Seminar marketing is a very powerful way to sell professional services. But most everything you read is shallow advice. In this article, let’s focus on one aspect in detail—how to convert the maximum number of seminar attendees to clients. I learned this valuable lesson from giving over 200 financial seminars personally and t5raining thousands of financial advisors in financial seminar marketing. (You can find a link to articles that focus on other aspects of seminar marketing at the end).

Unfortunately, most seminar presenters have the assumption that they want to accomplish one of these objectives in their seminar:

1 Show the seminar attendees how much they know. These professionals assume that if the seminar attendees see them as well informed, well educated and knowledgeable, the seminar attendees will want to set an individual appointment. But this logic is flawed. These professionals are educators and if you educate people, you’ll never earn more than a school teacher. That’s because education is not motivation. The seminar presenters job is to motivate the seminar attendees to action. Educators don’t do this. Educators are in the business of telling and informing. Motivators are in the business of persuading and enrolling.

2. Confuse the seminar attendees. These professionals believe that if you confuse people, they will seek you out to get clarity. I don’t think this is a valid seminar marketing model. The average person is attracted to someone who explains things in a way to give clarity not obscure clarity. Confusing people can do nothing but alienate them and leave your seminar attendees saying “I’m more confused now then when I came in.” People don’t like to be confused.

3. Scare them. Seminar attendees don’t like to be confused and they don’t like to be sacred. That is unless you share the same market as horror movie producers—teenie boppers seeking a thrill.

You get an insight into what seminar attendees really want when you look at who we pay the most in our society. We pay entertainers and sports figures the highest salaries. So it’s clear, that as a society, we want to be entertained. Therefore, if you want to attract people, if you want to maximize the appointments from your seminar presentation, entertain your seminar attendees.

Being an anal, information retentive CPA, it took my speech coach a long time to convince me—when I give a presentation, think Hollywood. She trained me to see that the presentation must have the elements of a blockbuster movie. Seminar presenters need to entertain with stories with humor, with music, with magic, with intrigue, with mystery. What you want to accomplish in the seminar is to get people to LIKE YOU. And you get them to like you if they have a good time, i.e entertain them.

“But I’m not musical or funny and I can’t do magic tricks,” you protest. Then you simply need some props to assist your milk toast personality. And those props are NOT a bunch of PowerPoint slides (unless the slides have humorous cartoons sprinkled throughout or embedded music that provide a humorous commentary on your seminar content or video clips of popular movie scenes).

You can in fact learn some jokes or learn some magic tricks or learn some humorous stories. If you cannot do this on your own, then simply find a speech coach (your local chapter of the National Speakers Association can help you). But whatever you do, don’t invest thousands of dollars in your seminar marketing and then not get a ton of business from the attendees.

Larry Klein is one the leading financial speakers and experts on marketing financial services and seminar marketing.

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