Conference “No Shows” - A missed opportunity?

Photo courtesy of Angle

Consider the scenario: you’ve spent many (chargeable) hours organising your professional service or consulting firm’s (PSF) latest seminar for clients and targets.

The event is free to attend because, as well as providing a fabulous marketing opportunity for your firm (and you), it also provides a great opportunity for you to demonstrate your credentials and profile in this area - hopefully leading to follow up meetings and ultimately fee income!

You have managed to build a good quality list of targets and clients and you are delighted to receive a high acceptance rate to the invites. All looks good.

The big day arrives - the room is set up; the presentation slides have been meticulously pulled together (and the hook up to the overhead projector tested repeatedly!); the conference venue staff roll out with the drinks and canapes.

Now we just need the attendees…… Tick, tock. They eventually trickle through the door minutes before the scheduled kick off time (no client wants to be the first to the “party” and therefore surrounded by eager (or passionate?) professionals!)

During the course of the seminar you scan your eyes around the room and see quite a few empty seats. You note that this is consistent with the smattering of badges still awaiting collection at the door. Attendance is good but it’s no way near as good as the original acceptance list. There are a lot of “no shows”.

Following the event, you shrug your shoulders at the lack of attendees and concentrate on those that did attend. This is a good strategy but are you missing an important opportunity?

An alternative approach

You have the list of badges for the “no shows” so why not follow up immediately post seminar with an email or letter along the lines of:

“It was disappointing that you were unable to make it along to our seminar on “X” earlier today. Feedback from the attendees was excellent so it would be a shame for you to miss out.

I attach a copy of the slides for your information. Of course, I appreciate that it may be more difficult to follow the slides without having one of our team with you to talk you through the relevant points so I would be happy to pop out to run through the presentation with you on a one-to-one basis. If this is of interest, please give me a call on xxxxxxxx”

How many recipients of a kind offer such as this are likely to refuse?

Answer: Not many!

Perversely, adopting this approach to “No Shows” may actually give a better result for both parties than attendance at the event in the first place.

How?

Well the client / target gets a one-to-one personal presentation where they can ask questions at any time whilst you secure a meeting in which you can follow your client / target’s lead during the course of the presentation in terms of specific areas of interest - hopefully leading to engagements and therefore fees.

Let’s take this approach to the next level

You could adopt this approach for all the invitees who declined the original invite - they may not have been able to make it due to a prior engagement so might be delighted with an opportunity to experience the presentation.

Also, why not consider uploading your slides to your website with a similar offer to any readers. This has the benefit of reaching out to other potential clients who may not yet be on your list.

If you have the resources, why not also consider videoing or at least taking an audio recording of the event. This would allow you to upload the recording to your website or record the event onto DVD or CD ROMs. If your event was a paid entry event, then this adds a further sales opportunity for those potential customers who could not make it to the event or who were not aware of it in the first place.

Summary

You can see that by taking these simple additional steps you are going some way towards fully leveraging the significant effort and resources that go into preparing and delivering such seminars. You also have the potential to significantly add to your sales pipeline.

We hope you find this useful and look forward to your feedback and / or suggestions.

Tags: passionatepractice, psf, seminar, conference, marketing, presentation