[quote=frumhere]

I am in the South and my experience is that the traditional mail/call for seminars yields a tremendous amount of plate lickers, but not that many good clients. 

Any thoughts on calling businesses and trying to get the principal(s) to go out to lunch with you to build report and tell them what you do/how you do it and kind of speed through the whole seminar process.

Has anyone done this?

[/quote]

Pick a nice resturant. A place people want to go to. Then get a map and draw a circle with a 5 mile radius centered on the restaurant. Everything inside the circle is your market area. Next get out your day planner. Mark off every Wednesday from now til eternity as your luncheon seminar/workshop dates. There are 5 open seats at every lunch. You now have a market area and a schedule. Your job is to fill the 260 available seats over the next twelve months. Then you stand or preferably sit and deliver. Keep it simple but be creative. raising troubling questions is always a good way to go. Promise in and out in 1:15 and keep the promise. Think in terms of education. Make it a two part effort. Part one is the free lunch. Part two is the free one hour consult. Mail/call to businesses inside the circle to get attendees. Use a caller, no DNC to worry about. Total cost for lunch, about $650/month. Callers avail from min wage to about $11/hour.

Step one: start calling the nicest restaurants in your area to find out how much they'll charge per head.

Step two: Just do it!

[quote=PantsGoBrown]3. Watch the waistlines of the freeloaders expand while your bank account contracts.[/quote]

I just about spit my Coke on my monitor again, I'm laughing so hard.

Good post!

[quote=frumhere]Any thoughts on calling businesses and trying to get the principal(s) to go out to lunch with you to build report and tell them what you do/how you do it and kind of speed through the whole seminar process.

Has anyone done this?[/quote]

I have.

These days, I only take clients out to lunch. They often insist on paying, too.

I was warned by my early mentors to avoid spending money on prospects in this way. I did not listen, and proceeded to spend thousands of dollars on entertainment for prospects. I did lunches, dinners, even took some hot prospects to ball games and concerts.

Large corporations can do this, because they are spending OPM. I wasn’t a large corporation at the time, and I was spending MY money.

I found this method to be expensive, compared to most alternatives.

If you want to do business with business owners, go to their business and ask for them. There’s a boat load of “how to” information over at on this very subject. Rumor has it that some real experts on the art and science of prospecting reside over there. Almost anyone is welcome there, as long as your name isn’t Major Strasser (or Tad Borek, or Skip Weldon).

The neat thing about business owners is they have bigger needs for everything wel sell, and they have the ability to pay for the solutions to their problems. The downside is you really have to learn how to think like a business owner (most brokers should think this way, but many don’t), and you’ll need more technical expertise than the typical retail advisor.

Any suggestions on how to open the convo with the business owner?

Ask him how old his receptionist is and will SHE be free for lunch tomorrow.