How to Gain Clients: The HorseDream Way of Doing Business. By Gerhard J. Krebs, Germany horsedream-international Whenever somebody is on the phone asking questions about the HorseDream train the trainer seminars, for example “what is required to do the training and to be successful in the horse assisted education business afterwards?”, we answer: “The most important thing is to get clients.” If you have management skills and horse knowledge, that’s perfect. In the 2-day seminar you get all the information to combine both. But that is only the basic requirement to do a good job. It is not sufficient to make a living out of our concept. There is one page in the seminar manual covering public relations, marketing and advertising. This page contains our experiences from more than 14 years management training with horses. We summarised in a few sentences, what worked and what did not. Our core statement is that ‘Traditional marketing and advertisement does not work at all with horse assisted education’. Unfortunately most of the seminar participants do not believe this. Therefore they try out everything on their own. We guess some of them think: “Okay, if you just do it the right way, it will work,” or “I have the competencies; I know how to do it.” And when they start their marketing they realise after a few months, there is no real success in terms of paid clients. They attract a lot of attention, appointments, taster seminars with much interest but no bookings. How come? Perhaps you know this famous AIDA model: A – Attention or awareness: attract the attention of the prospective customer. I – Interest: raise the interest of the prospective customer by focusing on or demonstrating advantages and benefits. D – Desire: convince prospective customers that they really want to do the seminar and that it will satisfy their needs. A – Action: lead customers towards taking action and booking the training. There is a whole industry fighting for attention, interest, desire and action. Advertising agencies employ thousands of very creative specialists to constantly think about new ways to sell products and services. Be honest: what is your reaction to direct mail, advertisements in newspapers or magazines? What is your reaction to TV adverts? And what is your reaction to internet banners and pop ups? If you are not really interested in the product, in the service or in the company brand you don’t even notice this kind of information. That’s why marketing psychologists come up with new strategies. They try to get the sales information into your subconsiousness. This is a method that works with a lot of people. They order the product, not because there is a need for it, but because they feel there is a need. Of course the more conscious people are, the less this method works. You know the advertising is manipulating you. Moreover, you think every marketing activity is trying to pull the wool over your eyes. With time you learn to ignore it. It is no longer your cerebral cortex which reacts to the message but your amygdala. And your amygdala immediately says NO to whatever shows up as sales manipulation. You think your horse assisted education advertising is information? Your prospective customer thinks it is manipulation. Your target group is the conscious customer and, believe me, he does not react to classic marketing as you hope he would. He reacts as you do. His amygdala works just as well as yours! Okay then, how do we get clients? We wait for them. It sounds strange but it is true. We want horses to follow us out of free will. We want employees working together with us out of free will. And we want customers to come to us out of free will. The positive impact of such an approach is: you only work with clients who are really interested in what you are doing. That’s much better than working with participants who have been convinced to come to your training by written or spoken promises. There are many companies out there, unaware of how important horse assisted education is for the benefit of their businesses. And there are a few companies out there which are aware. Don’t focus on the former. You will not gain any paid participants by doing so. Wait for five more years and some of them will probably be in the latter group. Focus on the companies which are already open for our new world of learning. They are only a few in relation to all the others but only a few in this dimension means tens of thousands worldwide and at least fifty to a hundred just around you within a radius of two hours drive. What is required to get into a position where you are able to just wait for those clients? First of all you have to be present. In the very beginning of all our seminars people get the information to be present one hundred percent. Because when you are working with horses you have to be present. The horse is a very present sentient being and it wants you to be present, too. So working with horses teaches you to be present all the time. And as a seminar provider you have to be present in the market. The market is the place where you turn desire into money. It is full of offered products and services which are not really needed. And yet they are bought. Those companies which are aware of the outcomes of horse assisted leadership seminars, horse assisted change management, horse assisted team building, horse assisted personal development must have the opportunity to find you. You go to the market with open arms just to be there, just to be present. The internet is our main communication medium. More than 75 percent of our seminar bookings come via the HorseDream homepage. There is a German and an international version. Further there are special websites covering special topics, like HorseDream Concept, which was launched to attract large companies and seminar organisations. We also deal with the statistical part of our homepages watching which path visitors take inside our programmes. And of course we search for new horse assisted education offers. Do you know how many natural or unnatural horsemen and women have invented this revolutionary thing called horse coaching? Hundreds. And they all consider themselves to be very unique. Hopefully for them, corporate clients will visit their websites, because otherwise they won’t survive. Whenever you find someone who offers horse assisted education on the same website besides riding lessons, mum-and-kids-projects and similar clinics you can be sure that s/he’s not an HAE professional in the sense of providing corporate trainings. From our point of view, competition belongs to what we call “the old business”. Our vision is not to compete any longer but to collaborate and cooperate whenever and wherever it is possible. Look at the market. There are hundreds and thousands of companies with millions of employees. What if only one big company finally comes up with the idea to train all staff with horses? Who would be able to do that? We would have to say “Sorry, we can only manage three courses a month – and two of them are already booked.” You see, we need many of us. We need to be prepared for these first huge orders. And we are sure they will come. Horse assisted education is not hype; it is not something that burns like a big straw fire and afterwards calms down again. Horse assisted education is like building a future. It is like being alive again. It is like being human again. When people experience that horses are bridges between people, when companies experience that horses are even bridges between countries and cultures, there will be no stop for our concept. So how do we spend the time until this happens? Being present, being aware, being of help to others, offering seminars and trainings in our own region, talking about what we are doing. What I mean is, burning like a fire of passion – not just presenting a method. Horse assisted education is more than a business. Whoever asks us what is required to become a horse assisted educator gets the answer “You need a long deep breath.” And s/he gets the recommendation not to leave their present job. If you can make a living doing your present job and start with HAE seminars once a month or so you will not run into any problem. And you will be able to put your seminar price on the table. And this price is high. There is one big delusion. If you think you have to start with a low price offer you are terribly wrong. Your horse assisted leadership seminar is worth the highest price ever. There is no way to learn faster and more profoundly. So you deliver very high quality – actually not you, but your horses. We heard people saying after our training “These two days have been worth each cent we paid,” and “It would have taken us 10 months coaching, to get to these fundamental results.” So you and your horses are absolutely good value for money. There is one more point. If a company books a training for executives, the HR people know well that quality requires compensation. So what? Horses are much more expensive than computer slides. And horses working as trainers are priceless! Let me tell you a short story. When we started with top management seminars for chief executives we set a price of 1,995.00 euros per person per day. Nobody signed up. Our thoughts were: if nobody signs up at 1,995.00 euros it will make no difference at all if nobody signs up at 3,995.00 euros. We had just changed the price on the website when the first vice president registered on a two-day course. In the meantime we take 4,500.00 euros if someone wants an individual one-day training. Why? Because it is worth this price. Do people still sign up at this price: yes, they do. Not very often, but once or twice a year. That leads me to the next crucial point of our market approach. We won’t do more than three or four seminars a month. The horses need time between the dates. They have to recover from their work with the clients, which is not of physical but of psychic and emotional stress. As the horses are most important in our seminars we have to look after their psychical, emotional and physical well being all the time. This does not mean that we are on holiday between the seminar dates. Just the opposite. We need the time to work on our websites, to network with business friends and those who might be interested in attending our open seminars or a corporate training. We need the time to run the International HorseDream Partners Community and the EAHAE network. I spend about four hours a day, just answering emails, giving support regarding special seminar issues, talking with EAHAE members and HorseDream Partners. The rest of the day is developing new ideas, working on seminar videos, preparing the next workshop or train the trainer seminar. Considering all our train the trainer seminars it is like lighting candles everywhere. In the first three or four years people had to travel from the north to the south to attend a HorseDream seminar. Now they find the nearest HAE seminar provider in Germany with two clicks on the internet just around the corner. In the next few years they’ll find you worldwide, everywhere. The base of qualified HAE seminar providers is becoming larger and larger. And this means the base of HAE seminar participants is becoming larger and larger, too. Word of mouth information about the incredible success that can be the result of continuous horse assisted trainings, will spread. That’s the way we attract companies. It is not about pushing, it is about pulling. Traditional marketing is a numbers game. The more you put in, the more you get out. But Horse Assisted Education marketing is not a game. It is a vision. And we will all keep this vision alive until the very last person can see it.
Posted on: Mon, 20 Jan 2014 08:41:25 +0000
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