The Ultimate Sales Machine - Chet Holmes [81]
Another great idea is putting on an awards ceremony. With one of the companies I ran, we put on a ceremony called the “Lammies” for the Legal Advertising and Marketing Awards. We had as many categories as we could think of so we could honor as many of the guests as possible. Judges and winners and the entire audience were filled with our Dream 100 list. We charged to enter for an award, and we charged a per-plate fee to attend the lavish black-tie affair, so the event didn’t cost us anything. We had dinner, dancing, awards, and then more dancing. A big group of us even ended the evening in the hot tubs at the hotel, partying to the late hours. This was a killer event.
Award categories included best ad, most creative ad, best trade show booth, best new product, overachiever of the year, and CEO of the year. We put together a panel of notable judges from popular ad agencies and, of course, a few members of our staff. We wrote clever scripts for my staff to introduce all the nominees and give great little sendups for the winners when they accepted their awards. This still stands out in my mind, 15 years later, as a marketing accomplishment beyond anything I’ve ever seen. You have to have enough clout to put on an awards ceremony for your industry or area, but, boy, is it great fun and rewarding if you do it right.
Exercise
Write down an awards ceremony idea that you could pull off at your annual trade show, in your community, or for your profession. Who are the most influential people in your area and what kind of awards could you give them? The more categories, the better.
Your Own Trade Association
Trade shows are great, but there are other ways to gain top-of-mind awareness through market education. You can create a trade association of your very own that would benefit your industry. You can even involve your competitors. They’ll love to come to your events because their dream clients will be there as well, but you’ll be in the catbird seat because it’s your trade association. Ask your Dream 100 to be on committees, serve as chairmen of subcommittees, and sit on the board of advisers. A trade association with worthy objectives is effective. Is there some problem in your industry that you can rally around? If you organize industry players around an important issue, you will rule your industry.
Other Educational Ideas
I once put on an industry seminar for all my clients. I charged them to attend (and they gladly paid). We had 54 speakers, many of whom were from my Dream 100. We had 27 seminars with breakout sessions and two heavy-hitter keynotes, one of whom was Jay Levinson, author of the Guerrilla Marketing series.
You can also create a mass teleconference for your clients. I do these for nearly every company that hires me. One of my clients has one of the largest duck farms in the country. He sells primarily to Chinese restaurants, but wanted to expand into all restaurants. We put on a mass teleconference for him where restaurant owners could learn many tricks for building their traffic. And at the end of the conference, we talked about the growing popularity of duck as an entrée.
The client who sells carpet cleaning ser vices wanted to expand his reach to interior designers because they are market influencers in upscale homes. In his case, we put on a mass teleconference showing interior decorators how to get more clients and get more revenue from current clients. One way was to recommend this carpet and rug cleaning company, which in return would pay a commission for every client sent to them. The carpet cleaning client also has a product that protects furniture and carpets against stains and spills. So the last part of the conference was about how these interior designers could make additional revenue by offering this protective coating as an add-on and how they could set their clients up for the Gold Service to schedule semiannual cleanings.
Exercise
What kind of mass teleconference can you offer your clients that they would happily attend? And what kind of a speaker