David Radin has been helping organizations increase their sales & marketing effectiveness for over 20 years. His work as a consultant, independently and with Dale Carnegie, has provided high impact revenue enhancement programs, and unlocked leadership, communications & sales skills for his clients; and he has launched & grown several companies. His current endeavor, Confirmed Instant Scheduler, enhances sales productivity by scheduling meetings easier and more effectively.
David Radid is the Founder & Co-creator at Confirmed Instant Scheduler
What are some of your most successful events? What was memorable about them? How did you make them a success?
It’s easy to talk about the events that attracted large crowds. One of my favorites was a tour we did with Silicon Graphics, which was one of the pre-eminent workstation vendors at the time. On a 12-city tour, each crowd kept getting bigger. For our final stop in Los Angeles, we had to change the room three times because the registration kept exceeding room capacity. The client was quite happy.
Even in the smaller sessions, there are exciting aspects. We recently did a 90-minute Preview/mini-class for Dale Carnegie in Pittsburgh in which I was both class manager and co-presenter, where we invited people to encounter the Dale Carnegie Training experience for their first time. Forty percent of the few dozen attendees registered for paying courses within a few weeks. I expect when we take our final tally later in the year that perhaps as many as 60% of the attendees will have become paying Dale Carnegie clients.
How do you plan a seminar or workshop?
There are lots of ways to plan and execute. They all start with the target audience – who they are and what will resonate for them. Then, if the session is for marketing, the next question is, do we have a compelling reason for them to attend to hear about the topic that will make them want to buy? If it’s for education, the next step would be to figure out whether we have the expertise to accomplish the task, or whether to bring somebody in. The logistics serve come afterwards to support those decisions.
One of the many reasons I love working with Dale Carnegie is that they have honed the education process so well, that attendees not only learn about the subject; they also internalize the learning and turn the teachings into good habits.
What is the difference between a seminar and a workshop?
Different people define them each in different ways. To me, a seminar is something in which you learn by observing (say, as part of a silent or near-silent audience); a workshop is one in which you actively participate in the session – as part of the presentation, through exercises or in some other interactive fashion.
How do you market a successful seminar or workshop?
Again, it starts with the target audience and the goals. A session in which a small number of key decision makers is considered success (for instance, if you’re selling a product or service in which a single customer provides a lot of revenue) will be marketed differently than if you need to put a lot of bodies in the room. In either case, you need to determine who you want in the room, what excites them, and what your goals are. Then you can determine where to do it and how to get them there.
Many consultants and small business owners are looking to seminars and workshops as a way to market their services. Is this effective?
Extremely effective for many products. The determining factors are whether the product is best sold in a long-format and whether the topics are important enough for decision makers/influencers to take time out of the office to attend an event. If not, a web-event can be done at a more moderate budget and for people who aren’t willing to jump in their car or on a plane.
The selling-by-seminar dynamic works because phone, email, social, and traditional ads don’t give you much time to make a case for your product; but they often give you enough time to sell the prospect on attending your event, at which time, you’ll have more time to make your case for your product or service.
I have had so much success over the years in live marketing events that I even plan to incorporate live events in my marketing plan for my new product (Confirmed Instant Scheduler) even though the mid-price point is only $5/month. This is very different from the way most low-priced SaaS products are marketed.
What does a typical budget look like for a seminar?
There is no typical. It can range from a couple hundred dollars for a local event with your own team in your own small venue to hundreds of thousands for larger venues, attractive locations, and tours.
What are the unseen or hidden costs than people often overlook?
The event is only a small piece of the cost. Pre-event marketing can be time-consuming and costly to reach your numbers. And too many people skimp on proper follow up – which often is what gets the results, especially for marketing/sales events.
How do you choose a location and venue?
Location is often a trade-off between where the users are and what’s convenient to you. ALWAYS make it as convenient as possible for the attendee; then adjust if you need to make your budget. Making it convenient is paramount for seminars, workshops, conferences and simple 1:1 prospect meetings. It will make or break you – because it’s a go vs. no-go decision factor. If it’s not convenient, they’re not showing up.
How do you know when to do a local event close to where people work, or a “travel event” in a vacation location.
To do a travel event, you have to have a compelling reason – because it costs the attendees more in time and money. That’s why they’re often in destination cities – such as warm weather in winter. One of my partners had a philosophy to draw a 500 mile radius and assume 90% of attendees will come from that circle. Others draw smaller circles. I have tended toward local events. I think it takes a different expertise for each as well.
How do partnerships play a role in successful seminars and workshops.
Years ago, I had an idea that would help sell products that (1) are found in every office, (2) require time to present their sales cases, but (3) on their own, would never draw a crowd. I teamed them with a name partner that we could build around – and The WordProcessing Showcase was born. Our clients were the products such as printers, PCs, and helper software; and we teamed with WordPerfect as the marquee, creating a half-day session that included tips & tricks and highlighted each product for ten minutes. We attracted hundreds of people to each session in 12 cities to watch the demos of products they had never seen, along with the tips & tricks sessions. I also ended up with WordPerfect as a long-term client. These days, many seminars are done as panels of complementary vendors who have similar target audiences.
Is there anything else you would like to add?
In live events, it’s not whether something will go wrong – it’s what will go wrong and how prepared are you to handle it.
Also: in live events, you can’t control for external factors. I remember a half-day session we scheduled in Chicago in which turnout was only a fraction of what we expected. The cause: The Bull’s victory the night before which was the NBA Championship. Upon following up with our no-shows, we found that a number of them stayed up too late to get up in the morning (presumably celebrating).