3 Key Things to Avoid Hosting Boring Sales Seminars

Have your past sales seminars been snooze-fests? Whether they were small affairs held in company conference rooms or mega-productions complete with stage lights and enormous video screens, perhaps you felt the trainers could have done a better job in holding the audience’s attention. Since this problem occurs with both simple setups and elaborate ones, the secret to engagement must lie elsewhere than the venue or the A/V equipment used.
This is good news for firms that would like to host their own training – you don’t need to spend a fortune on fancy bells and whistles. Instead focus on the following elements to make sales seminars more enjoyable for your trainees.

Practice

Want your salespeople to actually USE new skills, such as closes and objection handlers? Have them practice right there in the training session! At ASHER sales seminars, we use role play to simulate real-life selling scenarios and have trainees use the specific skills we teach to solve them. This builds confidence and allows trainees to ask questions to clear up anything they don’t understand.
Role playing is also very entertaining. It allows people to let off some steam as they pretend to be an obnoxious buyer from the past. It’s even better when they learn how modern selling techniques could have made dealing with them less of a hassle.

Stories

Nothing captures attention like stories. Stories evoke strong emotions. Good ones make listeners imagine themselves as part of them, thinking, “Could this happen to me?” or “I can relate!” The content becomes much more memorable and has greater impact.
Here are a few ideas to incorporate stories in sales seminars:

· Case studies. Share how businesses solved specific problems and relate it to solutions being presented at the sales seminars.
· Videos. Share motivating or humorous stories (you can easily find many on YouTube) to stress points you are making.
· Audience stories. Ask trainees to share their own personal stories which relate to the subject matter.

We seek out stories, whether on our televisions or books or podcasts. Take advantage of this natural craving by incorporating good stories into your sales seminars, and you will entertain while educating.

Bring in a keynote speaker

Another excellent way to entertain sales seminars trainees is by bringing in a top-notch keynote speaker, especially one with sales and marketing experience. A talented keynote speaker can pump up your crowd, get them to buy into the sales training, and relieve boredom at the same time.
Another benefit is people tend to accept messages from third parties they perceive as authorities. If your theme is “Double your sales next year!” you will have a greater chance of acceptance if a keynote speaker delivers that message for you, rather than your CEO. It’s humbling, but true!
Okay there you have it, a few key things which should be part of all sales seminars to keep things interesting.