SeminarSavvy.com

Satisfaction guarantees are essential to convincing uncertain prospects to register for your event. It’s how you ease their fears about making a mistake in signing up for your seminar.

There are several types of guarantees you can offer. Which do you feel most comfortable with?

1. Lifetime guarantee: if participants become dissatisfied with their attendance at the seminar at any point, either at the event or even months later when they’re using the information, you’ll give them a total refund of their registration fee. Add even more power to your guarantee by also giving them a gift or cash bonus to compensate them for their trouble.

2. Total satisfaction or 100% money back with a time limit, say 30 to 90 days. You might require that attendees prove that they honestly tried implementing the information taught in the seminar. Attendees get to keep their seminar materials.
3. Total satisfaction or 100% money back, no questions asked. Prospects must speak up and ask for their money back by the end of the event. You may want to let them keep their materials, but you could require that they turn them in.

4. Partial attendance with a total-satisfaction guarantee. Participants can attend part of the event (e.g., the first morning or the first day). Then, if they’re not satisfied, they can turn their materials in at the registration table for a full refund.

5. Total satisfaction or you offer a partial refund. You withhold either a percentage or a specific dollar amount to cover your meeting room costs. You can use this with any of the guarantees above, though it’s more common with #3 and #4.

The stronger your guarantee, the better. It shows that you are 100 percent confident about the quality of your content and seminar. The more “weasel clauses” you put in — such as making people prove they’ve used the materials — the more it appears that you have something to hide and are not sincere about your offer. The most successful seminar marketers offer total satisfaction guarantees.

There is a chance that strengthening your guarantee will increase the number of refund requests that you get. If that happens, go back and analyze your numbers. What you’ll probably find is that although more people requested refunds, the stronger guarantee also helped you secure significantly more registrations. Even after you honor all refund requests, you’ll still have a larger net profit with the stronger guarantee.

Also recognize that the longer your guarantee is (e.g., a 30-day guarantee vs. a guarantee that expires the minute your seminar ends), the less likely it is to be invoked. If you tell attendees that they have to let you know by lunchtime whether they want their money back, they’ll feel pressured to make a decision about requesting a refund. If they have just the tiniest shred of dissatisfaction, the chances that they’ll ask for their money back will skyrocket. Extending your guarantee to 30, 60, 90 or even 365 days after the event takes the time pressure off of them. It also shows that you have their best interests at heart, because you want to give them a chance to put their skills to the test before they make the “final” buying decision.

Convincing busy, budget-conscious people to invest their time and money to attend your seminar can be a challenge. That is why you should sit up and pay attention when a prospective attendee indicates even the tiniest bit of interest in your event. Seminar leads are golden.

Yet many seminar promoters treat their leads casually. They will field phone calls and emails from prospects who have questions, yet they will not keep records about who has called in. They will deliver free preview seminars, but assume that prospects who leave without registering aren’t interested. They let the sale go, assuming that prospects will call back on their own if they are really interested in participating.

If this sounds like you, it is time to change. Anyone who has summoned enough energy to get in touch with you to ask questions about your event if far more qualified as a prospect than the average person on your list. These individuals have indicated some level of interest in your material. Therefore, they deserve more attention when it is time to market your seminar or workshop.

Here are 5 tips to increase seminar registrations by improving your follow-up:

1. Capture as much contact information about the prospect as possible. This includes first and last name, phone number, email address, company and mailing address. The more information you gather, the more flexibility you will have when choosing how to follow up. At a minimum, get a first name and phone number or first name and email. This will allow you at least make a follow-up courtesy call or send a reminder email.
2. Do something with the information! In other words, create a list of people who are interested in the event, so that you may easily identify and follow up with them.

   Note: I don’t recommend adding email addresses to your broadcast list without explicit permission. If you want to contact prospects via email, do privately from your desktop. Feel free to offer them the opportunity to opt-in to your list. For example, you could tell them about a free preview teleseminar you are hosting to promote your next seminar, and provide the link where they could get full details about your event.

3. Pick up the phone. Taking the time to call someone can quickly strengthen your relationship, simply because so few companies use the telephone to reach their clients. But let me be clear: you do not need to engage in “telemarketing.” You don’t need to have a script. You don’t need to be pushy. You don’t need to badger prospects. You don’t need to make impersonal, automated calls. Instead, make courtesy calls. Follow up to see if the prospects who contacted you with questions need any additional information or if they want to reserve a seat. It’s short, sweet and can make a powerful difference.
4. Hook them online. Incorporate a mechanism on your website to gather names and email addresses of people who are tentatively interested in your event and want to learn more. When promoting live events, the best tool to use for this purpose is a free teleseminar or webinar, which can be delivered live or prerecorded and made available on demand.
5. Automate your follow up. Once people have opted in to your list, follow up via email. Send a series of messages via autoresponder, so that they continue to receive marketing “touches” about your event, but you don’t have to do the work yourself. Set it up and let technology take care of the rest.

Warm leads offer a significant opportunity for improvement for most seminar promoters. If they are interested enough to reach out to learn more about your event, they are closer to buying from you than the average person on your list. Invest the extra time, money and resources to follow up regularly with this motivated group, and watch your registrations and revenue climb.