Seminar – Train the Trainer

Overall Seminar Rating: C-

Who Should Attend: Trainers who need to up the sales potential in their seminars, workshops, presentations, classes, etc.

Would I Attend Again: No

Cost: $2995 (once again, prices do vary), Food & Lodging Packages available

What Is It?
Train the Trainer Certification is a 4 ½ day seminar focused on their top sales pitch “How to earn $20,000 a weekend or more!” Approximately 240 people attended the 2005 seminar. Essentially, they teach you most of the techniques they use to sell abundant products and services at their seminars. Now this program was VERY enlightening.

Seminar Summary
The program started on a Sunday evening. We were promptly handed a binder each, it was very thin. Inside it had a couple intro pages, seven pages of sample Harv advertisements, some blank paper for notes, and two comment forms requesting our praise to use in their advertising. There were an additional twenty pages, which we will call the “substance” pages. These substance pages were in an outline type format with tons of white space, in fact, several had as few as 20 words per page! I thought to myself, maybe they will be giving us more pages to insert during the next 50+ hours of training, or maybe these are just outlines and we will be filling in the information. Nope, this was it, the entire substance of the program. Okay, so maybe that means this seminar will be more about practicing our presentation skills…that would still be great! This was wishful thinking on my part. The night continued with icebreakers and Peak Potential’s “training”. It didn’t end until after midnight, and with the energy from the program, I wasn’t able to fall asleep until after 2am. Yet another exhausted start to their programs...

Our lead trainer was Robert Riopel, once again. However, Blair Singer, another name on the self-help circuit and a friend of Harv’s, ran the program for about 1 ½ days.

Blair explained the difference between context, setting the stage, and content, giving information. He explained that a good (sales) presentation is about 85% context and 15% content. Based on the number of doodle drawings in my notebook, and the lack of organized notes, I would say that he delivered on this very well himself. Blair did provide some excellent information on stage positioning, finding your topic, relating to your audience, pushing people to the point of decision (Peak Potentials is great at this one), and how to field questions. Unfortunately, his stories and lead-ins often ate up as much as 1 ½ hours at a time. Blair also led us in a great “role playing” activity on the second night, which once again kept everyone awake until well past midnight.

Rob took back over after Blair departed, and was the trainer for the remainder of the program. Rob taught us their tactics for getting venues to speak at, and getting “butts in seats” as they so eloquently put it. He also explained their funnel of products for keeping customers in the sales pipeline. Rob also spent a good deal of time expanding on Harv’s magic “template”. It is a list of about 20 steps that they believe every presenter should follow in order to sell their product in the end. It seems to work for them, but it is definitely a tad pushy. Many people, including myself, would want to tone it down quite a bit. Also, Rob emphasized that you should never sell books at your seminars, because they earn you virtually no money, unless of course they are “Secrets of the Millionaire Mind”. I took this one with a grain of salt, since it was an obvious plug for their network-marketing program.

Rob also led us into nights 3 and 4 (although he didn’t run them), where each person had to perform a “breakthrough” exercise. It was not only a rather embarrassing task, but it was also filmed, for no particular reason. In my opinion, it was a waste of time, and simply served to keep people awake until past midnight, and make them feel empowered, yet humiliated.

It seems that the quality offered in Harv’s Train the Trainer program used to be far superior. I listened to some of Harv’s earlier CD’s (from a few years ago) and he states that his Train the Trainer course only has about 20 attendees, who receive one on one training and attention. This is a far cry from the 240 to 1 ratio we had at this Train the Trainer. Like many unfortunate companies, the quality may be declining with the growth.

Get Some Sleep!
If I had just one recommendation for this program, I would say skip the night programs, get some dinner, and head to bed. Peak Potential’s claims that they teach you to make your own decisions, not give into pressure, self-empowerment, etc. Yet, Rob loves to use threats, conditioning, and peer pressure to get people to follow their programs. In this particular seminar, he states that if anyone tries to skip out on nights three and four, they will post their names up on the wall (threat), and use the attendees to track them down (peer pressure). Amazingly enough, they actually did it! I wish I had been as bold as some people who simply told them they weren’t going to the event. Their names were simply taken off the list. There was no real punishment; it was just a scare tactic as usual. After all, the attendees paid for the program, they can’t be forced to do anything against their will.

The lack of sleep really began to take its toll on everyone by day four. Each of the four nights had run past midnight. Attendees were falling asleep at breaks, walking around like zombies, many of them lacking showers! I also noticed a disturbing trend of wills breaking and logic flying out the door. People were acting a bit foolish, and doing absolutely everything Rob told them to without question. These were intelligent people, mostly professionals, many wanting to make a difference, but looking for direction. As an off topic example of the exhaustion, on the 4th day, Rob told someone with a question to stand up, and about a dozen other people around the room stood up for no reason.

Out of curiosity, I surveyed several people on their sleep. They each had trouble winding down from the program, as did I, which meant an additional hour or two before sleep was even possible. From there, the nightly sleep ranged from zero to six hours. The worst part was, most of these people were driving home at night and back in the morning. Studies equate less than 6 hours of sleep in a night to driving under the influence of alcohol. Ethical issues aside; sleep deprivation isn’t healthy or safe!

On the last day, I also saw a side of Rob, which was quite frankly, disturbing. He started bouncing around chanting “money, money, money” over and over again. If this wasn’t bad enough, he then jumped into doing his little “ch-ching” dance. He got so excited that he had everyone stand up and do it, twice!

There was also something about the schedule, which I noticed as odd. It may not have been intentional, I can’t say. The first three full days of the program we had a break at around 11am, and lunch at around 1pm or even later at times, then we would have a 10 minute break in the afternoon, and they would let us out for dinner sometime after 7pm. Most people I spoke with had a heftier breakfast in order to keep until the late lunch. But on the last day, we broke at just after 11am for lunch, and they gave us an “assignment” to do over the lunch break. Like most other people there, I wasn’t hungry yet. I didn’t eat, but unlike most I did get some lunch to have later. I watched, and most people not only skipped lunch, but also were franticly working on the assignment. After lunch, we only had a brief break, and the program continued on with some training until the early evening. I don’t know about you, but when I have hardly slept in four days, and I haven’t eaten for 10 hours, I tend to not think very clearly. Peak Potentials heavy program sales took center stage in the evening, immediately following the training.
I must be honest, for me this seminar resembled a rather cult-like experience.

Sales
Come on, it’s a Peak Potential’s program; of course there are sales! Don’t let the title fool you. Mr. Riopel does an impressive job in demonstrating the power of their sales technique first hand. Although I still disagree with many of their tactics (especially the ones they didn’t mention), he knows how to get those checkbooks and credit cards waving. Train the Trainer is an excellent breeding ground for selling future seminars. First off, there is Train the Trainer II. That’s a given. There was Harv’s latest offering, a leadership related seminar. A few seats were opened up for the Master of Influence program (formerly Secret’s of Influence) this year and next. Finally, to top them all, if you want to be a Peak Potential’s Trainer (that covered about 80% of the room), you have to take all of Harv’s courses in order to qualify. What a plug for their super deluxe, fully loaded, Quantum Leap Titanium Package! Whew… I think it is safe to say that the back end for Peak Potential’s at this seminar is a sizable one.

Blair Singer does a good job in using Harv’s discounting technique to sell his package. Although Blair still appeared a little green with Harv’s methods, the cash register was ringing. Just as with all other Peak Potential’s programs, once you catch on that you have been suckered into yet another sales presentation, you can be assured that a break is next on the agenda. If you have no interest in emptying your wallet, avoid the temptation, and step out early for a longer break.

Structure
Like many other Peak Potential’s events, this program started in the evening with an introduction, and the very first night went all the way until midnight. The program started at 9am sharp each morning. Unfortunately, a majority of the attendees were from the local area, and had to commute to the location. The mornings were usually typical Peak Potential’s training style: Robert talks, we respond when he tells us to, we take some notes, we listen to “class shares”, etc. It is a lot of setting the scene, filled in with just a little substance. There was typically a break mid-morning, except for the last day (see comments above). Lunch was usually a bit later, around 1 or 2pm, and ran for 1 hour and 15 to 30 minutes. You could purchase their meal package to eat at the hotel, or walk to neighboring restaurants. The afternoons usually involved some training with a few small group exercises worked in. Dinner hit around 6 or 7pm, with the class back in an hour and a half for some “crazy” nighttime activity. These events kept people up until at least midnight every night, and often much later.

Staff & Volunteers
The staff held their usual roles, handouts, sales booths, guarding the doors, not answering questions, etc. A couple of core team members were more involved in running events. Oddly enough, I received an email before the event asking if I would volunteer at it. It seems they may have abused the volunteers too much at this point! I thought it was odd that they were contacting people who had paid to attend the seminar. Particularly since their volunteer policy states that you must have already gone through the program before you are eligible to volunteer at it.

Kids?
There were a few teens at this seminar. This program may help to break teens out of their shells a bit, just be sure to keep them out of the snake oil business.

Follow-up – Life After Train the Trainer
I was floored by how few people took action following this program, these were supposed to be aspiring trainers! It seems Peak Potential’s usual pump-em and dump-em style had its usual effect. There was a very large list of names and emails, at least 50, of people who lived in the local area, and were interested in getting together to practice presenting. It would be a support group for trainers, as suggested by both Blair Singer and Robert Riopel. People were jazzed about it. Yet, a follow-up with the ringleader of this list, just a few weeks after the seminar, revealed that only a few people had even responded to him!

Sales is my weakest point, so their “template” did offer me a few ideas. However, their marketing said we would be “Designing a powerful program from A-Z”. I think they forgot B through Y. I was expecting the opportunity to practice and perfect our presentation skills in front of a group. That certainly didn’t happen, so I am creating my own network group, for brainstorming, practicing presentations, and sharing ideas.