When advisors hold educational workshops and similar client events, they typically have a couple of goals.First and foremost, they want to get in front of clients and send the right signal about their commitment to clear communication and an informed clientele. In market environments like today's, they may also want to provide some reassurance.

Beyond this, many advisors also attempt to use these events to help bring new clients on board - either by encouraging clients to bring along friends and family members or by getting prospects they're already talking to out in order to advance the conversation.

In a recent conference call, one of the questions afterwards was how to get clients to bring people they know along to workshops.

To get new prospects out, most advisors include a line on the invitation and note confirming their attendance, saying that clients are welcome to bring guests. Despite this, the number of new prospects that are brought along as guests are typically few and far between.

The problem, quite simply, is that the sentence in the invitation concerning bringing friends out is lost on most clients. Even if they notice that line, it seldom penetrates - quite simply, it goes by too fast for most clients to give it any thought.

Here's an alternative to consider.

The next time you're hosting a client education event, take the time to call the clients who respond that they're coming.

Tell them you're delighted that they'll be able to join you and then say something like this:

"While the evening is primarily targeted to existing clients, we do also open it up to a select number of people who we're not working with currently but might find the topic of interest and might also be interested in getting a sense of my approach."

At that point you can go in a couple of directions:

You can ask the general question "I'm wondering whether any of your friends or family might find the evening of interest and wish to come along?" or a bit more aggressively "Who among your friends and family might find the evening of interest and wish to come along?"

Or you can be more specific: "In the past, you've talked about your brothers / partners / members of your golf foursome. I'm wondering whether one of them might be interested in joining you?" Or you could say: "The last time we spoke, you mentioned that your next door neighbour told you he was concerned about his investments. Is this something he might be interested in?"

By taking two minutes to engage the client in this conversation and getting them to briefly focus on who might be interested in your client event, you greatly increase the chances of transforming educational workshops from purely client events to include a prospecting component as well.