Free Training Offer

[Stephen Wilkinson-Carr]

Just wondering but has anyone, anywhere, at any time, ever met anyone who has ever actually attended a free training event? I've always believed that describing an event as 'free' is synonymous with 'valueless' and would love to be proved wrong.

Thoughts anyone?

Stephen Wilkinson-Carr

[Matthew Chapman]

Stephen in my opinion you may be right. I remember last year I had access to some funding which I put my clients in touch with. All bar one took this funding up and I had to do the majority of the paperwork because they did not return it. On the other side of the argument, a survey was taken of over 2600 organisations accross the USA and Europe and one of its findings related to sales people and why they dont perform was "Self limiting beliefs". i. e. If we think we can we can if we think we cant we cant. One of my colleagues here in the UK aften offers free places on his seminars and gets a good response. So who knows it may be down to how you market it and who you market it too

[Sandy Marshall]

I ran a free event to introduce my business locally last month which was extrememly successful as it was attended by the local college business department & local businesses who were interested in the taster sales course I was offering on the day and covered communication skills using NLP techniques, although I had 11 attendees I got 3 referrals from each of them which I am now working through to introduce myself to the other businessess. I have started to network locally which was the aim of the 'free event' as I work all over the country at present and the local business community did not know that i existed, they do now!

Hope this puts a different view on 'free events'

Sandy

[Simon Raybould]

I've attended - in the sense of run - free events. I'd like to think they weren't valueless!

In my case it was because I was doing something that had sufficient value to me to mean I felt it was unfair of me to charge people - for example, I might have been recording the session. The pay off for attendees was that they got a free session and the pay off for me was that I had their permission to use them in a recording that I could use as part of my subsequent marketing.....

Similarly, a free teleseminar in which I was testing the recording quality. (It's about handling nerves in presentations and public speaking and it's available here as an MP3).