Sales Strategy

Help your clients while building your brand. 

Many salespeople have learned to find new clients while strengthening the relationships with the clients they already have by holding free informational workshops for their clients’ customers.

Here’s how it works.  Offer to present on a topic within your areas of expertise that is interesting to your client, for their benefit.  Make sure they take on the responsibility of promoting the workshop to their prospects and clients, as well as providing the venue and refreshments.  Your role is to deliver a dynamite session with value-added handouts, and to answer questions from the group. 

A couple of tips for holding workshops for your clients:

• Find opportunities to hold workshop for your clients by asking them “How often do you get your clients together for an event where you give them something of incremental value, outside your area of expertise?”
• Leave the hosting duties such as coordinating registration or providing refreshments to your client – the event is more likely to fail if your client doesn’t have “skin in the game”.
• Invite a few of your clients to sit in on the event – they may decide to invite you to deliver a similar workshop for their clients.
• Don’t sell from the podium.  Rather, close your presentation by offering to send your slides or raffle off a relevant book, and collect everyone’s business cards.  Tell them to write “yes” on the back of their cards if they would like to talk to you about further assistance.
• Ensure your presentation relates to your audience and their problems, rather than “spewing  facts” or using technical jargon.