Todd Taskey

An entrepreneurial business owner, Todd Taskey has more than 25 years of finance and investing experience. Prior to founding Potomac Business Capital, Todd was a founding investor, board member or management team member to five other business ventures. Armed with the insight from his past successes and failures — and ongoing conversations with growing business owners and entrepreneurs — Todd provides market strategy and finance advice via his Wrong Question blog and national public speaking tours.

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Better Question:  Who will fill the room for me?

In May I conducted a one hour seminar for almost 75 small business owners and was personally responsible for 3 of the attendees.  The other 70+ were invited by my partners in this seminar.  Here is a simple step by step guide.

1) Create an interesting title and excited bullet points for your seminar.

Our seminar title?

Six Big Changes that will Kill Your Business.

Bullet points?

• The real secret of 1st page Google
• How to generate "word of mouth" online
• Three "must" required for new marketing
• Why most social media is a waste of time
• How to focus on "high conversion" prospects only
• Your 3 most important customers - The key to future profits
• Plus much more...

2) Who owns the prospects you want to attend?

We reached out to a payroll processing company, a CPA firm, a health insurance provider, a local printer and the local newspaper.  All of these companies have a large client base and are looking for ideas to add value to their client relationship.  They all welcome the chance to contact clients  with something of value to offer.

In addition to sending a email promoting the seminar (one two weeks in advance, one two days in advance) with a link to register for the program, they had their sales team call their best clients with a simple message:  "There is a great seminar next week I thought you'd be interested.  It's $65 to attend, but we bought a few tickets and wanted to reach out to a couple of our best clients who I know are always interest in ideas that may help their business..."

If the client can not attend, they still get credit for asking and build good will with an important client.  Good marketers will welcome the opportunity just to call and appreciate the chance to get some face time with a prospect or client at the seminar.

3) Register with EventBright.com for online registration - it's free!

This is a great service which you can set up very quickly.  You'll look like a pro and this part of the process will be a breeze.

4) Create a one hour seminar and do not talk about your company at all.

This is obviously critical but may be easier than you think.  If you are in front of prospects and clients regularly, you know their problems and challenges, talk about those problems and solutions.  Do not talk about you or your company at all, only in the introduction.  If you're not sure you can fill an hour, get one of your sponsors to take half or get two others to each take one third.

5) Have the seminar recorded and provide the link for free for those who can not attend.

Remember, distribution on the web is free.  This recording will help psotion you as an expert in your field.  It is very important to remember that, regardless of your presentation skills, almost no one will watch an hour long video online.  Be sure to edit your video by topics so a) prospects can watch in bites and b) people searching online can get the small, specific piece of information then need.  Preferably in 3-5 mintue pieces.

Partnering with others is a very effective way to have a packed room and successful event.  What ideas have you used to increase attendence?