appointment 4 X by email and by text. It lets them reschedule that appointment and gives them the available options if they choose to do that. All of that happens automatically.

It is also important to mention here that you need to be selective and make sure the people are qualified prospects. After all, the last thing you want to do is waste time, energy, and money, then have a 30-60-minute meeting on an unqualified person who represents little or no value to you.?

As an example, for myself, I have two different staff members who will meet with, pre-qualify, and screen prospects before they ever get to me. They lay the groundwork for the meeting with me and prepare the candidate to finalize the relationship.

The aim should be to never have these unqualified people in the pipeline to begin with. You want to only be targeting qualified people. Some unqualified people will slip through the cracks, but you want to sort them into different pathways as early as possible. The further they make it down the chain, the more time, money, and energy you have wasted.?

What you want to do is market better and have the filtering systems get really, really good people as early as possible so that you can have a lot more appointments in place. What you do not want to do is filter them late. You do not want to get a lot of appointments with people, and then you have to talk with them and deal with them before filtering. That uses up too much time. The earlier you can filter them, the better.?

After all, it can be profitable to hit a few unqualified people in the early stages anyway. Just because they are unqualified now doesn’t mean they won’t be in the future. If suddenly they come into a load of money and want to invest it, it helps if they already know your name, have your book, and other information.?

Following Up

This is an extreme example, but I had a client a little while back who was very excited about a live event because 75 people had responded to say they were attending on Facebook. Now these weren’t people who have visited a registration page, shared extensive information, etc. They had just clicked “attending” to an event created on the Facebook page. Saying they’ll attend is a very low bar on social media. The vast majority not only don’t know what they clicked on, but really have little or no intention of taking the next step.

If you didn’t know it, LinkedIn now has a similar function. They allow you to invite 1,000 people who you are connected with to your event. They can accept with the LinkedIn page which then makes their name and email available to you. This can be linked to your CRM for further follow up. In my case when we set an event, I’ll create a LinkedIn event and invite qualified connections. When they accept, we automatically kick off a follow up sequence in our CRM that moves them to complete more information, shares valuable information, and asks them to take the next steps.

Anyone who has thrown events knows never to expect the full number to show up. However, the more information that someone has shared with you then the more likely to attend. This percentage drops and drops and drops the less you follow up with them.?

Trust us, people often forget about a Facebook event hours after they responded to it, let alone weeks or months. Don’t consider them clicking “attending” to be a registration. You’ve got to move them to a full landing page where the fully register sharing their information.

From the time they register, you should be sending out follow ups. Text follow ups, email, direct mail, phone calls, online retargeting. Follow up and remind them with every media available. And, once again, they ideally have an appointment already scheduled. There should be so many things in place to remind them and keep them reminded right up until the event and/or appointment.?

It is important to point out that 95% of this can be automated so it takes no extra work from you. Of course, the only part that cannot be automated is the live person calling them. Just make sure they are qualified, and the person tasked with calling them is qualified. Even that step can be “outsourced” if you don’t have staff that can do this for you.

Marketing “Bait”

As I explained at the start of this article, social media marketing is not nearly enough on its own. If you want to utilize LinkedIn, Facebook, and all of the other social media sources then great, but you need to use other marketing methods alongside that in order to see results.?

Now let’s talk a little about your offers …

For example, I keep getting postcards, letters, and big packages in the mail about steak dinners offered by various wealth managers. I’m not sure all of the criteria that they are using but, clearly from home value to age and net worth, I’m in the ideal target market for most Wealth Managers.

Hence, I’m on a lot of mailing lists. Now between you and I, whoever’s putting together their marketing really is really terrible at most of the basics.

1.?????Get inside the conversation already going in their head.

2.?????The most important aspect to any mailer (after getting it opened) is the HEADLINE that calls out powerfully to an existing concern (hence, the conversation already going on in their head.)

3.?????There needs to be a powerful offer. Frankly, someone in my neighborhood and in my income category isn’t going to spend much time being enticed by a free steak. For most, that’s their only real offer.

4.?????There needs to be a “time-limited” reason to respond. A powerful offer.

5.?????Another consideration, most of what I receive in the mail is “short-form” i.e., postcards with limited copy, huge photo covering one side, and minimal “sales copy” about the offer, and never even a simple testimonial. (Hell, “I thought I was showing up for a free steak dinner and ended up with 4 ideas that are going to totally change the way I think about my retirement planning” would help a lot.)

6.?????Frankly, there’s rarely much about the actual subject of the meeting other than free food. Again, if someone’s time is worth $1,000 an hour and they live in a multi-million dollar home, that’s not particularly enticing.

Now there are two problems with this. One – I don’t really want to talk to people. Two – I don’t want to show up for an event unless it’s something I want or need or am interested in.?

I show up to loads of webinars and events because the topics are interesting to me, and I am going to learn something that I’m in need of. However, I also know how valuable my time is—$1,500 to $2,000 an hour—so it makes far more sense for me to just buy my own steak. I’m not showing up unless the event or meeting topic and presenter itself gets me really excited. And this comes down to one simple fact, the bait is wrong. Bait, by definition, is supposed to tempt us to nibble—yet I do not feel tempted in the slightest, and with good reason.?

They are essentially improperly using the law of reciprocity. If I give you something, you would be willing to give us something back. It's an improper use of that concept because it’s the wrong kind of bait for what you are trying to accomplish. Loads of people complain to us about failed bait attempts. Perhaps they offered a free steak dinner in an attempt to lure in potential clients who might have money to invest. Then they complain when someone shows up without two pennies to rub together just to get the free steak dinner. But that makes perfect sense. You have put up the wrong kind of bait that has no connection with what you have to offer.?

Therefore, it makes sense that the percentages are low downstream because you are not offering anything unique or relevant. If you are trying to tempt someone who’s a C-Suite Executive or Independently Wealthy, they are likely to just buy their own steak dinner and skip your meeting.?

Your bait should be tempting because it solves a real problem your potential clients might have, or it offers something they want. For example, I’ve mentioned my friend who teaches dentists how they don’t need to need practice dentistry anymore and to replace their practice income with cash-flows from real estate. He offers an $85,000 package for the privilege of not having to show up for anything, because his team takes care of everything for them. He recognizes that at the highest end of his client base, they really don’t want to take the time to learn the how-to’s but just want someone they trust to handle it for them.

Does your offer help them solve a significant tax problem? Will it help them with their children’s college tuition? What real-life problem will it solve???

Dan Kennedy would say something like this: "I want it to be like I was eavesdropping on the conversation that they were having at the kitchen table late at night, what are their worries, what are they stressing about, what are they emotionally engaged in, and that I want to show them that I have the solution for it."??The right headline and copy should elicit the feeling that you’ve been listening into those conversations.

That is the big point that you need to understand and anchor in. What would your prospects be talking about around the kitchen table? What are they worried about, in your niche? They aren’t going to come to you if you say: "Please come and listen to me because I'm a certified financial planner.” They can Google that kind of information. You want to bait them and interest them with something very specific to them and what they need.

Another, quick aside: You need to decide how geographically centric you want your marketing to be. I’ve noticed that most advisors are somehow fixated on a 5- or 10-mile radius around their office. It’s probably a hold-over from believing that all sales need to be face-to face. Some of the most successful advisors that I work with have clients all over the United States, or all over Canada. In some cases, they have clients across multiple countries if their company and their licensing can accommodate that. There’s no reason that you can’t be effective with meeting prospects via Zoom or similar; that you can’t invite them to come to you for small group meetings; that you can handle their needs from a distance with little concerns.

Your marketing Parthenon revisited.

Advisors often get fixated on outsourcing social media marketing and other marketing activities, without knowing specifically what those companies do, or how they do it. Essentially, they abdicate the idea of what they are actually doing in order to generate bodies in their online or offline webinar or seminar. I have some VERY GOOD marketing agencies that I use to outsource elements of my marketing and that of my clients. These companies keep track of the numbers at each level. They look over them with me. Frankly, the companies I’m often using were at the upper level of the cost for their service but end up with the best overall results for me, therefore the investment pays multiples.

In every element you must delegate NOT abdicate. It’s essential to understand the steps for successful results in each media and then it’s essential that you are involved in what’s happening every week.

As a coach, I’ve handled every step of this myself. I’ve paid attention to the numbers. I’ve attended the seminars, read the books, and frankly pestered the agency reps on each step of the process to really understand it myself before ever delegating anything. I’ve got to be able to teach my clients how each step works and show them how to be highly effective.

And again, like a broken record, you need to look beyond social media, as I keep saying. You must look beyond just online marketing. You can use direct mail, niche magazine ads, TV, radio, newspaper inserts, and so much more.?

You should have a list of prospects who have filled out a form or requested information or have come to see you in the past. These people are perfect to send a few postcards to and say:?"Hey, we're having a seminar, and this is what it's about, why don't you come to it?” You can also give them some incentive to come to it to make it more valuable to them. This is where the idea of bait comes in.?

You may not know it, but superstar Tony Robbins got his start selling Jim Rohn’s seminars city-to-city. Another friend of mine, Larry Black, would do that for Brian Tracy. They would go to a community a month or two early and do presentations to pitch tickets to a future big event. They would do free sales training at real estate offices, insurance companies—anywhere with a substantial sales force. They’d give an hour of valuable training designed to sell tickets to the main event (i.e., the Jim Rohn or Brian Tracy full day event.)??That is a solution most people don’t think of, but it proves really effective.?

We have seen other successful people arrive in a local area and do a series of TV interviews, radio interviews, and newspaper interviews to drum up interest for the main event. Some even get celebrity appearances to really drive traffic towards their events and to get free publicity.?

Remember one of my favorite quotes:

If you don’t have a good model for success, just look at what everybody else is doing and do the opposite.

Earl Nightingale

I might add to that quote, most break throughs come from outside of your industry. Look not at what everyone in your industry is doing, look outside and see what can be adapted. I’ve done that for you by studying many different industries and not suffering what Dan Kennedy refers to as “marketing incest.”

A final aside:??Keep in mind that live in-person events and virtual events can cover a wide-range of reasons for people to respond and attend. You can have events that merge accountants, attorneys, and you to cover a common topic to feed traffic to all, and to draw attendees from each other’s practice. You can do a series of training events in your own conference room with very niche topics designed primarily for referral results. You can do lunch or dinner meetings with the meal acting as a piece of “reciprocity” to help gain compliance and cooperation from the prospects. You can host a closed meeting for each of your areas top 10 or 20 employers for their executive and management team supporting their retirement plan. You can be an invited guest speaker for an industry convention, training session, or “bootcamp.”??The options are endless as long as you focus on “fishing in the right pond,” and turning attendees into solid prospects then to clients.

Moving Forward

Once you start doing everything I have outlined in this chapter, getting quality prospects becomes easier and easier. If you throw one big successful event and get many new clients from it, that serves as a long-term blueprint for everything you should be doing. Now it becomes a case of doing it again, and again, and again. Tweak a few small things to improve the ratios. Throw bigger and bigger events. Throw them more frequently and more regularly.?

If you want massive growth, the thing to always keep in mind is that you don’t want the cheapest registration. You want them to provide a positive return on investment, so don’t just revert to always doing the cheapest thing. If something generates a client that is worth $10,000 to you or $100,000 to you, you won’t mind spending a thousand dollars to secure them. It’s all about ratios and returns. That is the name of the game. Even if the investment sounds like a lot, if it is replicable and consistently provides a return, it really is a no-brainer. It’s all about making sure you know the numbers.?

Remember…

1.?????Live in-person events are fantastic and work great.

2.?????If you are getting people who just turn up for the free steak dinner, it means your bait was wrong and you were getting unqualified people.

3.?????You have to be really aggressive and focused on having the right copy. Get inside the conversations that are going on in your client’s minds— “eavesdrop” on those dinner table conversations.?

4.?????Give them some other reason to come that is more important than generic free steak dinner.?

5.?????Your bait should match what you are offering and what you are trying to do.?

6.?????If you don’t get this right, all you are going to get is unqualified people or qualified people who are not in the right mood to set appointments.?

7.?????Be good at when you set the appointments and where you set the appointments.?

8.?????Preferably set up the appointments right when they first register, or failing that, at the start of the seminar.?

9.?????Keep reminding them and trying to set up appointments before they leave that event.

10.??Always remind people about the event itself, even after they have already signed up. If you let people forget, you won’t have a full room.?

11.??If someone signs up for an event or an appointment weeks or months in advance, the chances are they are going to forget about it and fail to show up. For the sake of a few automated messages, it is definitely worth reminding them again and again and again.?

12.??The more effort you put into booking appointments and reminding people, the higher your new client ratio is going to climb. That’s the difference between six or seven new clients and 35!

13.??Better marketing does not necessarily require extra work. As the old saying goes, work smarter, not harder. It’s all about knowing the right practices to put in place and repeating the success over and over again long into the future.?