Subject Matter Expert Workshops - I prefer to just call them Expert Workshops - allow you to present your expertise to current or potential clients. This has three immediate benefits:
You're giving the participant something they can genuinely use to improve their business or their quality of life, whether they pay to attend the workshop or not, so you are perceived as positive and proactive.When they need to buy expert input for the next level of activity, you are placed in their minds as the person to go to, having proved your abilities and established a rapport.When they come to you for that next level of support, they arrive as "qualified" clients, they have a clearer picture of their needs and more realistic expectations than clients completely new to your field.
In a nutshell, here's how the Expert Workshops go:
- You decide what you want to tell and to whom. This might be something you bring to me as a whole idea, or it might come out of the discussion with me
- We have the discussion and decide the knowledge and/or skills that the people will get from the session, your level of participation in the actual workshop and logistics such as the length of the workshop and what happens next, i.e. is it a one-off or delivered a number of times? Is it part of a series? Will it always be the two of us or will you (or your company) take over the entire delivery in a set time frame?
- I design an interactive workshop, giving you as much of the floor as you're comfortable taking. At the very least this will be a short introductory piece as part of the welcome and giving feedback on exercise outcomes. The feedback is easy, because even though it's a group situation, at that moment you're talking about your specialist subject with one or two people
- We run through it a couple of times - not word for word, just making sure we have the flow of the session right, know the outcomes for each section and don't bump into each other
- Deliver the workshop, review and continue as planned (with amendments as appropriate).
At no point are you handing over your knowledge to me. Typically, I couldn't deliver the workshop on my own, I'm facilitating you in sharing your expertise.