Alright – there is a lot of bad info out there on these topics. If you want to have some success with seminars you’ve got to get this right. Because if you screw it up, it doesn’t matter what kind of invite you send and how killer your presentation is. So let’s get this going on the right foot.
Who:
After doing seminars for years, I sometimes take for granted the basics – like who to invite to seminars. For whatever reason though, no matter how simple this seems to me, advisors are always screwing this up. Others could just use a little tweaking. In any event, here’s how we get people to seminars and why it works.
Boiled down to it’s simplest form – there are just 2 main factors financial advisors should be looking for in an ideal seminar attendee. And being hungry ain’t one of them.
- Motivation. Your target market must have some significant motivation to pick up the phone or visit a site and RSVP…then drive to your event…then watch eagerly for an hour plus…then want to come meet you. Some common motivations are: How to get income during retirement; How to invest smarter and not get killed by market gyrations; How to reduce taxes (income taxes, specifically); How not to run out of money; How to get more money. These are oversimplified, but hopefully you get the idea. This is key to writing appropriate invite copy too, but we’ll get to that on another day.
- Money. Self serving, I know. But hey, I don’t care how motivated someone who’s broke is – they cannot make for a great client.
By process of elimination, I market to boomers and young seniors. Specifically, ones that are a little higher net worth. There are a few other very niche audiences one could market to, but you’ll need to be in a pretty major market for them to make economic sense (ie, Doctors, Senior Level Executives, etc).
I usually iron this out a lot more for purposes of getting a good mailing list, so here are some additional criteria I use:
- Must be homeowners
- No singles over 75. Some will argue this by saying you can get older clients and then build relationships with their kids; or maybe they’ll get remarried. But that is way too much work for me. Look for ready made ideal clients rather than those you have to mold. It may sound selfish, but this is a business we’re trying to build.
- AND, OF SUPER IMPORTANCE – we always let people know they MUST have at LEAST $250,000 of invest-able assets, excluding real estate to attend
When actually getting lists, I always do the following for the purpose of getting balanced attendance and clients. *Actually, this trick was taught to me by Len.
- 1/3 of the invites go to people meeting the first criteria set, are age 55 to 60, with incomes of $125,000 and higher
- 1/3 of the invites go to people meeting the first criteria set, are age 61 to 65, with income of $75,000 and higher
- 1/3 of the invites go to people meeting the first criteria set, are ages 66 to 74, with incomes of $50,000 and higher
The reason the incomes taper down is due to the assumption that the older they are the more likely they are to be retired and thus living off their assets. So even someone with a $50,000 income should have a few hundred thousand in assets (in most circumstances).
What
Pre-supposing you target the same market – what do you say to them to get them to come to your seminar?
Unfortunately, most advisors get duped into doing a free dinner invitation. What this means, in a nutshell, is the dinner is the focal point rather than the seminar itself. My theory as to why this is the case is two-fold. One, mailing companies compete amongst each other based not on end-game results, but rather rsvps. How foolish. Second, most advisors and mailing companies do not understand how to write good sales copy.
This can all be fixed by focusing on one thing: the end result.
We want assets under management. I don’t care if I get 10 responses or 100. Frankly, time is much better spent when running only 5 follow up meetings with 5 highly qualified and motivated people versus 25 follow up meetings with a random bunch of half interested, half qualified prospective clients.
So you should learn to write copy. For the purpose keeping this topic short, and then following up big time on the specifics, here are a few important items to consider when crafting a financial seminar invitation:
- Getting the invite read is the most important part of the process.
- The headline is the most important component of the copy.
- The bullet points (yes, there should be bullet points) should specifically identify a motivator for attendance – which means boring bullets like: the art of asset allocation; or how to find good mutual funds, etc. – should be avoided. Think of explicit benefits to the attendee that are strong motivators for your target market.
- Always use qualifying text; ie, if you are age 55 and above with an investment portfolio excluding real estate of $250,000 – here is what you’ll learn…
- Give multiple calls to action. This means a simple website registration or a toll free recorded message line. Don’t make people call your office. Make it easy, secure, and anonymous for people to RSVP. For websites, make a dedicated RSVP site rather than a page off from your main site – don’t give them reason to get distracted – keep them entirely focused on just getting requesting tickets.
- Use tickets. But make them be requested. It gives percieved value and once they have the physical ticket in hand they will be less likely to no-show.
- Write like you talk. More people will read and feel compelled to attend when reading the invite isn’t a chore in and of itself.
For a follow up video – I’ll actually walk through the invites we’ve used with great success and include them in the “free stuff” area for download. I think most people will be very surprised with what works and what doesn’t.
Where
For the “where” component, let’s focus first on “where not” to host a seminar:
Never do them at your office. Yeah, it’s cheaper. That’s it.
Never use a low-end banquet hall or restaurant. If you want the greasy spoon set, go for it. If you want high net worth investors, hold your event at a place they would love to go to even if your event wasn’t there. Give your ideal client as few reasons as possible NOT to go to your event.
Never use the same place as the travelling road shows. You know, the places that run infomercials to sell investing software and the like. This usually means no middle-tier chain hotels.
The litmus test I usually use is this: If money is not an issue and you have one daughter, who is the apple of your eye…where would you want her wedding reception to be? If it cannot be at your mansion, of course.
When
This one is easy. The best day for for a seminar is when you know you’ll have a day or two for follow up scheduling of appointments (which means, by the way, you do not book appointments at the seminar – I’ll explain all of this another day). It should also not conflict with regular events your ideal clients may have in their schedule.
So by default, the best day is Tuesday.
Wednesdays are the days for many mid week religious services, Thursday and Friday don’t give enough time for follow up, and Monday is the worst day to have anything of any kind scheduled. So Tuesdays it is.
As for time, it depends on your market. For our market (high net worth boomers and young seniors) I find find that 4:30pm is a good time to start. It’s early enough that they’ll get home at a reasonable hour and not be driving when it’s too dark. And it’s late enough that if someone is still working they will be able to leave early to make the event. We run ours 1:45 – so we finish at 6:15pm and always serve a very nice meal.
Why the meal – look, your competition is serving a meal. Whether you like it or not, you are being judged. The judgement made when one guy serves a nice meal and another serves cheese and crackers is this: cheese and crackers guy is broke…and therefore must not be successful…and therefore must not be as good as fillet Mignon guy.
In Summary
When done right seminars are a very powerful way to build an investment advisor or financial planning business. You reach a lot of qualified people in minimal time, build credibility, and create desire. They can be reasonably done for a few thousand dollars and when perfected can bring in many millions per event in AUM.
As mentioned multiple times – I’ll be following this up with some videos that high-lite our most successful seminars and providing some additional commentary of what works, what doesn’t and why. So if there is something you want to know, just leave us a comment at support[at]advisorcontrol.com and we’ll use the feedback for creation of said follow up videos.
Now get back to work,
J