You will be able to explain how small client events lead to deeper relationships and referrals.
Wei Ling's company held a big customer event last year in a hotel ballroom. Two hundred people, a stage, a product launch, a buffet. She spent the evening near the registration desk, said hello to a few clients as they passed, and spent ten minutes with one practice manager before he was pulled away. She went home tired, with no new conversations and nothing she could point to.
Six months later she tried something different. She invited eight practice managers to a breakfast at a cafe near Novena, with a 15-minute talk on handling Monday morning rush and plenty of time to talk. Two of them brought a colleague from another clinic. By the end, she'd had a proper conversation with every person there, and the managers had swapped numbers with each other.
That second event is the subject of this module. Small events often do more for relationships and referrals than big ones, and you can run them yourself without a marketing budget.
At a big event you can't talk to everyone, and most of what happens is people listening to a stage. You meet a few people for a few minutes and the rest is a blur.
In a small group, everyone can talk, including you. Around a table of eight to a dozen people, you can have a real conversation with each guest, learn what they're working on, and remember it afterwards. Guests can ask questions they'd never ask in a room of two hundred.
There's no magic number. The right size is one where you can talk to every guest properly and guests can talk to each other. For a breakfast or a dinner, that's usually one or two tables. For a short talk with discussion, it might be a slightly bigger room. Pick a size you can host personally.
You might think clients come to hear from you. Often they come to meet each other. A practice manager running a small clinic doesn't have many people to compare notes with. Meeting six other practice managers who deal with the same staffing problems and the same difficult patients is valuable in its own right.
That changes how you design the event. Leave time for conversation, and don't fill every minute with your talk. Seat people so they meet someone new. Introduce guests to each other by what they have in common: "Siew Mei, you and Dr Lim both moved bookings online last year; you should compare notes."
When clients get something from each other at your event, they associate that with you. You become the person who brought them together.
A vague invitation, such as "a client appreciation breakfast," gives busy people no reason to come. A clear topic, such as a short talk on a problem they share, does.
The topic should be something your clients care about and can't easily get elsewhere. Wei Ling's topics come from her list of buyer questions in lesson 2.1, Content that sells starts with buyer questions: handling the Monday rush, getting older patients to use online booking, reducing front desk turnover. Arjun's come from his young families: what changes in your finances when a baby arrives, and how couples talk about money without arguing.
Keep the talk short and practical, and keep the selling out of it. You can deliver it yourself, or invite a client or a guest expert to share what they've learned. A client speaking about how they solved a problem can be more persuasive than you, and it gives them a moment to shine.
If you work in a regulated industry, check with your firm before running an event or a talk. Arjun's firm needs to approve any seminar on financial topics and the materials he uses, so he builds that time into his planning.
Here's what turns an event into a source of referrals. Invite each client to bring one guest, someone who'd find the topic useful. A plus-one invitation is an invitation to an existing client that explicitly includes a guest of their choice.
A plus-one solves the hardest part of a referral. The client doesn't have to ask their friend whether they want to talk to a salesperson. They're inviting a friend or colleague to a useful breakfast, which is an easy thing to do. The guest arrives with someone they trust, hears a useful talk, meets other people like them, and meets you in a relaxed setting with no pressure at all.
Some guests will eventually become clients. Many won't, and that's fine. The event still strengthened your relationship with every client who came and gave each guest a reason to remember you.
Make the plus-one specific in the invitation: "Feel free to bring a practice manager or doctor from another clinic who might find this useful." That helps the client think of the right person, the same way a specific referral ask does in lesson 5.2, Ask for a specific kind of person.
Before you plan an event in detail, generate a few options. A good event idea has three parts: a topic your clients care about, a format that suits them (a breakfast, a short talk with discussion, a walk, a workshop), and a group size you can host personally.
In the activity below, you'll write three event ideas for your clients, each with a topic, a format and a group size.
Write three event ideas for your clients, each with a topic, a format and a group size.
Junxiong-WFG Organisation is an authorised representative of AIA Financial Advisers Private Limited (Reg. No. 201715016G).