QUESTION: I was wondering if you have any advice on how to generate the most sales & referrals when I do a Hypnosis event like a free seminar done for World Hypnotism Day?
First thing… Make sure you send them a reminder and keep them excited about attending. You can’t make any sales if no one shows up.
Here are three important elements to getting sales from your Hypnosis event.
- Build trust, believability, and credibility before you make your pitch. The best way to do this is by providing UNQUESTIONABLE PROOF about any claims you make.
- Make the best possible offer you can. Do not skimp here. Make it irresistible to anyone who is remotely interested in your services.
- Take all risk out of the transaction for the prospect. You can do this through creative use of guarantees. (I have articles here on my blog about this) Hypnotists mostly seem to be terrified of anything that takes away risk for the prospective client. Think about what message this sends to your prospects.
Some other things to consider:
GIVE A REASON WHY
If you plan to offer a discount on session packages, You must give them a REASON WHY you are making such an offer to them or subconsciously they will wonder why it’s suddenly so cheap.
If you have read Robert Cialdini’s landmark work on the Psychology of Influence, you may remember the story of cutting in line at the copy machine.
Simply adding the word “because” with any reason worked about 90% of the time. Often the request went like this… “Can I get ahead of you to make some copies because I’m in a hurry”
Similar results have been found in testing sales copy in direct mail. There is even a classic book called Reason Why Advertising (pdf) by John E. Kennedy.
GET THEM TO TAKE ACTION NOW!
If you have done your presentation well, people either know they want more of what you have or they don’t. But if you give them time to ponder it, you’ll lose many sales. People get busy and distracted the moment they walk out the door. They may really mean to get back to you, but things happen and next thing you know it’s 5 week later and forgotten.
Make the offer time limited. Example: This offer is only good till I walk out the door today. You can still sign up for sessions tomorrow, but you can only get it at this special rate today.
KEEP IT SIMPLE
Be careful not to give them too many choices. A confused mind will say no.
It’s better to have one focus (example: stop smoking) and three options such as Silver Program, Gold Program, Platinum Program.
Make the platinum program very expensive with tons of personal service, the silver program is your regular effective set of sessions, and Gold is regular plus some extras.
Most people will go for the Gold program and some might go for Platinum.
You could pass around an “interest sheet” on other topics you work with. Have them put name and email for more info.
GET CONTACT INFORMATION
If you are doing an event, at the very least, get contact information from everyone who attends. Name and email is a minimum, and I would get full mailing address with phone being optional.
This information is so amazingly valuable, yet very few in the hypnosis business bother to collect it. This is basic Lead Generation Marketing.
Like I said at my NGH Presentation… If you don’t have a constant stream of qualified leads coming in, you don’t have a business.
Now one thing that is very important to know about getting contact information… people hold this information as valuable. So you must think of it as a transaction, they give you contact info and you give them (something of value) in return.
If you are doing a free seminar, workshop, or stage show… you are giving them something of value. So get their contact information when they register for the event.
RE-USE YOUR EVENT
Always re-purpose your content. When you put on a talk, seminar, or workshop… ALWAYS have it recorded. Ideally you want digital video. You can strip audio off of digital video so you can make both CD’s & DVD’s (or podcasts and youtube videos).
There is so much you can do with this material. Use it in new client packages, use it online to help explain or demonstrate what Hypnosis can do. Use it as bonuses for clients. Give them out at other talks as gifts.
But if you don’t have it, you can’t use it. Start recording all your events and then ask yourself “how can I use this in my marketing?”
LET YOUR PERSONALITY OUT
Finally, make the event fun and let your personality shine through so people can connect with you. This is extremely important. If you are stiff and boring, you’ll lose people.
Don’t try to be ‘corporate’, be yourself, let your personality out during your presentation. Show your sense of humor, or your ability to notice unusual things, etc.
The human element which allows us to connect is essential to all aspects of your business, but especially at live events.
One more thing, this is important… you can’t make everyone like you, so don’t try. Attract the kind of people you WANT to work with by letting your personality out. If you try to please everyone, you’ll end up being boring and pleasing no one (including yourself).
Question: How can I get the most people to attend my World Hypnotism Day event?
Here is a quick list of what I would do to get the most butts-in-seats for a World Hypnotism Day event. 
- Getting free publicity will get you the most mileage.
- Using other people’s lists. Get businesses, non-profits, colleges etc. to promote you to their audience.
Example: You do a Stop Smoking with Hypnosis Seminar. If you partner with the American Lung Society, get them to promote your event to their list.
Example: If you are doing stress relief, call all your large local businesses to send a message to their employees.
- How many ‘events’ calendars are there in your area? TV, Radio, newspapers, etc. Get listed in as many as possible.
- Get a local proclamation from the Mayor, or City Council etc. This is an idea Tom Nicoli came up with last year for World Hypnotism Day. Full instructions are in the WHD members area. At least 14 people pulled this one off last year.
Here is an example of a Proclamation from WHD 2009:
- Post event announcements on free Internet event sites like CraigsList.org
- Partner with other hypnotists doing WHD events to put a large add in the local newspaper. List all the WHD events in different parts of the city in one HUGE Eye-Grabbing ad.
- Start a Meetup Group on MeetUp.com This is a social Media site so people will find you by searching for topics and keywords.
Note: You can get a lot of mileage out of using Meetup.com. You can also use it as a way to keep track of registrations and to send email reminders.
- Post ads on Facebook.com You can target ads by location, age, income and other demographics, so the ads are highly targeted. You can also create an event listing on Facebook that anyone can find by keyword.
- Post ads using Google Adwords. You can target by location and keyword search. Drive them to your meetup.com sign up page.
- Old School – visit all the businesses in your area and ask to drop off flyer and/or free tickets. Make sure you require them to register to activate free ticket. Send them to your meetup site.
By the way, there are 3-steps to ‘getting people to attend’. These are as follows:
- Find people who are interested
- Get them to register (you build a list)
- Get them to show up (you follow up with reminders of the benefits to showing up)
So you need a list or a tool for registration and follow up. This is why I suggested Meetup.com, but you can use an email system of your own if you already have one.
Most Burning Question: What is the best combination of easy understand-ability / clarity of the call to action and actual value presented to the average potential layperson (when it comes to Hypnosis services)?
And assuming some of the higher value stuff we can offer as hypnotists is too cryptic for most people to understand or even conceive of.
This is a good question. In fact it’s a great question and one most people won’t ask.
And it’s also not a simple one to answer.
People mostly don’t understand hypnosis, and that’s not so important as long as you don’t sell hypnosis.
Instead you sell the benefits hypnosis has for them and you tightly niche it. A good example is Irritable Bowel Syndrome. This is an area where Hypnosis shines yet almost no one knows this solution is available.
People who are miserable with IBS (either the symptoms or the side effects of medication) won’t give a rat’s ass what can solve their problem, they just want their quality of life back.
Yet hypnotists have done a poor job of getting word out there is a 3rd solution that has no side effects.
So to paraphrase Michael Fortin, to produce a good marketing piece you need to
- know your product
- know your audience (your market)
- know how to sell (i.e. how to connect the first two)
Where hypnotists drop the ball is knowing their market.
All too often hypnotists put generic business-card type ads in non-targeted media. And then they wonder why they get a poor response rate from this kind of advertising.
So the real secret is to be able to literally crawl inside the head of your ideal prospect, and tell them what they need to know to get them excited about your offer.
Note: Having an irresistible offer helps too. But that is another discussion.
