In King County and in November alone NWMLS listed 1726 houses. In 2011, there were 28,749 listings. Yes, there is a need for home  stagers. It’s a new year full of new ideas to get your company new business. This is how we will kick- [...]]]> Build Your RESA

Creating your ideal RESA Community

In King County and in November alone NWMLS listed 1726 houses. In 2011, there were 28,749 listings. Yes, there is a need for home  stagers. It’s a new year full of new ideas to get your company new business. This is how we will kick- off our ideal community. Let’s start with you. What would you like to gain from your membership in RESA? Is it feedback on your running your business, education, collaboration, or resources? Be specific.

Your input is valued and wanted. Let’s hear about your dream association.  At the meeting we will brainstorm on your suggestions and decide which direction to go. From our discussion, we will produce a simple action plan.

We want to grant your wishes. We can only do this with the help of our members. What do you specifically have to contribute? Database skills, event planning skills, project management, social media skills, master networking, or printing shop access. We can grow a stronger community by collaborating and helping each other.

Our meeting will be maximized! The Meeting Maximizer, Jolene Jang, with all of her energy will help us get the most from our 1st meeting in 2012. If you have not met Jolene you want attend to the meeting to spark your motivation by her overflowing energy.

About the Meeting Maximizer

 Jolene Jang , Meeting Impact Consultant

Time is precious. No one wants to waste it at a meeting that doesn’t involve them, bores them, or dumps data on their head. Attendees get angry with resentment for the meetings that backlog their daily workload.

The Meeting Maximizer sets up your meeting and learning environment to achieve your goals, & maximizing your meeting impact. Your meeting will run more smoothly and effectively and it will be enjoyable for participants. Imagine an efficiency expert crossed with the Fun Specialist. You will have a methodically engineered mechanics of the meeting, but humanized, energized and slightly even “humorized” atmosphere of the meeting; the best of both worlds.

Meeting Maximizer Methodology is composed of streamlined standard operating procedures and ways to keep your meetings on track. Every aspect of our meeting design is detailed, orderly, logical, and effective.

Companies like Hewlett Packard, State Farm, Microsoft and Starbucks have used the Meeting Maximizer to Maximize their Return On meetings. The media, including ABC, NBC, KIRO News, Sales & Marketing Magazine, Professional Speaker Magazine and Northwest Meetings & Events, featured Jolene and her innovative ideas.

RESA Kick-off Meeting

Thursday, February 16, 11am-12:30pm

Staging and Design Network

13621 NE 126th Pl, Ste  400, Kirkland, 98034

Register

Send an email to JennYork@StagingandDesignNetwork.com or call and RSVP to the evite to be sent the first week in January.

1. Share with us what you want to gain from RESA Community
2. What do you have to contribute?

This fantastic event blends technology and innovation to create a product in a tight time frame.  The culmination of the weekend [...]]]> “Startup Weekend” recruits a highly motivated group of developers, business managers, startup enthusiasts, marketing gurus, graphic artists and more to a 54 hour event building communities, companies and projects.

This fantastic event blends technology and innovation to create a product in a tight time frame.  The culmination of the weekend was shared in 5 minute pitches from each team. Most of the products were mobile applications. The official winners were able to explain their product. If the other teams had tightened their plans, coordination and delivery of their presentation, the results could have been different.

Like a diamond in the rough, a supermodel wearing sleeping bag, or a gift left in the package, we just could not see the value, in the time-allotted. The clouds rolled in and it was foggy to see.

The participants were primarily techies and are not expected to be rock star presenters. That’s why we have sales representatives. However, if you want funding….then, it’s important to throw a small chunk of more effort at your presentation skills.

From what I saw, here are a few tips regarding the presentations. Most of these items were common throughout all of the presentations:

Presenters

The team member with the best communication skills should be the presenter.  They do not need to be the most important person or the

Coordinating

person with all of the knowledge, but  they have to be able to communicate the message. Half of the teams could had room for improvement in selecting stronger presenters.

The presenter should talk – that’s it. Another person should operate the technology, pass out handouts, etc.  Too much of the time the presenter tried to multi-task and mouse and he couldn’t talk at the same time and should not have to. The main communicator should not leave the audience hanging. When the audience has to wait more than 20-30 seconds, the audience is going to entertain themselves by talking or typing. After you lose the audience, it is challenging to pick them up again. If another person operated the computer, the presenter can stall, explain, or ask a question to keep the audience engaged.

On the other hand, several of the teams had an assistant to change the slides, but the presenter and assistant appeared with no coordinated plan.  The disorganization was a distraction and did not reflect well on the team. If they cannot execute basic communication, how will they deal with anything more complex?

Microphone Usage

Use the microphone effectively. If the audience can’t hear you, they can’t invest in your venture or share your message.  I saw one person slowly twirl the microphone around his mouth.  Each rotation we could hear him clearly for a second and had to wait until the rotation met up with his mouth again. The microphone is there to make it easy for everyone to hear your brilliance. Use it, even if you don’t want to. You want your audience’s attention focused on the content, not the audio sound or lack of.

Stance & Positioning

Please keep your body steady or move purposefully. Many of the presenters floated around and drifted about like a bubble in the wind. When a speaker moves in this fashion, they look unsure and not confident decreasing their credibility. Plus, in the audience, we have to concentrate harder to understand your concept with your distracting movements.

Standing in the dark

Presenting in the dark

The lighting was not ideal, but the presenter should find the brightest spot and stand in it.

Most of the time, the front of the room was dark so the audience could see the screen, but the presenters coincidently stood in the dark dead spot. Building a connection with the audience is important, but cannot be accomplished if we cannot see you.

If you want to pitch and be successful, egos must be tucked away and the most logical choice should be made.

Eye contact

Who do you want to communicate with? The projector screen or your audience?   We saw a lot of backs of heads of the presenters.

Confidence

If you are not confident in your product, why should anyone else believe in it?  The tone in the presenter’s voices is a giveaway. The excuse,”We didn’t have time” is not the best answer. You knew the parameters and time constraints perhaps years ahead of time. Everyone else had the same rules. This excuse sounded a bit whiny. Who wants to fund whiners?

Technology

It’s inevitable that technology is going to get in the way. Have a plan B, C and D. Be able to take advantage of the opportunity using low tech if you need to.  One of the teams had a video playing, which was a great illustration, but after we saw the video, it needed to be muted. The presenter was trying to talk over it, but wasn’t successful. It was a little stressful, hoping they get it together before the 5 minutes is up.

Contents

What do your potential investors need to know before they invest? Speak to their values and prioritize these points and omit points that do not advance the sale. Many of the teams talked about how their product works, but didn’t spend much time building awareness of the problem and the solution their product solves. The audience should be in agony, feeling the pain of the problem and begging the presenters to give them the answer to their pain.

Be specific which markets you are targeting and why. Then show us the lifestyle of this target market and you are confident they will buy your product. Ask the audience to think about who they know in this market. We in the audience need to understand, relate and be able to engage in what you are saying.

Many of the products were similar to existing products. More explanation and research was needed to persuade the target market to switch.

If the audience is interested in the product, how do they use it? When would they use it and why would they use it and what would be the results of using the product ?

If you have only 5 minutes, please don’t waste it on talking about your team and how great they are. The potential investors do not care who you are. Get to the point. Thank your team members later.

Overall

All in all, it was great to see ideas formulated so quickly.  A little more planning and thought into the presentation may have propelled others to be in the top 5. Great concepts.

#swred, #startupweekend

See pictures from StartupWeekend Redmond by Total Effects Video

Jolene Jang, The Meeting Maximizer

President, NSA Northwest, National Speakers Association

Free events, are not valued.  After all, there is [...]]]> This question was asked on LinkedIn by a small business owner.

 Use pre-registration to do the following:

• Filter out non-prospects
• Build credibility
• Prepare your audience
• Tailor to you audience
• Set expectations
• Set up the room appropriately
• Eliminate expenses and waste
• Connect with your audience

Free Events

Free events, are not valued.  After all, there is no investment. Think of the events you attend. Let’s say time is not an issue; you have lots of it – what a dream! If you get an invitation to a free event, how much background checking do you do before you commit? You read the description on the invitation, go to the website and you show up. You might take 2 minutes to do this. When you decide to watch the “American Idol” instead of the event, there is no consequence to you.  

Filter out non-prospects & build credibility

If registration is a deterrent, do you really think those folks would be valid prospects? Unfortunately, they don’t have enough trust for you or your company to give you any contact information.  If you want to attract quantity with no assurance of  quality  then continue with no registration and you will be sure to get  freeloaders.

For potential clients, request registration asking for a commitment. Dollars are a great symbol of commitment. How do we treat free events compared to paid admission events? Ask yourself? Likely, we RSVP, but if we feel like playing Sudoku instead, we do not feel obligation to show up.

Paid Admission Events

Another invitation rolls in with an interesting topic. The cost is $1000 for a half day program. What kind of background check will you do to evaluate your investment of time and money? …Much more than before. You are not only reading the description and linked website, but you are googling and binging the heck out of the presenter, company and topic. Is this person a guru of this topic? You scan through articles, white papers, Facebook pages, YouTube, and LinkedIn profiles.  You google his/her name and with “scam” and “fraud,” just in case. As you are researching for 30 minutes compared to 2 minutes, you know much more about the presenter and the company. If you decide to attend, you now have sufficient  background and will be mentally prepared to get more value from the seminar.  When you pay $1000 you are not going to miss it, but also at this point, if it were complimentary, you would be more committed because of your thorough research.

As a presenter, would you like to have an audience who has done their homework so you can go straight to the gold instead of answering routine questions that are already available online?  Now you can show why you are the guru if your audience is already engaged and knows your experience. The audience is warm. You will walk into the presentation with credibility, instead of having to build it from scratch.  

Specific Scenario

This profile is short and doesn't convey much information.

The small business owner who asked “Why should I use pre-registration for my event? “ may not have established credibility to attract his desired clientele. His online presence is lacking, for example his LinkedIn account is sparse, his blog isn’t really running (starter page) and his website is “old school”, plus his posted picture doesn’t contribute to his credibility. He could be brilliant in his field, but the information available online does not reflect that image, but he can update his image.  ReturnOnImage

Let’s say the $1000 limits the audience to a tiny audience of none. Here are a few alternatives to avoid the lack of commitment, lack of research, lack of seriousness of non-prospects feeding on freebies.

If you want to put on a free seminar, then try these ideas:

• Charge a $5 deposit, upon arrival to the event the deposit will be returned.  
• Offer a drawing for the first 25 people who register.
• Give this offer “With registration you will receive online notes to your inbox”.
• Provide an opportunity for your registrants to email questions to be addressed at the seminar.

Prepare your audience

Because you now have an email list, you can contact your audience. This will save you from catastrophes that would damage your reputation. Mother Nature, construction, politics and can throw off your event and you must be able to contact your potential clients.

 Here are examples of items you can share with your audience:

• Venue change, room change, – If you are hoping for 120 people, but only 10 people register, you might need to change rooms.
• Directions, parking
• Items to bring i.e. 100 business cards, examples of their work
• Invite them to read an article to prepare them for the topics
• Dress code
• Format of the meeting –i.e., It will be a casual discussion format or bring your computers, we will be working “hands – on” or the panel of 5 will answer your questions at the end.

Tailor to you audience

Without pre-registration, how will you be able to relate, accommodate and understand the audience’s  needs? An audience of veterinarians, tattoo artists, chemical engineers, jugglers, car mechanics and actuaries is an audience you want to be prepared for. If you knew the broad variety of careers and industries represented, then you can take time to use examples to speak their language. The values, nomenclature, preferences of this crowd will be 360 degrees. I don’t know about you, but I would not to have a surprise audience like this. The chances of relating to the audience and making the information relevant in terms they are comfortable with are slim. However, if you knew this weeks ahead of time, you can plan for it.

Set expectations

When you set expectations from the very start, you boost your chances for success.  In an email or other communication, you can share the following:

“This seminar is for CEOs of Fortune 100 companies and the topics will not deviate from this market. If you are not a CEO from one of these companies, you are allowed to attend, but you will not be involved in asking questions.”

“We have had an overwhelming response to this seminar and we want to let you know the room will be set with 100 chairs, even though we expect many more people. If you want a chair, then arrive early.” 

“After the program, we will send out a survey and would appreciate your feedback. You will receive a copy ofThe best 7 ideas to build your business – fast as a reward for your time.”

Set the room appropriately

For breakout sessions, commonly, you will have no forecast on the head count. This makes it challenging to set up the room effectively. Your venue will want the headcount and room set up nailed down 3-5 days before the event.  At this point you are gambling.

Setting up an effective seating plan when the range of the audience is between 10-150 is difficult.  Your event may look wimpy, or like a failure if you are set for 400 and only 16 people show up. The event can look successful if you have standing room only with 80 people in a room meant for 40. However, the audience will not be comfortable or accommodated with such a drastic disparity in expected attendance . 

The room environment is extremely important to the comfort of your participants and the success of your event.  To set the room properly, you must reduce the unknowns by using pre-registration and offering perks for following directions. There are many ways to avoid this problem. See more articles here  TheMeetingMaximizer .

Eliminate expenses and waste

Think about the breakout sessions. How many handouts have been wasted by printing too many or the angered participants who didn’t get a handout? Were there extra give aways and swag bags that were unnecessary?  Extra food, extra coffee, extra cups, plates, etc.  The venue arranged for 4 wait staff instead of 2 that you needed. Each staff person, each fork, cup and cloth napkin has a price. Of course, it depends on your venue, but you could be saving loads of money by planning and using your smarts. Think of all the money you could save by using pre-registration.     

Connect with your audience

Using the pre-registration to contact your attendees, you can show your style, personality, knowledge, approachability, and expertise. Relationships is what it is all about.  By using the ideas mentioned, you can have a following before the seminar and people will be excited to shake your hand and take a picture with you .

Using pre-registration allows you to get a pulse on your audience and accommodate their needs before, during and after the program.

Jolene Jang, The Meeting Maximizer

President, NSA Northwest, National Speakers Association