Seminar Business Plan

Advanced Linguistic Pontificators’ market is Corporate America. The Pontificators will be targeting medium- and large-size companies who typically have a steady need for seminars and training programs. Advanced Linguistic Pontificators will reach these customers through public seminars, word-of-mouth referrals, and through recognition of expertise because of publications on the subject.

4.1 Market Segmentation

Advanced Linguistic Pontificators is targeting two separate segments:

• Large corporations (100< employees): typically purchases training seminars through specific divisions in the company. Usually a specific manager will have money in their budget and they will choose to have their department trained.
• Medium size companies (100> employees): typically purchases the training seminars through the HR manager or the training manager. Medium-size companies will often have the training applied to the entire organization, not just a certain section of the company.

These segments are good customers because companies of these sizes to have earmarked money for training. These companies recognize the value that they hold in intellectual capital and the need for future investments to maintain the intellectual equity. This recognition of value in training makes them ideal customers. Economic downturns do not seem to effect business from these sources because of the recognition that it is more cost effective to have training done by a third party then to try to have a solution crafted in-house.

4.2 Target Market Segment Strategy

Advanced Linguistic Pontificators has a three part strategy for targeting the two chosen segments. The first part is through public seminars. A public seminar is a presentation on a subject that is offered to the public. They are typically held in a library or some other public building. While public seminars are not big money makers (and sometimes you will lose money), they bring together a diverse audience to view the seminar. This is quite valuable because within the diverse crowd are people that work in companies that would would otherwise have never heard about Advanced Linguistic Pontificators. It becomes a wonderful advertising tool.

The second way the Pontificators will reach their target market is through visibility of printed material, specifically books. Daug has published two books, one on advanced reading, the other on stress and time management. Having the speaker published adds invaluable amounts of credibility and authenticity. These books are typically toward managers so it is not unusual that a manager will have read the book and then become inspired into having the author come and provide a training session for the the company.

The last method of reaching the target market is word of mouth. Although the industry of training programs and seminars is large, those that are good and concentrate on certain areas form a group of well known service providers. This is quite intuitive. The experts in the field rise to the top and people that are in the “know” are familiar with these people. Word of mouth marketing is incredibly efficient once you have established yourself as one of the best.

4.3 Service Business Analysis

There are many different competitors in this space:

• Seminar production companies that act only as producers of the events, they do not make the actual presentation. These companies typically have a list of different presenters that they use.
• Independent seminar presenters.
• Independent training program presenters.
• Both presenter and promoter–just like Advanced Linguistic Pontificators.

The competition is on a national scale. Being local is insignificant in this industry. Companies will fly in the speaker from wherever they are in the country.

Buying habits are based on word-of-mouth referrals, reputation, topic/skill needed, availability, etc.