Webinars are a lot easier to sell than live events – because there’s no travel involved and people can sign up at the last minute. (Plus, they never have to see you face-to-face … which scares away prospects who fear being locked in a room for a torturous sales pitch.) By offering free and low-cost webinars, you’ll be able to build a list of people who are interested in your training.
Want to see if your new seminar idea will fly before you invest days developing the content? Strip the idea down to a 1- or 2-hour presentation to see if prospects bite. If they do, you have a winner. If they don’t, you can scrap your dud idea before you waste too much time developing content (never mind marketing a live seminar your audience doesn’t want).
As a salesperson, you know that it’s easiest to develop relationships and rapport with prospects when you’re talking to them face to face. A webinar is the next best thing to a face-to-face meeting. (Personally, I think it’s even better – because you don’t have to leave home AND you can sell to dozens, hundreds and even thousands of prospects at a time.)
Want to persuade undecided prospects to register for your event? There’s no better way than letting them sample the content of your event. And if you offer a trial run via free preview webinars, you’ll persuade more people to sign up for your live events. Plus, they’ll have a much better idea of what to expect … so you should have fewer refund requests from people who show up and decide your seminar isn’t right for them.
One thing you must accept as a seminar promoter is that a certain segment of your audience will never, ever attend your seminar because they don’t have the time, money, or desire to travel to and participate in live training events. Offering training via webinars give this segment of your audience a way to access your continuing education – and gives you a new stream of revenue.
One of the first things to get cut from budgets when the economy goes south is training. Even when there is a limited amount of money to invest in training, the decision makers holding the purse strings scrutinize each seminar before deciding whether to give you their precious dollars. Offering training via webinars gives your prospects the training they still need and want – at a price they can better afford on a limited budget. End result? You still get the business and have a more stable cash flow.
If you’ve ever produced your own seminar or workshop, you know they can be risky. There are many factors that influence your success with events – such as your list, price, content, time of year, promotional schedule, copy, etc. Not only do you risk losing thousands of promotional dollars if your events don’t do well … you risk losing revenue and future sales from the people you couldn’t persuade to attend your event. Offering webinars is far less risky. They don’t cost as much to produce. They don’t cost as much to promote. And it’s easier to generate registrations for a webinar than for a live event.
The bottom line? Whether you offer free webinars to build your list and give previews of your live events … or you offer paid seminars as a way to generate revenue, you should be using webinars to grow your business.
