Commando Consulting: January 2009 - Eight Pointers To Increase The Success Of Your Small-Scale In-House Management Educational Seminars - Part 1

By Tom "Bald Dog" Varjan, Organisational Provocateur

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Management educational seminars, according to RainToday's recent research study^[1], are the best way of helping buyers of consulting services to learn about consulting firm and what they can do for these buyers' companies. 66% of buyers use small-scale management seminars to identify and learn more about providers of management consulting services.

The problem I've seen in the seminar around is that many consulting firms try to use big seminars with hundred of participants. And just because this is not bad enough, they often use these big seminars as mass sales efforts, heavy-handedly pitching their services.

So, what happens? Participants get suspicious and run away.

So, in today's article, to kick off the year, we look into holding small-scaled seminars, focused on intimacy as opposed to headcount.

This month we review the preparation for such educational seminars, and next month we'll take a closer look at conducting them.

But let's start out with examining the...

Difference Between Interruption-Based And Attraction-Based Client Acquisition

In my view the biggest difference between interruption-based and attraction-based client acquisition is that in interruption-based client acquisition we try to sell prospects too quickly, and don't spend time to build the relationship by providing upfront value.

In permission-based marketing, we start the relationship by sharing some valuable information with the target market, and prospects can qualify/disqualify themselves whether or not they want to enter into relationships with us. We leave the decision to them and don't try to manipulate them in any way. If they're not interested, that's just fine and dandy.

So, why do so many firms engage in interruption-based client acquisition, like telemarketing? Let's use telemarketing for our example. Because they believe it's cheaper, quicker, easier, more traditional and offers payback more quickly.

Is it really cheaper? How much work does it require to engage one interrupted prospect in the sales process? Using telemarketing, you have to call some 100-150 folks to catch one who is merely interested. To have an engagement, you may have to call 2-300 people. But these calls are usually done by low-skilled minimum-wage people, the process seems to be cheap.

Is it really quicker? How many potential clients do you have to piss off with your aggressive approach? How many prospects start spreading the word that XYZ Consulting firm is in such deep shit that it has resorted to cold prospecting grunt work to find business? And the next point is the margin. Some quick sales may come in but the margin on those sales will be pretty thin.

Just imagine you want to lose weight. There are two options: Liposuction or healthy lifestyle

1. Liposuction's advantages are that it's quick and easy. Sadly, it's a temporary, so you have to keep repeating it and financially bloody expensive

2. The advantages healthy lifestyle (working out, eating well, resting well, etc) is that it is permanent and a lot cheaper financially. But the disadvantage is that it's very expensive in terms of commitment, willpower and accountability.

The problem is that human beings in general hate commitments and accountability, and are naturally attracted to shortcuts. But we also know that shortcuts in implementation often lead to shortcomings in results.

And some major shortcomings of interruption-based client acquisition are...

• Failure to gain "client attraction" momentum and in the long-run the process is very expensive


• Working with low calibre clients


• High price sensitivity. Need to give discounts to get new gigs


• Lack of peer-level relationships


• Undermines consulting firm's brand

So, the whole idea of attraction-based client acquisition is that we create an environment in which we can strut our stuff and high-calibre prospects, who are looking for the kind of services we offer, can experience what it's like working with us.

As the saying goes, the way we sell is really a demonstration of how we work with clients. Arrogant, know-it-all consultants are arrogant and know-it-all both before and after the money exchange. And the best environment in which we can demonstrate our expertise is a small scale highly interactive and intimate seminar. Or I would rather call it a workshop really.

So, let's see the...

...Ins And Outs Of Seminar Preparations

Seminars are just like any other products and services. Many people can design them, but only very few can sell them and bring butts to the seats.

Or as Andrew Pears, the founder of UK-based Pears Soap once put it...

"Any fool can make soap, but it takes a genius to sell it."

And without enough butts, the seminars are roughly as useful as a barbershop on the steps of the guillotine.

But to lay the foundation for good seminars, we have to develop a good marketing programme to fill the seats with butts.

So, let's look at eight key points for preparation...

1. Targeting Your Marketplace

Before you start promoting your seminar, get 100% clear about who you want to come. Just like in your normal marketing, design your Perfect Participant.

Define the characters of the people who attend, the companies they represent and the possible engagements they can offer.

So, if you're in HR consulting, make sure you attract buyers who have issues with excessive employee attrition and are ready to solve the problem. Yes, we offer these seminars as educational opportunities but we'd like to get some clients out of them. It's only fair.

Demographics - External Factual Selectors

These are all the external selectors for your niche. In the following table, are the key demographic selectors for buyers, companies and engagements.

Psychographics - Internal Behavioural Selectors

These are the internal selectors for your niche. These are the values, the style and the philosophy of your buyers and their companies.

Yes, Ik now it takes some time to put this profile together, but in the long run, it's worth every minute. You can attract better audience to your seminars.

2.Timing Your Marketing Efforts

There are a few things that can go wrong here. Most consulting firms start out with too long lead times, and by the time their seminars come around, their potential audience members are busy doing other things.

This is also caused by a disease called one-shot invitation. Firms send out one invitation and that's all.

So, let's see timing first...

National or even international seminars: Because you expect participants from other parts of the country and even the world, you can start your mailing 12-14 weeks before the event.

Local half-day or full-day seminars: Here you can start marketing 6-8 weeks before the seminar.

Basically, the shorter the seminar, the shorter lead time you need.

I would discourage you to run short seminars like two-hour evening shows. It's hard to create value in those gigs.

3.How To Market Small Seminars

There are some vital points to consider here.

Invitation to a seminar cannot be your very first touch point with a stranger. Seminar invitations work best if you target people who've already received a white paper or other educational pieces from you. They already have a rough idea of what you do and have a certain level of trust in your firm.

Based on some recent RainToday research, direct mail is the best way of inviting high-level decisions-makers to seminars

76% of buyers learn about seminars from direct mail pieces where an invitation letter accompanied by a brochure is stuffed into a plain white envelope. 62% gets invited by email and 62% by referrals from colleagues.

What works poorly are telephone invitations, newspaper ads and website ads.

This is where many consulting firms go wrong. They focus too much on the visual bits and bobs but fall short on good old copy.

We have to understand that it's the synergy of good copy and good graphics that create the right impact. But here is a great difference. Copy adds teeth to your promotion and good graphical elements support it, and it's not the other way round.

If your budget requires a compromise, then compromise on graphics not copy.

And the next point is starting sending out your promotional package, which consists of a main piece and several follow-up pieces. Depending on your lead time, these follow-up pieces can be spaced out evenly during the promotion period.

For the main piece, I like using long copy in a plain white envelope, and for follow-up pieces, I use postcards.

Some people say that no one reads long copy. Exactly! No one reads long, drawn-out crap. But when a well-written piece is sent to people who are already predisposed to learning more about specific problems and solutions, then they will read it. There is a reason that long copy always outperforms short copy.

It was the copywriting legend, Eugene Schwartz who said...

"You cannot create desire in your copy. You can only channel desire that already exists."

Another copywriter, Robert Collier put it this way...

"You must join the conversation that is already going on in your prospects' heads."

But there is a problem. Good copywriters are expensive, very expensive. So, most firms settle with image-rich brochures because they can find pretty good graphics artists for a small fraction of a copywriter's fees. So, they go to Elance, and hire someone cheap.

Then many potential participants recognise the stock images, laugh out loud, and chuck the brochures into the rubbish bin.

So, start with a letter and follow up with postcards. You can get high quality on-demand postcards from a company called Amazing Mail.

If possible, I get the envelopes hand-addressed and for the sender, we write the name of the owner/president/CEO but NOT the company's name. The company's name is written on the letter inside the envelope.

And we mail everything first class. Don't use bulk mailing. It ruins perception.

4.What Kind Of Response To Expect?

Based on a survey done in 2003 by the Direct Marketing Association, the average direct response marketing response rate is around 2%.

But many firms get overoptimistic and they think they get better response. And they usually flop. They flop because, due to budgetary restrictions, they hire below-average copywriters to write the promotional pieces.

And this is why the response rate to many seminar invitations is as low as 0.1-0.3%.

So, what to do here? What's the key to success?

The third most important element of your invitation is your copy.

The second most important element of your invitation is your offer.

The most important element of your invitation is your list.

It's only fair to say that if you don't have a sizeable home-built mailing list whose members already know you and have experienced your expertise in the form of writing, audio or video, you may well have an uphill struggle to invite them to seminars.

With a good letter sequence you can drastically increase your response rate. We've recently done a seminar in the UK, and with one letter + five cards, we pushed response rate all the way up to 17%.

However, I suggest that you calculate with 1% response rate, and if you want to invite 50 people, then mail out at least 5,000 invitations.

If the response is high, you can run a second seminar, but if you don't have enough arses to fill the seats, then it's a bit of a disaster.

5. Testing Your Copy In Google AdWords

When it comes to testing copy, Google AdWords is really the best tool out there.

Put your seminar brochure online, set up an ad campaign and start checking your results. Now you can tweak your headline and other bits and bobs. And through AdWords you get instant feedback on what works and what flops.

When you are happy with the results, you can finalise your copy in your invitation packages.

Remember, that a headline alone can make as much as 2,100% to the response rate.

But one warning about headlines. In your letter don't use headlines. The headline really is the title of the seminar, but you mention that a bit later in the letter.

Make your letter look like a letter not like a sales letter with the big bold headline. The people you write to receive plenty of sales letters with big bold headlines have been desensitised to them. They just chuck them into the rubbish bin.

Make your letter look like a letter but use carefully selected and tested words and phrases.

6.To Charge Or Not To Charge For These Workshops?

Many consulting firms walk the path of free workshops, but there are some considerations here...

• Free events can easily be perceived to be blatant sales pitches, thus to be avoided


• Free events are rampant with registrants who fail to turn up


• Free events often attract bottom feeders and tyre kickers


• Free events attract people who are interested in networking but not buying


• Free events attract higher quantity but lower quality attendees

So, why charge for these events?

• Paid events attract higher calibre participants


• Paid events' participants usually show up


• Paid events force you to ditch your pitch and focus on offering value


• Paid events attract lower quantity but higher quality attendees

In my experience, clients we acquire through these small-scale workshops are some of the highest calibre clients. And the earlier mentioned RainToday research study confirms it. 72% of management consulting clients are called "switchers".

The report defines switchers as...

Respondents who either feel they are likely to stop using current providers and seek new ones, or feel they "might or might not" switch (proof enough that they are open to the possibility)

In contrast, loyal clients are....

Respondents who report they are not likely to switch away from their current service provider in the next two years

And the type of clients we get boils down to the tactics we use to acquire them.

7.What To Reveal And What To Withhold?

My belief is that you can reveal everything and still don't have to worry that people do it without you.

There is a world of difference between intellectually knowing something and having it as DNA-level "fingertip" knowledge, which we can apply in a practical way.

Intellectually knowing something is explicit knowledge, that is, memorised information. Knowing something at a DNA level is implicit or tacit knowledge. It comes from repeat application. If explicit knowledge would mean implicit knowledge too, fluid dynamics professors would be excellent scuba divers by default. But they're not.

They may know intellectually what the water pressure is down there but, short of putting guns to their heads, most of them would never dare to gear up and go down lower than the bottom of a swimming pool.

A few years ago the owners' daughter on one of my joint venture farms was doing her Ph.D. in food sciences and animal husbandry. Humane slaughtering in small family farms was a big chunk of her doctoral thesis, and she wanted to learn the whole meat-processing process. So, as the long-time family butcher, I mentored her and taught her what I knew.

For instance, after years of learning, she knew anatomy inside out but she didn't know where and how exactly to insert the knife for quick and clean bleeding. It took her some practice to find the carotid artery on the first stab and slash it clean with one tiny sweep of the tip of the knife^[2].

I dare to say that your knowledge is about 10% explicit knowledge, stuff you've memorised from books, seminars audio and video programmes, and some 90% of tacit or implicit knowledge you've learnt through applying explicit knowledge in the trenches of real life.

And the 90% comprises intuition, self-esteem, frames of reference, perspectives, core values, perception of the world and people, finesse, gut feeling, creative hunches and some other bits and bobs we can't learn in school and can't even clearly explain. They are somehow beyond words.

So, my idea is that I don't feel like controlling myself what to reveal and what to withhold. I reveal everything and the rest is up to the participants.

And they won't do it. Everyone knows that if we want to lose weight we need to exercise and eat better. And since they know it only explicitly, North Americans are getting fatter and fatter. They talk about weight loss but go to McDonalds or other junk food joints for lunch.

As a local personal development expert, T. Harv Eker says...

"If you say you know it but don't do it, then you don't know shit. You've read about it, heard about it, dreamt about it or hallucinated about it, but definitely don't know it. When you actually do it, then you know it."

I know how to be a non-smoker because I've always been one. But I don't know how to be lean and athletic because I'm a short stocky guy who's battled with being able to put on weight with incredible ease throughout his life. At the moment, thanks to hard training and good eating, I'm winning, and run on 11-13% body fat (slowly going down), but I have to watch myself like a hawk how I train and what I eat.

And regardless of how much I read about being lean and how much coaching I get, I'm still a short stocky guy who has to watch his eating habits. So, in spite of my explicit knowledge of fitness (Hell, I'm even a practising certified personal trainer), on the tacit level I don't know how to get lean and athletic. If I knew I would be lean and athletic. And I definitely don't know the secrets of having a full head of hair. Over two decades of baldness makes my childhood memories of having hair an unbelievable claim.

So, knowing this, I feel free to reveal all my explicit knowledge. There is one more reason for that.

When we change, first we change our mindsets, then skill sets and then tool sets.

Changing the tool set is easy. I take away your bicycle and give you a pair of rollerskates and tell you that from now on you have to commute to work on your rollerskates. Can you do it? No. You need the skill set.

Changing the skill set is harder. It takes time for you to become a fairly skilled at rollerskating.

But the hardest and longest change is changing the mindset, the behavioural change. And if you have an unresolved negative issue related to rollerskating, for instance, a friend of yours has been killed on the road while rollerskating, then you will subconsciously sabotage changing skill set even if you have the best tool on the planet.

And in these short (evening, half-day, full day) seminars you can't change the mindset. Hence most people won't be able to use whatever you reveal to them because they try to use new skills or new tools but they still operate from the old frame of reference. They don't have the new mindset.

8.Titling Your Event

In advertising the headline is the ad for the ad. For your seminars, the titles have the same job. They are the ad for your seminars.

As humans we're not walking towards opportunities, but we're walking away from frustrations.

Seven Ways To Developing A Strong Organisational Strategy In The Weak Economy

...is a "walking towards" title. We walk towards those seven strategies

Let's turn it into a "walking away" title

The Economy Is Marching To Hell In A Hand Basket. Seven Ways To Make Sure Your Bottom Line Doesn't Go With It

Then you can put in some key ingredients

1. Question


2. Problem-based


3. Raises curiosity


4. Creates a picture in the reader's mind

Are You Missing These Seven Strategies That Could Prevent Your Bottom Line From Forced-Marching To Hell In A Hand Basket?

1. Question: Are you missing?


2. Problem-based: Going to hell


3. Raises curiosity: Which seven strategies?


4. Creates a picture in the reader's mind: Marching to hell in a hand basket

Let's remember, when readers talk to their peers, they talk about improving business. When they are alone, they say to themselves...

"Shit, how can I save my arse and live another day?"

On Summary

Now, we all know these seminars cost a pretty penny to set up and run successfully, but as the saying goes, the bigger the bait, the bigger the fish. And the calibre of clients you land through these seminars is not the same low-profile RFP warriors cold prospecting grunt work can usually yield.

And once you start running seminars, you start developing your seminar marketing system. You document scripts, winning promo pieces, keep your database up-to-date, etc. As time goes by, and your firm gets more known, you generate more interest but your costs keep going down because your process is more streamlined.

And if you plan to run seminars of any kind, I would encourage you to get a copy of Jenny Hamby's seminar marketing home study programme, and learn about this great way of acquiring clients from one of the top pros. I got this programme a few years ago, and applying one little nuance to the very first seminar I helped a client to run, we landed a six-figure engagement from one of the seminar participants. So, if this is of interest to you, then check the "Recommended Reading" section below.

"Dynamic Duo" Mentor Programme... ...has 1 opening for July and 4 for August 2010. Click here to continue to read the fiendish details.

Recommended Reading

How To Market Seminars

"How to Fill Your Seminars and Workshops - Without Spending a Fortune on Promotion"

By Jenny Hamby

It's a well known fact that facilitating seminars and workshops is one of the best ways of generating high quality sales leads for consulting firms. Yet, it's also a well-known fact that most consulting firms lose their shirts (often their trousers, knickers and bras as well) in the promotion of their seminars and workshops. They have valuable messages to their target markets but somehow fail to raise their interest in attending their seminars and workshops. So, they try it once, flop miserably and then declare that "Our industry is different. It just doesn't work that way."

What they fail to realise is that there is nothing wrong with the industry as a whole, but the problem is with their thinking. Helping clients with workshops and seminars has always been part of my consulting work, but when I started implementing the little nuances I've learnt from Jenny's programme, the little things started adding up. For instance, on CD #2 she has a 10-second segment on one tiny aspect of printing. For a recent client we saved $419 on printing costs by going to the printer armed with this "10-second knowledge." But most printing clients pay this extra (and much more) because they don't know how to discuss projects with printers.

Here is the thing. If you don't run seminars and workshops to generate business, then you probably spend far too much money and effort acquiring far too low quality sales leads. People need to build a certain level of trust with consulting firms before they can hire them. Workshops and seminars are just the idea ways of building this trust. On the other hand, what can we expect of prospects who reluctantly give in to cold prospecting efforts.

What you learn from Jenny's programme will allow you to at least double the price tag on your seminars and workshops, and still get more butts on seats. And the good thing is that those butts will be attached to highly attentive heads of committed prospects. The other benefit is that as you hone your seminar process, you keep weeding out the butts that are attached to heads that would take everything but pay for nothing.

Follow the link to find out more about How To Market Seminars.

^[1] How Clients Buy: 2009 Benchmark Report on Professional Services Marketing & Selling from the Client Perspective. And I'd like to encourage you to get a copy and read it from cover to cover. The information you find there can be very valuable for your marketing in this tight-fisted economy. Continue where you've left off...

^[2] Disclaimer: By this time, the animal is stone dead not merely stunned as it's done in large slaughterhouses. I always separate the animal to be killed from the other animals to avoid psychological shock or panic. And then, from a distance, while the animal is happily munching on some carrots or some other veggies in order to relax, I shoot the animal with a .22 between the eyes, which causes instant and relatively painless death. I say "relatively" because, for obvious reasons, it's hard to get first-hand opinion on the topic. But based on my studies and over two decades of slaughtering experience, this is the most humane way. Continue where you've left off...