Tailor-made B2B
seminars
and workshops

Tailor-made B2B seminars and workshops

Sometimes the quickest way of improving conditions is a seminar or a workshop. This is especially so if the required subject is relatively narrow and its application requires all personnel to understand the same basic data in the same way.

A seminar is an easy way of receiving information and, if delivered correctly, can handle a lot of fixed ideas while driving home new and useful information and/or skills.

Delivering a seminar needs to be done so that it works WITH the current reality of the audience. One must first AGREE with the views of the audience in order to establish some leverage, which is then used to give new information. Humour is used to make the audience see things they would normally not want to perceive.

A good seminar is an engaging and entertaining experience from which participants come with changed viewpoints and an increase ability / willingness to produce results. Any seminar worth its salt must always MOTIVATE its audience to do better.

Now, the difference between a seminar and a workshop is really only that the latter denotes the use of some practical drills in using the tool(s) or technique(s) that the agenda of the workshop covers.

Which you choose depends on the subject itself and the degree that it is practical, involving actual tasks that the participants need to perform in the course of their work after the event.

Price-wise there is a difference as a workshop requires a bit more preparation AND also another consultant from us who supervises the practical drills.

Note that we also offer an introductory one-day consultation to the executive, which is a good way to start using our services... click here to read about this option.

Here are some of the subjects on which I do seminars of varying length, usually a full-day event. The length depends also on the number of participants. Depending on the depth and extent of handling the subject, seminars and workshops can also extend to 2-3 day events.

Note that if you are planning a seminar for your staff (as opposed to the management group or top executives of your company) then there's information further down this page on what you should know before you decide on the seminar.

So hear are a few of our seminars:

Seminar: Customers' viewpoint

A one-day sales seminar on adopting the client's viewpoint in sales and positioning yourself on his side.

How do customers REALLY see you? Is it the way you believe... or could it be they're not letting on what they think and how they interpret your words and actions?

Handles many fixed ideas and considerations of the sales personnel, thus opening new possibilities for improving sales results.

Seminar: Employment of the client's own willingness

A one-day seminar which reveals why any technique enforcing anything on a client doesn't work well and makes selling such an arduous battle...

...and how could you employ the customer's OWN willingness so HE is actually selling to YOU?

Makes selling much easier and handles many previous disappointments as this data explains failures.

Suitable for sales and marketing efforts of any kind, including networking, telemarketing / cold calling, telesales, and sales.

Seminar: Approach strategy

A one- day seminar going over the all-important planning of your angle of approach to contacting prospective clients, known sales leads, or existing customers with a new proposition.

This seminar concentrates on going over the basics of approach strategy, giving new information on how and why the traditional approach causes you to lose most of your opportunities simply because of positioning yourself wrongly.

If run as a workshop, this topic also gives many practical tips on creating a successful approach strategy for your main line of products or services, however only one clear-cut product or service can be taken on per day.

Seminar: Sales Closing techniques

A one-day sales seminar on how to close a sale. Can be delivered as a seminar or as a workshop with sales closing drills.

Requires some preparation prior to the seminar and preferably a market research survey conducted prior to the seminar just so we know what your target group really thinks and wants.

An excellent booster for B2B sales and one that also brings to light many previously unnoticed problems and considerations regarding sales closing.

Seminar: Principles of successful telemarketing

This one-day seminar explains in detail how traditional techniques of "enforcing data" and "controlling the decision-maker's thinking" do not work well, leading to very few results and short customer-relationships WHILE actually creating a negative image of your company in those who refuse a contact.

We will also go through the two principal goals of prospecting by telemarketing, explaining why it's more important to "grow the field" than trying to "harvest" it... and how both are done so that telemarketing provides a high 10-30% success ratio eventually.

This seminar does not include the creation of a telemarketing script as that would require a survey done first and a separate assignment. However, if these have been done by us prior to the seminar, it can also be extended into a workshop which includes practical drills of using the script on top of the topics explained.

Seminar: Client-satisfaction

This one-day seminar gives new information on what clients' satisfaction depends and how one can easily increase that satisfaction onto a much higher level and then maintain it there for the duration.

The benefits of client-satisfaction actions are explained as well as some of the techniques. The seminar offers new understanding to why clients act as they do and generally helps your personnel to work better with clients.

Workshop: Public speaking

This one-day workshop includes two parts.

One is a lecture (or series of short lectures) on various techniques and insider secrets to successful public speaking.

The other is a workshop in which several members of the audience practice public speaking while being coached with "reverse-logic" methodology.

This is the technique of making the person do MORE of whatever non-optimum he does while on stage.

This is a very useful workshop if your representatives have to give presentations to groups. The public speaking workshop can also be quite fun!

Tailor-made seminars

The above represent just a selection of subject matters of our seminars. Practically any subject can be made into a seminar or workshop.

It allows you to receive an exterior viewpoint to your activity as well as the way target groups look at things differently that the vendor.

Thus, if you have a subject in mind, please contact me and I will examine if we can deliver it in seminar form and give a quote.

Our standard one-day seminars are priced at £2,750.00 plus expenses, with the seminar fee to be paid prior to the event and the expenses to be invoiced after it.

Seminars are delivered at the location of your choice and arrangement and the price only includes the delivery of the seminar, not the cost of venue or refreshments.

Public speaking as a tool of conveying understanding

A seminar can be very useful as a tool to convey understanding to a group, as long as one understands its function and limitations.

Generally, there are two vectors influencing the degree of difficulty, time-consumption, and results of public speaking.

The size of the audience is an obvious first factor influencing the results.

The bigger the group, the slower the progress and the fewer things can be made understood (and AGREED UPON) to each individual member of the audience.

The second factor pertains to the "quality" of the audience in terms of their motivation to LEARN (or even HEAR) anything on the subject being explained. Here also the intelligence and general responsibility level of the audience is a deciding factor.

Let me explain this.

I price LOWER those seminars which are to the top management of a company simply because they're the most rewarding audience for the speaker.

They're motivated to learn new ideas and techniques because they bear responsibility for their jobs. They're interested in acquiring new ways to do their work better. They're highly intelligent and usually have a lot of experience.

Thus, a lot more can be done in a day with a small audience of top executives of a company simply because this group is cohesive and bright. And that is also much more enjoyable for the speaker, which is why I price such seminars lower.

Now, if the audience is composed out of the employees of the company, the motivation to learn new things will be lower inevitably.

These are perfectly good people, don't get me wrong. Among them are highly motivated individuals. There are bright people in such an audience, no doubt about it.

But any group learning experience is forced to slow down its working pace toward the acceptance level and aptitude of its least capable member.

Realities of public speaking: Willingness of the audience limits the creating of understanding

Running a seminar, one must aim at least at the AVERAGE level of the group's understanding, experience, knowledge, learning ability, and willingness to receive information.

Let me give a couple of examples of comparison to explain this.

Way back when, I delivered these two different kind of seminars.

One was for an in-house accounting department of a publishing company as the programme for their year-end celebration held at a resort hotel.

This was just a half-day presentation but the group itself had decided what they wanted, searched for it and contacted me as a result.

The other was a two-day seminar for the warehouse staff of a B2B company selling various electrical cables. This seminar was delivered at their place of business and their managing director had decided they need it.

Now, one of these public speaking engagements was very enjoyable, enabling me to deliver quite a bit of useful new information and tips to the group.

The other seminar was a long-winded affair in which I truly had to work hard to drive home at least SOME understanding.

Not difficult to sass out which was which, is it?

The group that had wanted to hear me about the given subject matter were WILLING to receive the information, they WANTED to learn new things and they AGREED TO BEING THERE... very much so in fact as it was their reward for the good work done during the fiscal year.

The other group was hard-to-handle. I had to throw out the worst troublemaker first thing and use a lot of the time just go achieve SOME AGREEMENT with the group in order to USE it to drive home SOME useful information.

We ended up talking about subjects of THEIR liking for most of the time just so they would LISTEN and PARTICIPATE... just so I could drop in a datum from the actual agenda of the event here and there and have it accepted.

See. Agreement is the element of learning which, if missing, will stop a person or an audience from learning anything.

A person who has been forced into the audience to hear about things he does not consider worth learning... well it's not going to be a positive experience and he will not learn much.

Yet the speaker cannot just forge ahead and rattle through his agenda. That would defeat the purpose of the engagement completely.

A good speaker always works by engaging his audience and moves to next point only once the previous one has been MADE (accepted, agreed-upon, understood) first.

Public speaking works through the audience, not by reading aloud from some manuscript. In fact, professional public speakers never have their oration written up as one seminar will never go the same way as the next.

The point is not to read / say aloud the sentences or words or concepts. The point is to go by your audience alone, start from where they are (what they agree with) and take it from there, ensuring each step of the way is understood... and go as far as you can in the time allotted.

The person presenting the information is forced to go with the pace set by the audience's willingness (and ability to adopt information) as modified by the skills he has to establish agreement about SOMETHING constructive.

Thus, the factor influencing what a seminar can achieve is "how much preestablished agreement there is AGAINST receiving the information and participating in the event?"

An audience of unwilling participants who've been ordered to be present, who've had ample time to reach an agreement amongst themselves of what a drag it is to have to listen to some consultant yabbering about things he knows nothing of...

...well, it's not exactly the most fruitful opportunity to drive home the new information that you're supposed to teach the group, right?

Now, I'm not saying all this in order to justify "little or no results" with a seminar. Not at all.

Any public speaker worth his salt has quite a few tricks up his sleeve for engaging an audience, employing their willingness through clever positioning, and generally make the event go well.

But seminars are not for entertainment purposes alone. They're for bringing the audience into understanding about certain new data, which are of use for them in their work.

The question here is solely HOW MUCH data you can drive home in the time allotted.

The AMOUNT of new information that can be made understood to the group is reversely proportionate to how much the speaker must work the WILLINGNESS of his audience.

A day is a day. If you spend half of the eight hours employing their willingness so they COULD RECEIVE information then it will cut down the amount of new information you can drive home.

Mind you, with a thoroughly resistant group of rough-and-tumble guys it can be 95% of the time you need to work on their willingness to establish some agreement. It's not only hard work to do that but it's also unrewarding to know how LITTLE you could change their viewpoint during a whole day.

And it's not only an issue of time.

See. The less willing the audience at the start, the more you have to explain each point to make it understandable. You need to give more examples about each datum. You need to put in jokes to lift their spirits onto a level where they can AGREE and thus adopt the datum. Stuff like that.

Now you can see why a seminar to the top executives is so rewarding for the speaker.

And you can also obtain a few tips on how to go about arranging a seminar for your employees.

How to create willingness for a seminar

If you're planning a seminar for your staff, it's better to present it cleverly so that THEY WANT IT... as opposed to you ordering it because "they need this information."

You could present it based on what they RECEIVE from it... which things will be easier, how it might help them to be more successful... things that pertain to THEIR perceived troubles and problems, bringing relief to their pressures... you get the idea.

After that, one could explain to them that you're THINKING of the possibility but that it is quite expensive, so you are inclined to turn it down unless they really want it and the decision to secure this knowledge and this seminar is completely unanimous.

So the recipe is: Present it from the angle of THEIR wishes and then play hard to get, so they feel it's quite a benefit for them and they'll DEMAND FOR IT.

That way, you'll present it as something desirable and engage their own willingness to work on their own willingness.

It they don't want it then you've saved a bundle since the seminar would have produced very little change in their understanding of the subject due to lack of willingness to receive / accept the data.

If they want it then you know they're willing to learn new things, in which case the seminar will drive home a lot of information and understanding, which in turn will influence their work positively in future.

With some prearranged willingness present, a seminar is a great tool to improve conditions and create agreement on vital points of work and customer care.

The toughest category of public speaking

There's still one more challenging form of engagement for the public speaker and that's conducting a presentation to the target group of the client... meaning that you would hire me to do a presentation to a large assembly of members of your target group or the press or alike.

That would be tough merely because it requires SO much preparation and the rendition of the presentation has to be quite flawless.

Actually, I would not accept such an engagement because I believe it would be bypassing YOU and your authority. YOU are the person who should deliver such a presentation involving your services and your target group.

But I could help by delivering the Public Speaking Seminar (mentioned earlier on this page) in consulting format added with some assistance in preparing the structure of the verbal presentation.

If that's of interest, please contact me directly.

How to reserve a seminar or workshop

If any of our seminars or workshops interests you, simply email us and give your contact details along with some indication which seminar interests you and I'll be in touch to give you a quote.

Early reservation is recommended to ensure we can secure you the date you require.

Best wishes,

Harry Kafka
HDK Consultants Ltd
32 Manning Close
Richmond Square
East Grinstead RH19 2DR
West Sussex, United Kingdom
Tel. 01342-328 116
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