Too Early to Bail?
Waiting for registrations to arrive is one of the toughest challenges to face as a seminar promoter. While enduring this nail biter, you might find yourself pondering whether it’s time to pull the plug and cancel your event.
The danger in cancelling is that you might make the call too early, thereby missing out on the rewards of all of your promotional efforts. You also risk damaging your relationship with the people who have already signed up — especially if they have purchased airfare or incurred other expenses to
travel to your event.
Here are some things to consider while making your decision:
- How far away is your event? The closer your seminar gets, the more registrations should arrive. When plotted on a graph, most registration curves swoop upward dramatically in the last week before an event.
Unless you’ve tracked registration patterns for your seminar before, you’ll have a hard time predicting
whether the lack of response you’re seeing is normal or not. - Where will most prospects come from? If you’re marketing locally, you can expect people to wait until the last minute to register because they can do so without having to pay through the nose for airfare or without risking not being able to secure a hotel room.
- When do you have to guarantee your food and beverage counts? If you have zero registrations, you’re 14 days away from your event and you have to tell the
hotel today how many lunches you want, it’s more tempting and understandable to want to cancel. But if you have registrations and you’re just not happy with the numbers yet, it’s harder to justify. - How well did you market your event? If you were scrambling to pull your marketing together at the last minute and you skipped most of the promotions you were planning, the lack of results is probably more due to poor marketing than prospects waiting until the last minute.
- What’s your break-even point? How many registrations do you need to break even on the expenses you’ll incur by running the event? (Do not count the money you spent on marketing — that’s already gone. Consider only how much it will cost to put on the event vs. cancelling.) If the number is low, keep waiting — it’s worth the extra time to see if you can still round up the registrations.
- What’s the cost of cancelling? Consider any penalties you might incur with the hotel. And consider the cost to your reputation — especially with those people who have already signed up and made plans to travel to your event.
- What’s the cost of running with your current registration numbers? Could you tolerate the amount of profit (or size of loss)? Could you focus instead on the ability to deliver on your promise of a great event for the few people who have registered? Could you reframe the event as great practice for delivering your content since it’s not going to be the big money-maker you hoped?
If you decide you must cancel, be sure to allow adequate time to notify registrants. For example, pull the plug on local seminars a day or two before so you aren’t scrambling to reach them the night before your planned event.