If you’re wondering how to attract customers quickly, this post is for you.
When you’re trying to establish a new business, it’s easy to obsess about making sales. That was me in 2015. If I thought someone needed my services, I’d jump onto telling everything I can do for them.
The response I would usually get was along the lines of, “I don’t think I need that right now” or “I’ll think about it and let you know”.
I was never going to make a sale under these circumstances.
Why? Because I was trying to sell before establishing what they needed help with.
Sure, customers want to know about your services, but what they really want to know, is how you can help them achieve the results they want.
How can you do that if you don’t understand their problems?
You can’t.
Consequently I changed my approach. I made developing relationships with potential customers my mission.
And I started to sell. 🙂
There’s a number of ways you can start building trust with potential clients but I’ve found speaking to people in person to be the most effective.
It’s why so many experts choose to do live speaking events.
Firstly, you get to to meet a large number of potential clients in one go, and second of all, you can quickly establish yourself as an expert in your field.
Now, let’s imagine selling to people who already know, like and trust you. Do you see how your chances of making a sale have dramatically improved?
This is why I held my first live speaking event on the 7th September 2016. I spoke about how businesses can drive more traffic and sales online with Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). Exciting stuff, right?
With 50 people registered to attend my event, I was aiming to make at least one sale of my 4 Week SEO Coaching programme.
Organising the event is not as hard as you may think it is.
Six Steps To Organising Your First Speaking Event
1. Create Your Agenda
Set out your event schedule: length of talk, time for networking and guest speakers.
This is what my agenda looked like:
2. Find a Venue
I used Google to find places available for hire, and created an initial list of 20 venues. I then called each one up, finding out about their capacity, dates available and cost of hire.
One of the venues in Baker Street, ticked all the boxes: fitted 50 people, had quite a few dates available, only cost £50 to hire and looked great.
3. Schedule Your Event
You need a way for people to view and register for your event. A friend of mine recommended that I use EventBrite, which has made everything so easy to do.
Setting up an event on Eventbrite is free as long as the event is free.
4. Promote Your Event
Tell everyone you think will be interested or knows someone that might be interested.
My promotion tasks:
- Sent emails to everyone I’ve met at networking who have given me their business cards
- Informed two local Facebook Groups I’m active on
- Asked a few close business friends to mention it to their networks
- Asked the other speaker (Kavit) to email his network
- EventBrite is also a great platform that people use to find local events, I know a number of people found my event here
5. Practice Your Presentation
The more you know your material, the more confident and impactful you will be.
As Tony Robbins says, “people are rewarded in public for what they practice in private”. Click to tweet.
The 4 weeks running up to the event I used every opportunity I could to practice:
- My wife must have heard me practicing a million times after work and during the weekends
- Held a few Facebook Live sessions to groups who were interested in learning about SEO
- Rewrote the speech off the top of my head whenever I could, which helped me to memorise key points
- I even tried organising a small local get together with business owners I’ve never met and give them specific SEO advice for their business, but we couldn’t find a convenient time.
6. Prepare For The Event
I visited the venue beforehand to organise the layout, test the connections, meet the owner and familiarise myself with the place.
Just before the event, I sent three email reminders out, 3 days before the event, 48 hours before the event and on the actual day.
So, How Many Sales Did I Make?
None. 🙁
50 people registered for the event, but guess how many people actually attended? Three. Yes, you read that correctly.
With only three people attending, I had a better chance of becoming a professional footballer (dream job), than making a sale.
I was incredibly surprised. Especially when it’s on a topic that every business should be interested in. I mean who doesn’t want to know how to grow your business by ranking in Google?
I felt like a total loser.
When you have 50 chairs in front of you and only 3 people (who are also sitting on different rows) it’s not the most uplifting of feelings.
I didn’t expect everyone to attend but was expecting at least half.
As I started speaking I was tempted to skip some of the material as it felt too painful speaking to an empty class. I’m glad I didn’t do that as it would’ve been disrespectful to those who had gone out of their way to attend.
Instead, I gave it everything. I stopped thinking about me, and started thinking about them. I’m so glad I did.
I received some excellent feedback and realised public speaking is not that scary.
Feedback Is Everything
After the event I sent an email to each attendee, thanking them and asking for feedback.
Here’s one of the responses I got:
Feedback like this is gold.
If someone is nice enough to tell you where you can improve, do me a favour – listen.
She said I sounded “salesy”.
A few years ago I would have felt offended and also missed a chance to improve my presentation. I now know what I need to change.
Trust Your Public Speaking Skills
As strange as it may seem, I think a part of me felt relieved that only a few people showed up.
I’ve struggled with public speaking for years, the thought of it makes me want to run a mile. Each time someone new registered for the event, my stomach would drop like I was on a rollercoaster.
As a result of booking the venue and promoting the event, I had no choice but to push through my fear and make it happen.
It worked.
With practice, watching YouTube advice videos (like this one) and repeating positive affirmations to myself each morning, I pushed through my barriers.
“Tweet: Get Comfortable with Being Uncomfortable via @watchmequit”.
I was ready to talk to 100 people by the time I finished speaking.
You must have heard successful people talking about the importance of psychology and mindset. I used to think, “I’ll worry about that later”, but I now realise that having a strong state of mind is part of establishing a successful business.
Pay attention to it, feed it and find excuses to keep being positive.
Overall the event cost me less than £60, but was an experience you couldn’t buy.
This is a great post. When we started our social media company in Dallas, no one really knew what to do with social at all. We started holding training sessions where we would teach people how to do it themselves. We didn’t hold anything back at all. At first this felt bad because we had spent all of this time and money learning these tips and tricks. However, it was the greatest thing ever. Some people went on to become social media marketers themselves but a lot of them hired us.
Now there were times when no one would show up and there were times when 1 person would show and then there were times when 50 people would show. Each time we did the class just like we would if 100 people were there. You did good.
Hi Renee, thanks for the comment and glad to hear you delivered your class as if 100 people were in front of you. It’s definitely the right thing to do! It’s also very reassuring to hear someone else experiencing no one attending, doesn’t make me feel so bad 🙂
I like the way you didn’t hold anything back. I too believe in giving your best material away. After all they have come all the way to see you, so I feel I need to make it worth their trip.