Seminar Appointments

By Kathryn Dunn Leave a Comment

We measure the success of a seminar by how many appointments are made — right at the seminar, before people go home.  Our benchmark is 33% of the seats filled.  In other words if you have 25 attendees at a seminar (no matter if they’re singles or couples), you should make 8 appointments right there.  Then, with follow-up calls the next day, you should be able to make appointments with another 9% — for a 42% appointment rate.

If that’s not happening at your seminars, then your presentation and follow-up can easily be modified.  All you need is an objective coach to show you what to do. Now, if you’ve been doing seminars for awhile, change is not always easy.  But if you trust the process and make the needed changes, you’ll be glad you did.

Let me tell you a recent story…

We just started working with a new client in Texas.  This is a sharp professional who has been doing seminars, and she wanted to use our system to make improvements.

So, we modified the opening and closing of her seminar (the opening and closing are the two most important parts of a seminar when it comes to making appointments).  We also provided her with handout materials to use (the wrong handouts can cause a low appointment rate).

She held two seminars the same week — on Tuesday and Thursday — and she had 15 people attend each seminar.  At her first seminar, she only made one appointment!

So, I took her through an audit and found out that she didn’t use our evaluation form!  She used her prior evaluation form, which she thought was just as good as ours.

I explained the nuances of our evaluation form and told her she needed to use it for the Thursday seminar.  She did, and the result was five appointments!  Now, if she had just used that form on Tuesday she would have made 10 appointments!!!

The moral of this story is twofold…  1) It’s all in the details — every little thing you do can have a positive or negative outcome.  And sometimes it takes an objective coach to help you determine what and how to change.  2) Change can feel uncomfortable, but choose the right coach, trust the process, and you’ll see your business improve.

Leave a Comment