Marketing 101 By Mike French mike@mikefrench.com

Overcoming Conference Attendee's Information Overload

n many of the recycler conferences I attend there are seminar titles about how to get ahead such as, “How to move to the next level in parts sales,” “...in car buying,” “...in net profit,” “...in digital mar- keting,” just to name a few I’ve seen recently. In fact, entire conferences have been dedicated to the “getting to the next level” theme. But sadly, most conference attendees never do move ahead to the so called “next level.” They seem to stay at the same level no many how many great conferences they attend.

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While writing this article I attended a three-day business conference that fea- tured three wildly successful businessmen who have each amassed huge fortunes in their respective business fields. The first speaker made his tremendous fortune working with multi-billion-dollar Fortune 500 companies, and he presented practi- cal step-by-step instructions that he said, “anyone can put to work to achieve simi- lar top success in their own business.” He then presented mountains of charts, graphs and detailed instructions as proof. There were so many slides and illustra- tions, in fact, that I couldn’t write them all down. I finally stopped writing and sim- ply took photos of them. The next speaker, who had made his millions in real estate, explained to us in great detail a plethora of transferable methods, concepts and how-to instruc- tions that he promised, once applied that “anyone can immediately put to work to get exactly the same wonderful results that I have gotten!”

I stopped taking photos at this time, and only listened (sort of). And finally, the last speaker who had created his incredible fortune turning small companies into big ones, said to us, “Anyone can flip companies like I do, here’s how,” and then like the two previ- ous speakers proceeded to explain and illustrate how with a mountain of instruc- tions.

26 Automotive Recycling | July-August 2015

First, listen ONLY for those things that you will actually be able to imme- diately put to work once you get back home, and write down ONLY those things. I call them those “aha moments,” where you say to yourself, “I can and should do that!” At the end of your confer- ence you won’t have mountains of notes that you won’t use anyway but instead you will have a practical to do list of things that you can immediately put to work in your business.

I don’t remember anything the third speaker said. This much information coming so fast and furiously landed on deaf ears! Quite truthfully, I was com- pletely brain dead by this time and could hardly stay awake. No matter how good and practical the information was, it sailed right past me and I wasn’t receiving anything.

The problem was simple, I had infor- mation overload, which is a kind of a mental hernia and I could not process any more information at this point! This happens often to people attending training conferences. They sit through seminar after seminar taking endless notes, but they aren’t actually processing much of it for any long lasting results and when they finally get back home, they go through a mental detox period, and soon are back to normal without demonstrat- ing much change.

What To Do

Hold on to your seat because what I’m about to tell you flies in the face of most traditional thinking on the subject. STOP taking notes! Instead, do two sim- ple things.

Second, record or buy the recorded ses- sions and take home with you. Listen to them again in small sections. You will be able to retain more useful information this way.

By the way, my son-in-law, Jamie, who is a CEO of a very successful security com- pany with about 120 employees, takes it down even further. He told me that he sends his staff to conferences a couple a times a year and tells them to ONLY bring back one good idea each that they can and will put to use at the company. I said, “Only one?” and he said, “Yes! ONLY ONE! Because applying one good idea by each employee does make a big differ- ence.” He said as soon as they get back from a conference he has them submit in writing the one idea they have come back with along with how they plan to imple- ment it.

He may have a valid point! This is the first in a four part series on break- ing the barriers that prevent you from achiev- ing real success.

Mike French, president of Mike French & Company, Inc., can be reached toll free at 800- 238-3934, or visit his company’s Web site at www.MikeFrench.com.

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