If you’ve already figured out how effective seminars and workshops can be for attracting new patients to your practice you are ahead of the game. Building trust and interest with potential new patients during a live presentation is a great way to increase sales but getting people in the door for the event and scheduling them for an in-office 1 on 1 appointment before they leave can be difficult without the right practices in place. Don’t take the risk of hosting another event until you read through these three tips from the pros to help you hit your seminar and workshop goals.
Key #1: Nail Your Scheduling
You won’t get the chance to help potential patients if they don’t show up for your seminar so the first pro tip for having a successful workshop or seminar focuses on picking the right day and time to schedule your event.
You want potential patients to have options but, not too many. So, you want to hit the sweet spot of available seminar events when doing direct mail and other marketing for your event. Offer no more than two options. We have found that when three options or more are offered it lowers the show-up rate. Make it simple for them to choose one or the other to fit their schedule and you’ll boost your show-up rate.
You want to have a lunchtime and dinner time option to attend your event. We find that these times are your best chance at catching potential patients with a free time slot to spend listening to your seminar presentation.
Bonus Pro Tip: Having food at your event will be a huge draw and will guarantee an increase in show up rate. You can customize your approach to how you want to get this done but keep attendance numbers in mind when you’re making your decision. Some will argue that offering food will increase show-up rates but lower the quality of leads. In our experience, however, the result is the opposite. We have found that events with 20-30 people in attendance produce more motivated leads than events with under ten attendees. Larger crowds encourage higher energy, it’s more fun for the attendees and they feel more comfortable in a larger group. Offering food to draw a larger crowd creates a 360-degree positive experience where your attendees will enjoy a meal, be encouraged from the energy of the group and be influenced by the exciting offers and shared interest.
Key #2: Testing Times and Locations
Selecting the best time and date for your seminar or workshop will also depend heavily on knowing your area and target market habits. Things like traffic, other local events, and your proximity to highly populated areas will affect if potential patients will show up. If you’re in a large city with high traffic like Orange County or Atlanta, make sure you allow your attendees enough travel time. Test your scheduling options by adjusting 30 minutes before or after your target lunch or dinner time slot and selecting different days of the week. You’ll eventually land on the precise schedule for your area that will maximize show-up rates.
Bonus Pro Tip: Our research shows that across the board Tuesday and Thursday seminar and workshop dates produce the highest show-up rates. These are typically the best days to use when making your schedule. Evening start times from 6pm to 7:30 pm and lunch times from 12pm to 1pm depending on your area.
Key #3: Customize and Master Your Closing Offer
Getting people in the door won’t mean anything if you don’t have a solid closing. Once you have found the right formula to increase your show up rates you need to focus on saying the right things during the event and your closing technique. The final 10 minutes will be particularly crucial.
You organized this event to provide valuable information but if you don’t feel comfortable and deliver a closing offer that you have mastered and studied your audience will know. You know you can help them, and your next step is to get them into your office for a 1 on 1 consultation so you can offer them the solutions that will change their current condition. That energy needs to come across confident and knowledgeable especially during the last 10 to 15 minutes of the event.
Customizing your closing into language that feels comfortable to you and practicing until you’ve reached perfection will eliminate any signs of nervousness and help you avoid fumbling your words. When you don’t come off confident, your audience begins to lose trust in all the helpful information you have delivered up until the closing and a low number of them will be interested in moving forward with signing up for a consultation.
You want to focus on a percentage of at least 50-60% of attendees converting to scheduled 1 on 1 free consultations. The last 10 to 15 minutes of your presentation is the key determiner of you hitting those numbers at every event. It must be solid; it must be confident, and it must be perfected to capitalize on having the undivided attention of people who need the services you have to offer.
Bonus Pro Tip: The person you have along with you to help with scheduling interested attendees must be highly trained to handle this task because they can make or break your free 1 on 1 consultation show-up rates. The person you choose must be an extension of the solid, confident and perfected energy of your closing offer. They must be trained to handle questions with perfection and be able to streamline the scheduling process, so they don’t spend too much time with each scheduled patient but just enough to make a lasting impression. They need to be trained to know how to close appointment slots and get to everyone in a timely fashion, so you aren’t losing people at the end of the event. If you want the best results, offer a bonus for free 1 on 1 consultation show ups for the scheduler and work out some kind of reward for the number of potential patients who show up for their appointment time.
A successful seminar or workshop event is a dance of perfected elements. You don’t want to put the time, effort and capital into organizing an event and lose potential business because of one or two underperforming elements so training and practice is key to making good on your investment. Go in with a plan clearly communicated to every staff member working to make the event productive and make sure you’re all operating towards the same goals. Take time to analyze the data after every event and don’t be afraid to adjust the time, day or location to maximize attendance and become a closing master by delivering a genuine and appealing offer at the end of your presentation.
If you’d like to learn more about how we can help increase your seminar attendance through our targeted approach with direct mail campaigns, please give us a call or fill out this form.