Savvy marketing executives and business owners are leading a new business trend. No longer content with being passive participants in networking groups, they are taking charge of their business growth and producing their own events designed to generate more leads and more sales.

The event marketing formula is a simple one. Host an event whereby you create an opportunity for your guests to network. Give away valuable information that helps your guests in their professional and personal life. And then take an opportunity to pitch your wares.

Is it generating more leads and more sales? You bet! Trading valuable information for leads and sales can truly be a rewarding social, financial and business experience. And leveraging that information in the context of producing your own networking events has its benefits. For example, as the event producer, you create the potential to:

Quickly garner trust as a leader in your area of expertise.
Collect attendee information and use it to follow up.
Create opportunity for yourself and others.
Disseminate valuable information that creates real world results for your networking group.
Entertain and educate your clients, suppliers and potential customers which fosters relationships and builds more trust.
Most importantly, you create a built-in opportunity to pitch your wares or upsell your products and services to a specific target market.

When producing networking events, there are few guidelines you want to follow:

No one appreciates a maverick producer. The last maverick event I went to, the leader, a group insurance re-seller by trade, was clearly using his group to scope out potential candidates for something else. The day following his event, I received his multi-level-marketing pitch. Annoyed by my own ignorance, I now interview network group leaders before I find myself attending potential maverick productions.

Avoid being a passive event producer (PEP). A PEP is a business professional with an authentic agenda to help grow local businesses or help charities. However, PEP producers often fall short of creating fruitful networking experiences. For example, one of our local networking groups invites its members to a different local business once a month. The owner gives a very dull speech about the history of the business. Afterwards, there is one hour for us to network with wine and cheese in hand. The unfortunate part is that both the PEP and the business host have completely missed the opportunity to engage the guests and create a critical flow of information. A well produced event might hire an entertaining host and lead networking games and exercises and lead active participation. The whole idea is to raise the energy level in the room and engage your guests. This creative energy usually manifests into opportunity because you have stimulated the flow of information.

Even though the lack of a good networking structure will eventually diminish your audience, rigid rules are almost worst. There is nothing that takes the fun out of networking more than unrealistic rules. While implementing group traditions and guidelines is a positive thing to do, rigid rules will eventually suck the creativity out of the group. A healthy approach is to create realistic goals for your guests while they are present in the room. Avoid setting up future expectations such as being penalized if you miss a meeting, or having to bring two leads before entering the next event. These types of goals may be setting your guests up for failure. The long term effect is that your events will not attract new prospects.

A great networking event engages you from the minute you receive your invitation to when you exit the room. The successful producer has planned every logistical detail and delivers Valuable Information in an Entertaining Context(VIEC). A VIEC producer thought of the perfect room, perfect music, perfect sound system, perfect guest speaker, and perfect set up for food and beverage. They have given away valuable information that helps people, and have implemented networking games that enroll every single person in that room. They implement successful traditions, guidelines and have strategies to keep the group energy up the entire event. They have collected and disseminated information, created opportunity and made the whole experience entertaining. And while people are offering you great testimonials about how much value your event created in their lives, you too will enjoy the leads and sales your VIEC event generated for you.

Copyright Training Business Pros 2006

Nancy Houle
http://www.articlesbase.com/marketing-articles/trading-valuable-information-for-leads-and-sales-44390.html

It seems that we’re all fighting the battle of the bulge. Especially as we get older, it seems to get harder to keep the pounds at bay. We often think of women as being the dieters, but in fact, men are just as subject to weight problems as women.

As you’re looking for ways to make weight loss easier, consider the research that has been performed on the health benefits of tea. Tea has long been used in Asian cultures to prevent illness and protect health, and it seems that science is proving what Asians have believed all along: tea is good for you.

Lifelong tea drinkers have lower incidences of heart disease, high cholesterol and some forms of cancer. They are also less likely to suffer from diabetes or be overweight. Tea protects your teeth and may even have potential to prevent diseases like Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s.

We are beginning to learn a lot about the benefits of tea, but clearly there is much more to learn, so that we can pinpoint exactly how we can best use tea to help with medical needs.

One of the most promising areas of tea research centers on tea as a weight loss aid. Much research has shown that tea seems to speed up the metabolism and promote fat oxidation. Other studies have shown that lifelong tea drinkers are less likely to be overweight, have a lower percentage of body fat and have a lower waist to hip ratio.

In addition, studies have shown that when tea was part of a sensible diet and exercise plan, subjects lose more weight than those subjects who used a diet and exercise plan without tea as a supplement.

One study that is particularly interesting was conducted by the Beltsville Human Nutrition Center in Maryland in conjunction with the University of Tokushima in Japan. In this study, twelve men between the ages of 25 and 60 were evaluated. All participants were in good health, and the study was conducted over a period of one month. The target participants were those who consumed the caffeine equivalent of 2-4 cups of coffee each day.

Prior to the beginning of the study, each participant was evaluated with regard to their calorie expenditure per day without caffeine or tea. During the study, each participant was placed into one of four study groups. One group received a supplement of water, one group received water with caffeine, one group received half strength oolong tea and one group received full strength oolong tea.

For three days, the participants were fed the exact same diet. The diet was low calorie and free of caffeine, other than the caffeine in the beverage supplements. The beverage supplements were given to the participants five times per day.

This study found that the participants who drank full strength oolong tea and caffeinated water burned more calories in a day than the subjects who drank water or half strength tea. Drinking caffeinated water increased energy expenditure by 3.4% over those participants who drank water alone.

Drinking full strength tea increased energy expenditure by 2.9% over drinking water alone. Drinking half strength tea did not significantly increase energy expenditure over drinking water alone.

So, why not just drink water with caffeine?

You might ask why we wouldn’t just drink water with caffeine to help increase our metabolic rate. Well, according to this study, you could do just that. However, when you consider the many other studies that have touted the many other benefits of tea consumption, it’s clear that getting your metabolic boost from tea is far healthier than adding caffeine to your water.

Tea is full of anti-oxidants, which is believed to be why it prevents illnesses and protects health. Anti-oxidants are powerful fighters of free radicals in the body. Free radicals are oxygen containing molecules that are created as a by-product of our digestion process.

These free radicals damage our cells and DNA if left unchecked. However, consuming anti-oxidants combats these free radicals before they can harm our bodies. Scientists have shown that consuming a diet high in anti-oxidants helps us to avoid serious illnesses and slows down the aging process.

In addition, there have been other studies that have suggested that tea promotes more weight loss through fat oxidation than other caffeinated beverages. It is believed that this too is the result of anti-oxidants. It appears that the combination of caffeine with the anti-oxidants in tea is a more powerful weight loss supplement than caffeine in other beverages.

Finally, research has shown that the caffeine in tea seems to be better tolerated than other forms of caffeine. Many people who are caffeine sensitive find that they can drink tea without the usual side effects of caffeine. The caffeine in tea often does not produce the irregular heart rate and nervous jitters that caffeine sensitive people experience from other caffeinated beverages.

So, adding tea to your diet plan may be a great way to speed up your weight loss. Tea is healthy, refreshing, inexpensive and readily available. So, why not add tea to your diet routine?

Marcus Stout
http://www.articlesbase.com/health-articles/can-oolong-tea-help-men-lose-weight-114601.html