Driving More Services Fees with Webinars – The Easy Way

While many services marketers and professionals think “filling-the room” is the hard part of getting new clients from Webinars, this is but one milestone in converting Webinar attendees to clients in bunches. There is nothing worse than getting tens, hundreds, and sometimes a thousand or more Webinar attendees at your Webinar and then seeing little sales activity or results afterward. While entire books can, and have been, written on “platform selling,” here are three, critical steps to selling more from every one of your services Webinars.

Make Sure Your Buyers Are in the “Room”

One of today’s top Marketing gurus, Dan Kennedy, has a great expression, “A buyer is a buyer, is a buyer.” Get buyers into your virtual Webinar room and a lot of the job of selling is done. But if there are no buyers or members of a buying team at the Webinar, even the best sales pitch or Webinar content will have little impact on your fees. So make sure your potential buyers are in the room, largely with the help of the strategies outlined in this White Paper.

Develop The Right Sales Pitch So Your Presentation Does Not Go Flat

Many say that you should not sell at a Webinar. This is simply not true. Think about it! In the marketing process we are all “selling” in one form or another almost all the time, but we may not think of it as selling because we may not ask for an “order” with every marketing event or communication. What a Webinar really needs to be clear on, and what creates sales, is a specific next step your prospect should take.

Don’t be bashful about presenting your “next step” and allow enough time in your Webinar to do the job well. For example, once you educate your prospects on an issue or problem, or position your firm as an expert, plan what you want prospects to do at the end of the Webinar. Will they review a sales letter, download more information, or request a no-obligation consultation or analysis? Does your firm have a low-cost, planning or strategy service which is really just a way of getting new clients to sample your services in the hopes of creating a larger relationship? Whatever is being “sold” at the event, make it clear. And devote the necessary time to articulate the benefits of taking the next step

Shortening the Sales Cycle with Automated Conversion

There is a common axiom in business marketing which says that 70% of business sales leads do not get the proper follow-up. Our experience indicates that this is true for services Webinars as well. Simply by avoiding this mistake you will naturally get more sales from every event.

For example, when I was head of marketing at a small firm with weekly Webinars, we had a small, inside sales force. We made sure all Webinar registrants had a link to the Webinar recording along with a free evaluation offer, and were turned over to sales within 24 hours of the event. Inside sales would then generally both call and email all prospects within 48 hours of the event and do additional follow-ups according to a profile of the target individual and his or her level of interest indicated at the Webinar. Many of today’s CRM systems, like Infusionsoft used by QLM, allow for more automated conversion sequences which you can employ again and again with your Webinar registrants. Perhaps, a sequence of 10 touches over 21 days after the event with a combination of 7 emails, 2 sales calls, and 1 longer-format direct mail sales letter will boost your Webinar lead conversion to clients from well below 5% to well above 10%.Thistype of improvement would not be unusual and is very exciting because you have already sunk almost all your marketing costs and effort into the event.

The next section will highlight key recommendations to put the ideas shared in this White Paper into practice. These tips will help  you get more leads and sales from your next services Webinar.

Continued tomorrow in Part 5: Five Key Recommendations for Services Marketers

 

A Quantum Leap Marketing White Paper; A Companion to the Cutting Edge Marketing Webinar Series
About the Author
Bob Hanson is the President of lead generation and conversion consultancy Quantum Leap Marketing and creator of the Must-See Webinars TMsuccess system. He has also published a recent guide to online lead generation, the “What’s Working Now in B-to-BLead Generation Guide: Success with New Media: Webinars and Goog/e Ads.”