Seminars For Less.com - good seminar mailer for retirement?

[BiggitySwat]

Yup, I always scrubbed the list each time to eliminate the plate lickers. When we missed someone on the list and saw they were signed up I would call them to see if there was something I didn't explain well enough the last times they were there, and if so I would gladly set an appointment. If they couldn't justify their 'need' to come and sponge another meal, I would tell them I needed the room for others who had not participated in the past.

The plate lickers are shameless. They will go to as many of the 'Free Meal' seminars as they can.

Charpress is right on about appointments. We used an assumptive method to get the appointments, but we did not force them to see us. My wife set most of the appointments by simply asking, 'is morning or afternoon best for you?' , never ask if they want to set an appointment...

I have looked at RBE's Seminar Success and it looks even better than SeminarsForLess.

You guys make great points, but I'm kind of loathing the fact that I may attract plate-lickers to my event. It gets me because they are USING ME and taking me for a ride - very disrespectful and inconsiderate....but hey, I guess we are financial professionals in modern corporate America, not the town moneylender in renaissance Italy. You guys mentioned that you somehow scrub them out - but how exactly without spending alot of time? Since SeminarsForLess and RME use their own targeted lists, would they be able to auto-scrub these cretins out of the mailing for me?

Also, how do you guys smash the competitions' grasp over your prospects at the seminar without sounding like a pompous a--hole.....many of my prospects already have "Financial Advisors." I just don't want the prospects to use me for my info and meals then take the data back to their own planner to write the business.

 

[padthaiforlunch]

Also, how do you guys smash the competitions' grasp over your prospects at the seminar without sounding like a pompous a--hole.....many of my prospects already have "Financial Advisors." I just don't want the prospects to use me for my info and meals then take the data back to their own planner to write the business.

Consider a slide that shows how much those annual fees are costing them. - 2% is about right.

How many have b shares and c shares? Most.

Also, consider this quote from John Bogle.....

While the stock market provided an annual return of 13% during the past 20 years, and the average equity fund earned an annual return of 10%, the average fund investor, according to recent estimates, earned just 2% per year.

Source: The Mutual Fund Industry in 2003 01/14/2003

 

[patch36]

You can't eliminate plate lickers until you have had them at your events at least once. It is part of the cost of running seminars. I thought you weren't providing meals? If you are not, then the plate lickers will have no incentive to come, and neither will 75pct of the others who would normally attend.

You are selling yourself. If they connect with you they will consider moving their investment to your care. Many have never heard from their Investment Advisor, at least on a regular basis, and in this economy they will not hear from the guy/gal who put them in the path of risk.

If you are targeting older people and selling anything to do with risk, you are going to have problems in our current market environment. If you preach suitability and safety you will have an attentive audience. Unless you are selling CD's or Fixed Annuities, you are just another Ed Jones after AUM.
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RME is very good, but nearly twice the price. I did mailings with them for nearly a year and prior to using seminars for less. My first series of 3 seminars had over 60 attendees in each of the 3 seminars. It was also my first seminars I had given and it was overwhelming. I paid a ton of money for those meals and was not able to effectively work the crowd for appointments. Even so, I sold more than enough to pay for the whole thing and set enough appts to support the office with the sales I made.

 

[Charpress]

Two more points on plate-lickers:

1) You have to just consider them part of the overhead and not let it get to you too much.

2) I had a guy who bought a $4,000 IRA annuity and then had the nerve to kick on me causing a $360 charge-back. This guy was very unpleasant and, well, a jerk. The next seminar that was mailed to his zip code, sure enough he showed up on the invitation list again and was bringing guests to boot. I nearly called him to force him to cancel.

His guests purchased $500,000 in annuities from that seminar.

I have an associate who is very successful with seminars who always told me that he does not mind people showing up time after time because it can lead to bigger and better things.











4,00

 

[BiggitySwat]

Thank you for the replies. I'm going to go with RME and see how this goes.

Just a last thought - did you guys go into debt when you first started doing seminars? 'Cuz I am.... Don't have the 10K to drop here and there at the moment - going to have to take out a business loan.

 

[patch36]

RME is one of the best, but also one of the most expensive. Be sure you have products that will generate the revenue to cover your expenses and profit. This isn't like advertising, where you are branding yourself. Yes there is business that comes down the road from attendees, but the expense is so great you need to have a substantial marketing budget and a system in place that will maximize the business you get from the event.

If you are shooting from the hip, no script, no presentation that wows the clients, and no trained staff to meet, greet, and set appts, you are going to spend a lot of time and money learning the game.

It is only about setting appts, not educating the audience. If you tell them everything you know and don't set appts you have done a public service, at your expense.

Yeah, I went into debt for a a few months. Mostly waiting for product to issue, funds to transfer and commissions to roll in.

 

[Charpress]

Those are good points.

You often have to do as many as 4 appointments to finalize a sale. Then you have to wait for the transfers to happen which can be a mine field. It is not unusual for it to take 3 months or even more before you actually see the commission.

In the meanwhile, if you are doing seminars correctly, you have the overhead of two more seminars while you still do not have all your profits from the first seminar. You can't really just do a seminar and then wait to get all commissions before starting a new one. If you do that (and I have) you end up doing just 2 or 3 seminars a year.

 

[patch36]

With RME I always had 3 different dates included in the mailing. For instance Tues, Thurs, Tues consecutively. I did a set of 3 seminars a month.

With Seminars for less I was doing 2 sets of 3 per month. They are half the cost. The attendance and response rate was lower, but smaller groups of 15-25 are much easier to work, set appts and adapt your message to.

I really enjoyed doing seminars, but right now I am too busy with Medicare and Annuity referals, and past clients to invest the time or money into a set of seminars.
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Those are good points.

You often have to do as many as 4 appointments to finalize a sale. Then you have to wait for the transfers to happen which can be a mine field. It is not unusual for it to take 3 months or even more before you actually see the commission.

In the meanwhile, if you are doing seminars correctly, you have the overhead of two more seminars while you still do not have all your profits from the first seminar. You can't really just do a seminar and then wait to get all commissions before starting a new one. If you do that (and I have) you end up doing just 2 or 3 seminars a year.

You are so right Charpress. Before I started doing seminars I was mainly a one call closer. Seminars force you to do multiple appts to close a sale. That stretches the time even further to the payday.

You need to be prepared financially to go a couple months and a couple sets of seminars before you are self supporting. You may get lucky and close a big one, but the bread and butter of this business are the $60k annuities. If you are selling Securities and the associated services, you have an even longer road to travel, IMO.

 

[indaville]

If you are doing a good seminar you should be able to close most of your business on the first appointment with the prospect. I always recommend having at least $20k to get seminars started. You pay for the mailer a long time before revenue starts to flow and it takes a few months to get ahead of the curve.

Matt

 

[patch36]

If you are doing a good seminar you should be able to close most of your business on the first appointment with the prospect. I always recommend having at least $20k to get seminars started. You pay for the mailer a long time before revenue starts to flow and it takes a few months to get ahead of the curve.

Matt

Maybe it depends on what you are selling. I would agree if you are selling low ticket stuff like Medicare. If you are selling annuities or investment related stuff then you are a lot better than I am at closing the appts from a seminar. With those kind of products I would scare off most of the business pushing for a close that soon. I assume you are not talking about the same type of seminars and products as Charpress and I are discussing?

And why would you need a couple months to get ahead of the curve is you are truly selling most of your appts at the first appointment? When I make a sale from a seminar I make enough money to pay for the seminar with that one sale. Of course you may be a better salesman and have much higher expenses than I have. Why not share your secret to selling most of your seminar appts on the first appt?