Ten keys to a win-win event for attendees and advisors alike.
David Schlossberg remembers 2007 fondly, and not just because it was a period of relative calm before a financial firestorm erupted the following year. In 2007, Schlossberg, a financial and investment advisor with Assured Concepts Group, Ltd., of East Dundee, Ill., made a concerted push on the seminar front, a move that here in 2012 continues to pay major dividends to his practice.
Schlossberg figures the clients he landed as a result of the educational seminars he held throughout 2007 generate about $160,000 in annual revenue for himself and his firm.
"Not bad," he says, "for a $60,000 investment."
Done the right way, seminars remain a valuable client- and revenue-generating vehicle for all kinds of advisors, from investment advisors and wealth managers to financial planners and insurance specialists.
Non-hard-sell seminars designed to educate people about the federal government's Social Security program and how to manage their Social Security benefits have become a go-to marketing tool for Joe Elsasser, CFP, founder of SocialSecurityTiming.com and Sequent Planning, LLC, in Omaha, Neb. "It's hard to gauge ROI exactly, but I get anywhere from two to four new clients from among the 20 to 30 people who attend each seminar," he says. "There's not been a seminar where I haven't covered the cost of putting on the event."
How can you stand out in a crowded (some would say oversaturated) seminar field and generate a stellar ROI in the process? While every advisor ultimately must find his or her own formula for success, here are some proven tactics for standing out on the seminar circuit:
1) Make enriching attendees through education your top priority, not enriching yourself. "A lot of seminars that claim to be 'educational' are self-serving," observes Elsasser. "My goal is truly to educate people—to give them the framework for making decisions by showing them the trade-offs involved in those decisions."
According to Schlossberg, new clients—and the added revenues they bring—tend to flow naturally from seminars where attendees sense there is no overt sales agenda on the part of the sponsor. "Success comes when you truly deliver information that is of benefit to the audience, without any effort to sell anything," he says. Schlossberg added an extra wrinkle to the educational thrust of his seminars by charging attendees a tuition fee of $69 for the two-day workshops that proved so successful for him five years ago.
2) Find a seminar topic that appeals to your target audience. A subject such as Social Security, for example, intrigues a broad range of seniors.
3) Align with a well-respected organization or institution. Both Schlossberg and Elsasser have had success holding seminars at local universities. Prospects may be more receptive to attending a seminar when the invitation bears the name of a local college as a kind of implied endorsement. Before sending out invitations that bear an educational institution's name, be sure they have been approved by officials at the institution, adds Schlossberg.
