Attending A Seminar Can Be A Great Way ToTake Your Business Up A Notch

Local or in-person business events are a great way to boost your business’s profile and take your business to the next level. These business events are often called seminars, workshops, masterminds, intensives and/or inner circles. It doesn’t matter whether you have a solely online business or a brick and mortar business, hardly anything can match the marketing power of offline business events – whatever they’re called.

You can learn more at a business event, meet more influential people, and even influence a few yourself, even more than you may have thought possible. It’s hard to replace the human touch element of offline business events with online business events. Even though the online business event arena has exploded in recent years, don’t discount the importance of in-person business networking for the success of your business.  Seeing a person in real time and reading their reaction to you and body language allows you to make personal connections.

There are three ways that you can participate in in person business events: attending, presenting, or hosting.

Any of these actions will be successful if you first ensure that you’ve studied the potential audience of any event. Every event will not be successful for you. An offline business event must either serve your group of customers in some way, or teach you to serve your niche. This is where you need to do your due diligence before signing up for anything.

Once you decide on a particular event, it’s imperative that you go in prepared with written goals of what you want to achieve depending on your function – whether attendee, presenter or host. Each role has something to offer you, so try to do all three at least once a year.

Many events have presentations going on simultaneously and you need to know what you are going to attend so you can make the transition between rooms easily.  It makes your time there easier and allows you to pay attention to what the speaker is saying because you are not worried you are missing out.   Try attending an event, then find ways to present at an event, and finally plan and host your own event.  Your own event at your store can be a fun way to bring in the idea of serving your customers.

When attending any business event, go in prepared by dressing appropriately. Don’t underestimate the value of first impressions. You don’t want to overdress at a casual event or under dress at a more formal event. If you’re not sure what to wear, ask the host or try to connect with other attendees.  Look at pictures from prior conferences on the website as well.

Always take your business cards with you, and remember to listen more than you talk. Make a goal of connecting with just three to five new people, then follow up with them after the event is over. The follow up is the real key to success with attending offline business events. If you’ve done your homework and the attendees are within your target audience, you should be successful.  You might even consider being a sponsor in the future.

Try Speaking At A Conference and Even Holding Your Own Event

Once you are comfortable with attending offline business events, it’s time to take it to the next level and offer yourself as a presenter at various offline business events. Create a presentation that matches the audience of the offline business event host and send it to them offering your services.  You may not realize it, but just by being an entrepreneur and working on your fashion shop you have more experience than most of the population.  Share your wins at things – maybe you like shopping for wholesale like I do, create your speech about doing that well!  You can also create something called a “one-sheet” that is used by speakers’ bureaus to identify appropriate speakers for various events. This can be found on the following website: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_sheet

Marketing yourself as a presenter for in-person events can push you out of your comfort zone, but once you’ve done a few you’ll become known as an expert in your niche. That expert status can take your business farther than you’ve ever imagined. People will eventually start knocking on your door to seek you out as a presenter.  And other business owners might look to you for some coaching to help them succeed at their shops.

Finally, when you think you’re ready, host your own business event. To make it easier, enlist others who offer products and/or services to your target audience but do not compete directly with you. By creating a joint venture such as this you’ll be able to leverage other people’s connections (and they yours) to create a really powerful offline event that won’t soon be forgotten.  You can start small with a local chamber and expand as your audience desires.  Bringing in special artists and designers to your shop is another way to add that event to your shop.

Have you attended any seminars this year?  Gift shows are great for finding products and learning more about retail business – check them out if you can find some local to you at: http://www.wholesalecentral.com/tradeshowcal.htm