seminar | National Inventory Certification Association

25 Jul 2020

Marketing Minute – Seminars, Trade Shows, and Conferences

Mary Gillen Attending business functions provides great opportunities to meet referral sources and inventory prospects. Whether you’ve paid for a trade show booth, or are attending trade shows, seminars, and conferences, be sure to take time to make connections.

You Hosted a Seminar – How About the Folks Who Didn’t Attend?

A prospect who has made a reservation to attend your seminar or webinar but, for some reason, doesn’t attend, may still count as a “qualified” lead. Follow up. Offer to reserve space for him/her at your next seminar. Better yet: use the phone call as an opportunity to question them about their needs.

How to Easily Gather Prospect Email Addresses When Hosting a Trade Show Booth

Getting folks to sign up for your email mailing list from your busy trade show booth can be a challenge. Here’s an option to make it easier for everyone.

Have folks send you a text message with their email address from their mobile phones as a request to subscribe. You can add this information to your list after the show.
Create a subscription form on your website, a page no wider than 600 pixels so it can easily be viewed on a mobile phone. Prospects who visit your booth can complete the sign-up process right away, filling out the subscription form from their mobile. This can save you a ton of work after the show.

Stand Up and Market

Can’t afford to exhibit a trade show or conference? Be an attendee. Make the most of the question and answer periods during workshops and presentations. Stand up and ask a question, throwing in a reference about your business. Example: “As a home inventory professional, I would like to know if you have any unique tips for those who market to homeowners.” Make sure your question is intelligent and pertains to the matter being presented. This process can help you make more connections, as everyone in attendance now knows what you do.

Mary Gillen has 24 years of Web development experience to build responsive, accessible websites for tech companies, associations, non-profits and small businesses, blending professional design with measurable business results. She is also an experienced Website Accessibility Compliance Auditor, providing website testing & remediation for compliance with Section 508 and WCAG 2.1 A, AA & AAA Guidelines. Her experience also includes testing and fully remediating Adobe PDFs, Microsoft Office documents and pre-recorded videos.

08 Jul 2015

No Flip-Flopping This Summer

Do you have an educational goal on your life plan that you haven’t yet achieved? Has it been on that list for quite some time? What’s holding you back?

Summer is often the time of year when people tend to “take time off” even more than other months. One minute you think, “I’m going to get this done,” and the next minute you’re telling yourself that it can wait another day.

What harm will result by delaying it just one more day? After all, you have things to do. Like enjoy the sun, go on picnics, take a vacation, go to a concert, or have a cook-out with friends.

All of these are great activities and summer should include them. However, what about your desire to move forward and improve your life and/or your business?

Goals that are worthy of your time:

Take an online course
Attend a conference
Read a business book
Learn a new business skill
Attend a seminar or webinar
Achieve certification

Though it’s tough to talk yourself into self-improvement activities when the toasty-warm sunshine is calling you to the patio, consider how great it will be to reach that goal. Checking it off your list, sharing your accomplishment with others, and benefiting from the event or activity is well worth the hours it will take to achieve your goal. Then you can have a big cook-out in celebration!

21 May 2015

Webinars, Seminars, and CEU Credits

In our continued effort to offer a variety of options to achieve CEUs, we are developing a series of webinars and seminars to present on a continuing basis. The Inventory Institute recently presented a Facebook webinar that was approved by the National Inventory Certification Association (all knowledge-based presentations must be approved by NICA). Attendees received step-by-step guides to setting up Facebook personal and business pages. Also discussed were tips on how to cross-promote, how to find Facebook friends, and ways to keep your company pages fresh. It was a well-received webinar, based on feedback from members.

The next social media webinar, LinkedIn, is tentatively scheduled for June 25. It will be one hour, and has also been approved for .1 CEU.

Additional CEU credits

Are there topics you would like to have presented in a one-hour (CEU-approved) seminar or webinar? Remember that we are here to serve you, our members, so please contact the NICA office with your suggestions or requests.

Another option to earn CEU credits is to share your expertise through a webinar that you create and present. Once you’ve chosen a topic, contact the NICA office to discuss requirements. We welcome member contridubion to the education effort. Many find that when they develop a seminar, their knowledge level increases as well.

22 Apr 2015

Inventory YOU

When is the last time YOU took inventory?

This is a question I am often asked, since one of my businesses, Hartman Inventory, is a personal property inventory service. As an asset inventory professional, you probably immediately thought about your last job, too.

But this time, I’m not talking about home or company contents. What I’m wondering is, when is the last time you took inventory of yourself?

As business owners and entrepreneurs, we must always keep an accurate inventory of what we are doing. We must continually check our focus, goals, and achievements. Do we bring value to our industry, in general, and to our business(es), specifically?

Knowledge and Wisdom

A couple areas that might need to be updated are knowledge and wisdom. Taking time to evaluate ourselves is often something many just don’t do. Busy with the day-to-day busy-ness of life, this valuable process of pondering, dreaming, planning, etc., is often forgotten.

Stop right now and take an inventory. When is the last time you read a self-improvement book, took an online continuing education course, attended a seminar or webinar, or participated in a networking event? Without regularly taking inventory of your progress, there is a high chance that you and your business will not grow.

Gaining new knowledge regarding our specific business is essential. Knowledge of our industry in general is also imperative to become or remain a leader. Continued learning will result in greater wisdom. Wisdom, to me, is using the knowledge you have – and using it appropriately. We can use it to improve our business skills, industry expertise, and ourselves (the most important of the three).

When is the last time you took inventory of you?