Your workshop should reflect what the attendees want, or need, to know. To ensure that you divide your workshop time effectively between the different subjects you need to discuss, survey your workshop members before they attend. After receiving your workshop reservation information, send each registered workshop attendee a survey along with a stamped envelope. Study the surveys and use the information to plan your workshop schedule in response to attendees' needs.
Workshops at which individuals are simply preached to are often not as effective as ones at which people can engage in hands-on activity. To ensure that your attendees have hands-on activity time, arrange small group sessions in which the larger groups divide up into smaller clusters, each of which has a slightly different focus.
Instead of just giving workshop attendees paper copies of handouts, provide each attendee with an easier-to-file digital copy of each document. For example, if you have a digital slide show presentation, burn this onto a CD instead of just giving a handout copy of it so your workshop members can move through the presentation at a later date, or share it with others they work with.
Someone doesn't have to be an expert to have something valuable to share. Dedicate at least part of your workshop time to best-practices sharing. During this time, allow those in attendance to share the things that they have done that have worked well for them. For example, if all of your workshop attendees are real estate agents, one may have tried an open-house technique that worked particularly well while another may have some effective advertising plans. To ensure that attendees are ready to share, tell them of this best-practices session in advance.