Designing a great seminar is simple if you follow this three-part process.

1. Focus on where your participants are right now. What is their level of expertise on the topic before taking your seminar: beginner, intermediate, or advanced? Among the most common mistakes a seminar leader makes is to create a seminar that is either too elementary or too advanced. In either case, your participants do not get what they came for or what they need. For example, if you are delivering a sales seminar to brand-new salespeople, your content should be very broad. They need an understanding and an overview of the selling process itself, the basics. On the other hand, if your audience consists of experienced salespeople, they will be bored with material they’ve heard before.
2. Focus on where they want to go. Focus on the benefits your participants expect. In the case of the sales seminar, the participants will probably want to make more money by closing more sales. If you construct a seminar that focuses on helping them achieve their goals, you are guaranteed rave reviews.
3. Focus on what your audience needs to learn to get where they want to go. Again, using the example of the sales seminar, the audience might want to learn how to prospect for new clients, how to handle objections, and how to prequalify leads. The information or skills your audience needs are known as objectives. By achieving the objectives above, the salespeople will get where they want to go—they will make more money.