I had such an overwhelming response to last week’s Selling By Seminar, I felt I should clarify one point.
          Achieving buy-in from your sales staff to any company initiative is absolutely critical if you are to achieve long-term sustainable success.
          Please do not confuse your sales force’s attitude towards facilitating legitimate customer-focused seminars with the various revenue-generating sales pitches that are out there.
          Sales people with integrity will have moral difficulty attracting prospects to a sales pitch disguised as a seminar. The most professional sales people will also have philosophical difficulty selling your unsold inventory in “packages” or at deep discounted rates.
          If you are establishing an inventory-focused culture, designed to sell out at all costs, the aforementioned revenue-generating schemes will help you achieve your goals. And if that’s your goal, there is nothing wrong with the group sales-pitch approach.
          If, on the other hand, you are evolving a more customer-focused culture, then the only way you will achieve buy-in from your sales force to selling by seminar, is to facilitate legitimate customer-focused experiences.
          Remember the caution we highlighted in last week’s Selling By Seminar memo?
Caution: Never let your “seminar” degenerate into a sales pitch. The attendee will invite you to make a “sales pitch” if your seminar has been truly educational and enlightening.
The goal of the really great advertising seminar presenters is three-fold:
1.       To introduce your clients and prospects to proven concepts that will help them to grow their business with your medium.
2.       To introduce your sales staff to these same proven concepts so that focusing on results for your customers becomes a permanent and ongoing part of their culture.
3.       To establish your station and your account executives as business partners to your clients. 
The relationships that evolve in a customer-focused culture will result in your clients wanting to buy, rather than in your account executives having to hard-sell.