![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.completemarketingsystems.com\/cms\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/09\/4-piece-puzzle.jpg\" "\\"4")
<\/a><\/p>\nHe was putting on 3-day events and walking away with only $30,000 to $40,000.\u00a0 I told him outright he should stop doing these events if that\u2019s all the money he was going to make.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s too much work for such a small payday.\u00a0 You see, most people think of an event as just the 3 or 4 days you\u2019re in the city at the hotel, attending the event.\u00a0 All promoters know that\u2019s just the beginning.\u00a0 You have a 3 to 6 month marketing cycle (and that time frame is growing all the time), you have all the preparation ahead of time, you have speakers to schedule and contracts to get signed, not to mention the hotel and all those issues, plus all the staff you have to send to the event, and then there\u2019s the after-action items that happen after the event \u2013 packing to leave, event follow-up marketing, etc.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s just the tip of the iceberg.<\/p>\n
This promoter was using an event model I have never seen used before.\u00a0 Based on his results, it seems obvious why nobody else is using his model.\u00a0 He was using a very soft sell approach (actually it was more of a no sell approach) from stage.\u00a0 He didn\u2019t actually bring in any outside speakers.\u00a0 Instead, he set the stage up to look like a bookstore with a shelf of books and courses behind him and at strategic times throughout the 3 days, he would pull somebody\u2019s course from the shelf and talk about what it was and why it was important for them to have it.\u00a0 Then, he would proceed with whatever he was teaching.<\/p>\n
He had a book store set up outside the room in the hallway where people could go purchase these various courses.\u00a0 His deal was if they sold somebody else\u2019s product, he kept 60% and the product owner got 40% since the product owner\/speaker didn\u2019t have to travel to his event and incur the cost of speaking, the promoter kept the 60% instead of the usual 50\/50 split.<\/p>\n
The reason this promoter used this event model was that he felt like it was his job to teach his attendees everything they needed to know about his topic area, and since he couldn\u2019t get all the information he wanted to teach in 3 days, there was no way for him to bring in outside speakers to sell.\u00a0 He also believed he could only bring in speakers that were directly related to his very narrow topic.<\/p>\n
He was the problem.\u00a0 His concept, his view, his paradigm that he had to \u201cteach\u201d people everything, was severely limiting the profit his company could make at an event.<\/p>\n
He didn\u2019t even understand that people want to learn about areas that are related to the main topic, but that might broaden their views or help them grow into another aspect of their business.<\/p>\n