Tweet

The lost opportunity – your seminar notes. What do you do?

Guest post by: Jeffrey Gitomer

Article Overview: You’re at a seminar. Great information is being offered. Information that will help you succeed. Your mind is open. You’re taking notes. Recording what is being said.

The lost opportunity – your seminar notes. What do you do?

You're at a seminar.

Great information is being offered.

Information that will help you succeed.

Your mind is open.

You're taking notes.

Recording what is being said.

Even taking snapshots of slides.

You take in the talk, and get your own ideas.

Great ideas that you know you can use and you know will benefit you and others, ideas you can turn into money.

You are pumped!

You make a mental commitment the moment you write each note: "change cold calls to referrals" - "be more creative and daring when leaving a voicemail" - "sell value, not price" - "get more video testimonials." But then you don't fulfill them when you get home. Why?

They seemed like great ideas at the time.

You had AHA's and epiphanies at the event.

And you wrote notes that were golden.

But something happened between the seminar room and your first moments back at work. ANSWER: You dropped the ball. The mental ball. The focus ball. The commitment to yourself ball. And maybe even the success ball.

Whether you were at a trade show, an annual meeting, an association meeting, or a business event, what you decided to do IMMEDIATELY AFTER the event determined your fate.

If you chose wine, beer, liquor, socialization, partying, TV, or some other form of time-wasting (self-destructive) activity, you lost the opportunity to formalize your information, expand your thoughts, and cement your self-commitment.

POINT OF UNDERSTANDING: At any information event, you cannot take notes fast enough to capture all the pertinent information. You write as fast as you can, but still (without recording) miss some thoughts about ideas and things that were important to you at that moment.

FIRST ANSWER: The minute the seminar is over find a quiet space for 15-30 minutes. Open your laptop and take out your notes. (Maybe next time you'll take notes on your laptop.)

Look at every note you took, and spend a moment with each one to expand the thought. How will you apply that thought to your sales, your business, and your life? In other words, take the note and make it yours. Then determine when the action will be implemented.

(NOTE TO MEETING PLANNERS: Meeting planners try to cram session after session into a two or three day meeting without providing a chance for attendees to catch their breath, let alone have think time. Big mistake. Every traditional meeting and breakout should have a "quiet" session afterward. Refer to them as "think and apply" sessions. Even if they're just for 20 minutes.

SECOND ANSWER: Expand your thoughts while they're fresh in your mind. Do it again in your hotel room, and on the airplane going home. Think (don't drink). Take your notes further, expand your thoughts. Think more about the application of each idea, and how you intend to put it into action.

THIRD ANSWER: The minute you get home, record your notes. When you are recording, even more ideas and applications will surface. Burn them onto a CD and import them into your iPod or MP3 player. Record your notes and ideas so you can listen to them until they become dedicated tasks.

FOURTH ANSWER: Listening to your recording once a day, you will begin to commit to them, and take achievement actions. Put at least one new thing into your work or your life every day.*

*If you have been in sales for less than three years, this process will reinforce your belief system, and inspire you to greater achievement (the very thing you were hoping for when you entered the seminar room). And if you're a seasoned salesperson, this is a huge opportunity to reinvigorate your desire to achieve at a higher level, and re-dedicate yourself to personal excellence. It's your re-commitment to your own success.

REALITY: Corporations and associations spend hundreds of thousands (even millions) to impart new and important information, and yet when the participants get home, very little changes.

REASON: Participants are not allotted the time necessary to transfer the notes, thoughts, and ideas into personal actions that they are committed to take.

FIFTH ANSWER: Allocate time. During (and after) the meeting, let each participant make their own personal plan of action. This will ensure a full return on your time investment, their time investment, your dollar investment, and your human capital investment.

Related Articles
  Ten Strategic Tips For Seminar Presenters To Gain Maximum Benefits, According to Your Strategic Thinking Business Coach
  Select Seminars and Workshops with Purpose
  Strategic Elements To Confirm Its Time To Run A Short Seminar, According To Your Strategic Thinking Business Coach
  15 Ways to Create High Visibility with FaceBook
  On Being Present
  Teleseminars Five Tips For Getting Your Moneys Worth
  5 Good Reasons to Not Go to a Seminar
  Team Building Seminars
  What is the first thing your mother taught you to say after Ma Ma and Da Da?
  How to Start a Debt Consolidation business
  Four Marketing Ideas for Client Retention
  Red Zone Marketing® Seminar Tips
  Seminar Success Strategies - How to Profit From Your Investment
  How to Speak & Present Without Notes
  How Many Affiliate Marketing Seminars Have You Attended?
  Take Note
  How to Make the Most of Attending a Webinar
  Too Many Ladders? by Robin J Elliott
  How To Benefit From The Awesome Power of Two Simple Words –Thank You! According To Your Strategic Thinking Business Coach
  Sell Your Seminar

Article Tags: seminar notes



Related Forum Posts
Re: Free Fundraising Teleseminar for Entrepreneurs Friday am - Hi Tami, Did you have an opportunity to check out this seminar? If so, how was it? And would you happen to know who the 8 famous entrepreneurs were?
Re: Would you pass on a media opportunity? - I rather have the right now opportunity, just take a deep breath and do it. If I wait too long, I get to excited to do it, and end up with unwanted results. As a lab technician I always stand in front of a class to demonstrate and talk, that's not new, but I always thing it through in my head, going through the steps again, taking notes in my mind. My advice is: Think before you talk.
Small Business Advice Seminar? - Small business advice seminar is pretty generic though. Unless the host has pre-existing relationship with the audience, it's kind of hard for the attendees to assess the value of a seminar in such situation. And it's easy for the rest of us to say something you see tested everywhere else so let's get something creative so that Kevin could find something he never would have thought about. Here is my suggestion... Incentive is nice, but it might draw greater number of attendance if a guru speaker can come. Instead of thanking people for attending, it'll make the seminar to look more of a priviledge to attend. Whenever you finish a seminar, the attendees would look back evaluating the ROI for the time that was spent being there. Even though the content wasn't a perfectly delivered one, the greater the influence the host would have with the attendees, the better its after effect would become. So that the bit of celebrity attendance, it would boost the credibility for the next time around. It doesn't have to be a super guru, but just a well known local one once seen on TV news or something. I don't know what your friend's budget is, but if you happen to be promoting something real high end, instead of inviting a guru speaker, you could offer Ipod, too. Now as for the email campaign ... I would pay someone in the local area who has huge database of newsletter subscriber list and approach him with can't lose offer, like paying him upfront and splitting some of the revenue from the backend. Then have him do a few promotions to his list just about the seminar while building anticipation. My friends and I have done similar what we could call "launch" to our lists of people using a few step methods. First mail invited people to click through to our first video -- this showed some "private" behind the scenes type of screen shots of what we wanted to sell with just a small lead capture form below the video to build more list. Second email had another set of short video that showed more content inside, which lasted like 5 minutes so that anyone interested would stop and watch what we had to say. Third one, forth one just kept on building up some anticipation until people said, "Umm.. it's impossible for me to physically attend your seminar (or luncheon) on Monday 12 pm, would you take our cash in advance so that we could buy your recorded DVDs?" Of course, who would refuse that! Well, this time around may not be possible to do anything like that, but as soon as this seminar is over, you might want to video some of the attendees and ask for testimonials. Before the next seminar, have people pre-register for the email list and you can send promotional emails to that list every three to four days, just showing the testimonial videos and results of the attendees. I haven't personally used this method but I know this works the same way as the method I mentioned above. At this time, the audience is thinking "I don't know what you're going to do in your seminar, would it be worth my time to attend or are you going to waste my time?" Most pre-seminar promotions sort of leave it up to the attendees to figure out if it's going to be worth or not. And some hosts mistakingly think if it's free, there is nothing to lose. But they don't realize is it still requires people's opportunity cost to attend a seminar so no matter if it's free or not, it's still costing their valuable time and the only way to really build anticipation is clearly articulating the benefit they'll receive in advance. So if your friends could come up with something super unique to say about the seminar, it could expand it from there. But if their message happens to be still generic, I think it would need the help from a guru speaker.
Seminar - Hi Martin, Over a month ago you asked for ideas regarding the seminar you were to present. The response was good to give the necessary support. 'jvprosperity' had a good post. I am sure it would be good, if you would inform us of the outcome. How did you manage it? Did you get any feedback? What was the highpoint of the seminar? Kindest Regards Beat "Unlock People's Potentials!"
webseminars are viral - I agree there are benefits to both and personally I like sync'n seminars on my ipod for Subway listening. Hardtofindseminars.com by Michael Senoff is indexed well with Google in my opinion because of the detailed summary he includes with each recorded seminar after it takes place. So we can have best of both if there is an article introducing the live seminar and then after it has taken place there can be a well documented synopsis of what was actually covered and some of the questions the audience asked.


Share this article with your friends. Fund someone's dream.

Leave a comment below or share on the left and you'll help support entrepreneurs in Africa through our partnership with Kiva. Over $50,000 raised and counting - Please keep sharing! Learn more.

Newsletter

Get advice & tips from famous business
owners, new articles by entrepreneur
experts, my latest website updates, &
special sneak peaks at what's to come!

Name:
Email:

Popular Articles

Pay Per Click Advertising

What Type of Business Should I Start?

Suggestions

Email us your ideas on how to make our
website more valuable! Thank you Sharon
from Toronto Salsa Lessons / Classes for
your suggestions to make the newsletter
look like the website and profile younger
entrepreneurs like Jennifer Lopez.