Event Production and Sales – From the attendee’s perspective

Please by all means SELL something!

If you create something valuable that makes something or someone better, then I encourage you to SELL it to someone who needs it — at a price that allows them to profit from it.

• Not at a price that erases the potential value.
• Not at a price that they can’t afford.

But …

Definitely at a price.

Because in my experience, we really don’t value what we don’t pay for in some way — in time, money or usually both.

You will need to sell it.

The default choice of human beings when asked to make a choice is to do nothing.

I’ve been producing events that sell products and services for over a decade and I’m proud of that.

After a decade, I still love to attend events that aren’t my own whether it’s to speak or in many cases just be there sitting anonymously in the back soaking up the value.

There is always value to be had at live events.

Always something new to learn and I love it!

Which is why I registered to attend an event about speaking.

I wanted to watch an event promoter who was advertising on Facebook, fill an event and then watch their process at work. I wanted to see what systems they used and how they structured the event and how they sold the people who attended.

The organization who put on the event is global in nature.

The featured speaker produces many events all over the world and is apparently extremely successful at it.

What the actual numbers are I can’t say, but according to him, he is on track to be the next billionaire.

He runs a very structured process and travels with a team.

To build his audience for a one day free event, he starts running advertising 45 days ahead of the event. For Philadelphia, he registered in excess of 1,200 people and by 10 AM with a 9 AM start time, there were close to 100 people in the room.

During his presentation he quoted show-up rates from cities around the world and they typically ranged from 14 to 10 percent of registrations.

Events are run Tuesdays – Thursdays or on Saturday for one day events.

There was a warm-up speaker that went until about 10 AM. Then the featured speaker began.

A main slide with his picture and his “branding” were on the screen.

Then a video kicked off the “social proof.” Many pictures with the speaker with celbrities and speaking in front of thousands.

Then self-deprecating local humor.

Then setting the expectation that he is selecting 7 superstar speakers to work with. Noting the number of black people in the room and saying that he is taking ONE lucky speaker to speak in Africa with him.

Then poking “fun” at the reasons you don’t buy. Why women don’t buy. (most of his buyers are women.) Why blacks don’t buy. (Most of the people in the room where black.) Why not having money is just an excuse. Why billionaires make decisions instantly and losers just stay poor.
What your ridiculous arguments are if you are right-brained or left-brained.

He puts down authors and then asks the audience a question along the lines of “how many people have …”

Breaking my usual rule of never raising my hand in an audience, I raise my hand and he ups the ante. When asked to name a specific number I replied “about 10,000” which is when he said that “in his experience nobody who quotes round numbers is telling the truth,” and quickly moves on.

At that point I was tempted to challenge his billing as #1 coach in the world and coach him on thinking about how to avoid ticking off attendees at his events. Luckily, I resisted, because he later said that speakers can’t allow anyone to challenge them EVER.

Then he gave overwhelming facts and figures, systems and models with lots of “write this down moments.”

He is constantly telling us what we are going to learn in the afternoon, reminding us of what we will miss out on.

Apparently, he knows his figures, because he accurately predicts in advance how many people will leave and sets the expectation that 14 percent of the room will leave at lunch, so that when people come back after lunch they won’t be surprised to find fewer people in the room. The “losers” will have left the room.

Then tells us that coaches have to have coaches and talks about his coach, packages the cds of his coach that he paid $250,000 for along with unlimited access to his two day events around the world for $497 and closes 20 percent of the room on it.

Lunch is an hour. (there were no breaks.)

After lunch, he brings up people who have purchased his program to talk about what they’ve done and the publicity that they have generated by branding by association.

In other words, if you take lots of pictures with you and famous people, you will be famous.

He ramps it up in his next presentation. Lots of videos and pictures of what his students have done. Global travel, important people, intimate events with the rich and powerful (and you.)

If you buy his top-level program you will be able to interview people like John Travolta, George Ross, Gene Simons and get pictures and videos of you doing it.

He is selling these programs for up to hundreds of thousands around the world, but if you sign-up today (and sign a non-disclosure agreement promising not to tell the people who paid that much) he will sell it to you for $5K to 15K depending on the package.

Then it’s trashing the trashers.

How everyone tries to bring down people who succeed. How people will post terrible things about you that aren’t true.

Then he asks people who are interested to sign-up on a list by which package they are interested in. They are seated in a new row of chairs in the back of the room and called out of the room one by one to talk to one of his coaches.

Probably 15% – 20% of the room immediately goes to the back of the room to sign up, which to me is pretty astounding.

Now note that this is just to get their final questions answered — to explore what options are best for them, but they do know that the price tag is at least $5K.

Closes are timed for breaks so people who are rushing for the bathroom create part of the momentum to the back of the room.

I don’t know how many people he will eventually close, because that’s done out of sight of the room.

He stated that he is happy to break even on these events because the big sales are in the small groups.

So he pulled all the right triggers. Social proof, overwhelm, reward action, remove (or in his case belittle) objections. He used biting humor to polarize his audience, reinforced his status as a truth-teller by reinforcing their prejudices.

And he sold.

People who bought will be able to ask a couple questions of a celebrity, or hang around together brainstorming in Florida or an exotic location and if you really shine he will be happy to publicize your success.

If you pay attention, you will learn how he does it.

Unfortunately, during the presentations he gave me the clear impression that he really didn’t care much about you personally.

In giving a warning not to talk about God, he gave the impression, that given the choice, he’d take the $250,000.

I’d never heard of the guy before I registered for his event. I’m sure he’s given more to charity than I have, because he told me he had.

He’s really talented, structured and skilled and he wants your money.

Nothing wrong with that.

But, given the choice to hang around with this guy or the amazing people in the Impact Family,

I’d just prefer to hang around with you.

All the best,