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Why Good Seminars Give Great Results

Okay, you’ve been in the industry long enough to have seen that new “green” agent conducting their own “Homebuyers 101 Seminar” and you thought to yourself: Wait, you’ve never even SHOWN a home much less SOLD a home! Me too. But gosh, it seems like such a great idea!

Well, it is. And the truth is even a green agent with no sales experience who invites the right partners to assist in the seminar can give some extremely valuable information. I’ve facilitated over 2000 deals since 2001 but in 2001 I had only done my own deals and had been to the closing with a few family members and friends. We all have to start somewhere. Now I see literally thousands of people every year either in my office at our regularly scheduled seminars or at large events where we may be in front of hundreds or even thousands of people at one time like at the Learning Center’s Wealth Building Expo with Donald Trump, Robert Kyosoki and Suze Orman.

My confession is that I had decades of public speaking and entertaining experience prior to my first real estate seminar so I wasn’t nervous and I was well prepared. You can be at least 50% of those … well prepared. Well prepared even allows room for nervousness.

KNOW YOUR SUBJECT MATTER!

If you’re doing a first time home buyer’s seminar the worst thing you can do is give incorrect information. If you’re a real estate agent don’t try to teach the attendees about mortgages. If you’re a loan officer don’t try to teach about appraisals. If you’re an appraiser don’t try to teach about what happens at the closing table. Need I continue? Too often we try to be experts across the board. This is probably the greatest singel error I’ve encountered in seminars.

If you’re a real estate agent invite an EXPERIENCED loan officer, an EXPERIENCED appraiser and an EXPERIENCED closing attorney to assist you – get the experienced professionals from the each field to attend. They’ll be happy to do so.

Don’t give a lot of useless stats or even stats that are useful to you but nonsense to your attendees like “housing starts are off by 8% over the same period last year”. They don’t care. What they are there to learn is what is expected of them. If it’s a more advanced seminar you better be the expert in experience or advanced investors will never use your services.

You have valuable knowledge just from your experiences. Even if you’ve only been to one closing you’re going to have attendees who never have: Do a mock closing as a part of your workshop. Show them an example of a full buyer’s report and show them an offer letter, a pre-qual letter, an appraisal, a HUD 1, a contract addendum, a buyer/broker agreement, and all the other necessary paperwork. Set with them at the table and let your closing attorney who is attending as your expert go through the steps of a closing.

Let your experts interject as you are work shopping and give them time to present their field and answer questions. 20 to 30 minutes each is PLENTY. Your seminar really shouldn’t last over about 1.5 hours with 30 of it being workshop and questions.

DON’T GO OVER YOUR HEAD! Stick to what you know. Plan well. Tell them no children or provide child care. Have experts there or don’t bother. Advertise for at least 2 weeks prior and try to have at least 6 people there but really no more than 20 or so especially for your first one.

You CAN DO IT!