Private seminars - do they even work?

connundrum

Hey,

I run sales/marketing for an International Property company.. and my boss is insisting that we should be doing private seminars around the country.

Now I know that the foreign property scene is getting a bit stale, and every second person's aul lad seems to be selling it - for this reason I think that the private seminars may be a bit of a waste.

How would we go about targeting an audience for the seminars? How can I avoid a situation where we have 3 people show up to a room booked for 50+?

Obviously we'll be taking the local advertising route i.e. we're up in Sligo so we'll do the local papers etc.

Maybe I'm just too negative about it

Nuttzz

got a letter today, "you too could be a property millionaire" it went into the shredder without been opened, I dont know how you would target people to come to an event like this, other than using a price point, which would be very hard for you to set, as you say loads of people are selling foreign property and most are the same price

telecaster

Maybe setting up a stall in a public place (shopping centre?) is the way to do it, then see if you can take enough interest names to warrant having a seminar. And expect that only 1 in 3 will show up.

You could of course call everybody a day or two before the seminar to see if they are still interested in attending, thus saving yourself the embarrasing scenario of only 3 punters showing up.

shepthedog

If you have a current mailing list, contact them to gauge interest..
There seems to be so many property expos on every Sunday in all the regional hotels it becomes hard to take them seriously..
Gotta stand out from the crowd.. Guest Speaker perhaps? Or local people who have bought from you already and would be willing to give a talk.. people relate better to similar ppl rather than the hard sell from salesperson..
Good luck