Chapter 9 - How To Hold A Seminar

If you have an online business that is an MLM or membership site, you can also promote it offline through a variety of different ways. Until now, we have focused on promoting online businesses that are selling goods or services. If you have an MLM or are an affiliate marketer, you can still make use of these ideas to market your business offline. However, you can also hold seminars in your local area as a way to really get people to listen to what you have to say.

Unlike those who have businesses that sell something tangible that people can see, those who have a membership site or an MLM need some time to explain the concept of their business to prospects. This can be done in a variety of different settings. One way that you can get people to listen to what you have to say is to hold a seminar.

One of the things that you need to do when you hold a seminar is to advertise it to as many people as possible. You should also be giving away something that will entice people to attend the seminar. Bear in mind that a good many people who attend these seminars are only there for the food and drink that is offered. However, you have to remember that sales, any type of sales, is a numbers game. So if you get 100 people showing up at your seminar and 10 sign up for your MLM, you are doing pretty good.

You should have a plan for the seminar so that people who attend will not just eat and run. You want to offer anything that you are giving away for free, such as tickets, at the end of the seminar and not before. You also want to hold off on the food until you have had a chance to talk to people about your business opportunity. You should use a Power Point presentation when you are conducting your seminar and make sure that your presentation is polished. If you are a powerful speaker, you can speak to the crowd as well so that you can get them fired up for the presentation. Those who are good speakers usually do very well at these type of presentations and are often the most successful when it comes to MLMs. You can practice your speaking skills and learn from some of the masters by taking some online courses in how to speak to crowds and get people to listen to what you have to say.

You have to remember also that you will want to look the part of the successful business person. No one is going to want to listen to anything that you have to say if you do not look professional or carry an air of confidence about yourself. The presentation that you show people should be informative but also entertaining. There are presentations that you can have put together by those who do this for a living. You can find those who will put together a Power Point presentation for you when you go online and look for freelancers.

After the presentation is over, you have to ask for the sale. One of the biggest mistakes that people do when they are trying to sell anything is that they are afraid to actually ask for the sale. They let prospects who may very well be interested in what they are saying and might be on the verge of signing up slip through their fingers because they do not know how to ask for the sale. You have to put the pen and paper in front of the prospects and ask them to sign on the dotted line. If they hesitate, you should ask them why and what you can do to convince them otherwise.

Once those people walk out of that seminar, they are gone. They are not going to come back after they have thought it over. Having a seminar for your business is like selling cars. Any person who has ever sold cars can tell you that the customer who walks out of the showroom never comes back. There may be the rare occasion, but for the most part, they will go to another showroom where another sales person will get them what they want.

You can hold seminars at various civic halls as well as hotels. You often have to pay for the room that you use, but this is not usually very costly. In order to cut costs down, you may want to offer some free promotional items and just coffee and cake for those who attend.

If you have an MLM or affiliate marketing plan that you need to explain to people before they will actually sign up, you have no better way to do so than with a seminar. This is much more effective offline than online as the people are actually with you face to face. Because you have given them free food and gifts, you have also created a sense of obligation that they feel and can expect to do better in this endeavor than if you try to use any other tactic to try to promote your MLM, subscription site or other online business in which you are actually instructing people how to make money.

Continue reading Chapter 10...