Before you can have a meaningful dialogue with a prospective client, you often have to get above the noise level and a webinar targeted to a demographically matched audience with the right message/content are a great way to establish your thought leadership and value.
Furthermore, the “web” provides leverage from allowing a small organization with limited resources to rise above the noise level and reach out to an audience that in the past had been the domain of only the big guys.
It also let’s you compress time zones and geographies with ease….as the map on the previous slide that I showed, demonstrates that we have a large cross section of the US represented spread across multiple time zones.
Add the the fact that this is a “Live” event, and you have a greater sense of urgency for wanting to attend.
The notion of the “digital campfire” while being virtual, is analogous when were kids sitting around the campfire and hearing a great story that sparks the imagination and inspires.
The idea of the digital campfire came to me 6 or 7 years ago when I managed a large partner organization and realized that by hosting a monthly partner call, we would show our partners that they indeed mattered to us and we could keep them in the know with new product and technology updates and it was a relatively cost effective way to stay connected, and all the while it helped raise our thought leadership and brand.
From a sales perspective, it really can help accelerate the sales funnel by having such an event self identify those prospects that would want to have a 1:1 or more in depth conversation with you and your company.
When you consider the cost of a print ad in a trade journal or exhibiting at a trade show, the price of a webinar can be pretty cost effective.
there are some specific differences in focus, between being informed and sold.
I suppose another word for Informational could be educational, i.e., the real value in you attending should provide you with something “new” that you didn’t know or didn’t think of considering before attending.
So, in the case of the Sales Pitch, the focus is more on the product, features and benefits and maybe even pricing.
In the Informational, the center piece is around learning business value, and that is nicely conveyed from a case study, where you have a client or partner share what best practices they implemented and most importantly, the audience gets to hear from a peer or colleague some valuable lessons learned.
Look, we don’t like being sold and there’s often a fine line between what is informational and a sales pitch, but if you can walk away better informed with some fresh new ideas that you can take action on, then it was well worth your time.
And once you’re convinced there’s value in having a further discussion, then it becomes perfectly appropriate to discuss features, benefits and pricing.