The Anatomy of a High Converting Sales Webinar

Wouldn’t it be great if you could sell to more than one prospect at a time? What if you could present your sales pitch to 10 prospects simultaneously and they all feel like you’re selling just to them. What if that number could be as large as 50, 100 or 200 prospects at the same time?

Selling one-to-many is a powerful way to scale your sales process. Better still what if this could all be done in an online meeting so you don’t have to spend time traveling to each prospect’s office. Travel wastes so much time. Even the most efficient sales person could only see around 6 prospects every day.

Webinars are the answer to scaling not only your sales process but also your lead generation process. Smart businesses today are using webinars to not only attract new leads but present their solutions to them en mass.

There are so many benefits to webinars like:

  1. One-to-many Selling – Sell to many people at the same time
  2. Lead Generation – Webinars are a great lead generation tool. here are the 7 Ways to Promote Your Webinar Online
  3. Conversion Tool – Powerful tool for converting prospects into clients
  4. Client Follow Up – An effective way of keeping in touch with your existing clients and showing them your other services or products

When done well webinars are a great conversion tool helping turn prospects into clients. A prospect will spend 1-2 hours listening to you present. If you teach the prospect how to solve pain points in their business they will see start to view you as a trusted advisor. Then when you present your product or service they will be more than happy to hear your pitch.

Unfortunately, most people who try their hand at sales webinars don’t know how to present for sales conversions. Running a sales webinar is very different to a live presentation because the attendees can’t see you, can get distracted on their computer easily and exit the webinar if they get bored.

There is a way to combat each of these negatives and turn webinars into your #1 sales machine.

In this post, I want to show you the structure of a sales webinar that converts prospects into paying clients.

The Introduction

The first five minutes of a sales webinar are the most important. In an instant you can have 10 – 100 people turn up to your webinar and if the registrations are all new prospects they won’t know who you are and why they should keep listening to you.

You job in the first 5 minutes it to let them know:

You are in Charge

Attendees want and need to know that you are confident and in control. Your confidence will give them confidence in you. I like to do this by asking them to do three things that I know most webinar presenters don’t do:

  1. Block out distractions – I tell them to turn off their phone and close their door if they have one because I want them to be focused for the next hour
  2. Get a drink – I explain that I have a drink and I suggest that they get one to get comfortable, stay hydrated and concentrate as we are going to go fast
  3. Bring their A-Game – I tell the attendees that I will be addressing some of their pain points and solutions which could change the direction of their business. But they have to be open. I tell them to bring their A-game and answer questions when I ask as this will help them retain the information.

By going through this list I am establishing my authority on the webinar. Of course, there are many other ways to do this and you can use your own methods, but don’t skip this step. It is vital to keeping their attention.

You are an Authority

Next, you need to establish yourself as an authority. I recommend making a slide which outlines your achievements and why they should listen to you.

Never think this part of the presentation is just procedural and not important. It is very important in convincing the attendee they need to stay on the webinar so don’t rush it like many do.

Some of you may be thinking “Well I am not that impressive”. Well if you are not then you shouldn’t be presenting the webinar 🙂 But if you are presenting then I am almost 100% confident that you are impressive. You just have to describe yourself in the right way. It is important to highlight the parts of your career that are related to the topic at hand.

Most people underestimate their experience and knowledge of a subject because they think everyone knows what they know. The reality is if you have been working in an industry for 5-10 years you probably know a lot more than your prospects, so highlight those points.

They should stay until the end

One of the biggest challenges webinar presenters have is keeping all attendees until the end of the presentation. There is a very simple fix to this. Promise the attendees you will give them something of value at the end of the webinar. It could be:

  1. You are presenting 10 points and the last 2 are your favourite or the most useful for clients you have worked with
  2. An ebook, video or download you will give to all attendees who are still on at the end of the presentation. Just tell them to type into the chat box at the end to remind you and you will send through the link

You are going to Sell to them

Finally, you want to tell the attendees that you are going to promote a product or service to them at the end of the webinar. Be upfront, let them know what you are going to do and when it happens there won’t be any surprises.

Speak to their Pain Points

The presentation should be targeted at a very clear niche. Are you targeting real estate agents, financial planners, software developers or restaurant owners? Each of these niches have very different pain points and your presentation must address these.

I believe the quote by Wyatt Woodsmall sums it up well.

When you can articulate another persons problem better than they can they automatically and unconsciously credit you with knowing the solution

Wyatt Woodsmall

And that is the purpose of the sales webinar. Over the hour you must describe their pain better than they can, so at the end when you show them your service or product they have already agreed within that your solution must be the right one.

Only 3 Main Points

Too many sales webinar presenters try to include too much content in the presentation. It is just information overload. Too many points can leave an attendee confused as to where to start.

People can only process so much information in an hour. Give them the top three pain points and the top three solutions to make those pain points disappear. That is all. Then move into the sales pitch at the end.

Structure each Point

There is a specific structure to each of the three points you make in your presentation. When making each point you need to include a section on each of the following:

  1. What – First you need to explain what the problem is
  2. Why – Explain why the problem is significant and the benefits to their business if they overcome the problem
  3. How – Explain at a high level how you would solve the problem. Do not go into too much detail. Remember information overload is not good
  4. In Action – Explain a working solution done right using a case study

Using this framework is very helpful to ensure you cover all the important points for your client so they can then relate the content to their specific situation.

Build Credibility with Stories

For a prospect to buy from you they need to trust you. They have to trust that you have solved their types of problems before. Reciting facts and scientific studies will only get you so far and does not build your credibility.

To build trust you need to tell stories. Your stories. Stories of how you solved your client’s pain points. Go through a case study. Even interview a client on the webinar. Every time you give an example from your experience it adds a credit to the prospects trust account. Once you tell enough stories the trust account will be full enough for them to believe you are the right vendor to select.

Webinars are the perfect way to tell your story. I like to give a case study at the end of each of the three major points in the presentation.

Less Words More Images

Whether you are presenting a sales webinar or a live presentation when it comes to slide content less is more. Reduce the words and increase the images. People are inspired by what they see. It is said that a picture tells a thousand words and in a webinar this is so important.

If you give people a wall of text to read, most will lose interest very quickly. If you give them beautiful images that reflect the point being made you will keep their attention much longer.

Apple and Steve Job mastered this style of presentation and there is no reason why you can’t take advantage of it too.

Apple Presentation Slide

Figure: An example of a simple presentation slide by Apple

In the past beautiful images that didn’t look like stock photos were expensive and hard to find. Now there are many sites which provide free stock photos that are simply stunning for presentations. Here are a few sites I recommend.

Free Stock Photos

  1. Pexels
  2. StockSnap
  3. Unsplash

Paid Stock Photos

  1. Deposit Photos
  2. iStockPhoto
  3. Shutter Stock

 Ask Questions and Read Responses

Losing the attention of your audience while you are presenting is quite easy. They could open up a browser and surf the web, respond to an incoming email, or get distracted by a fellow employee. Keeping their attention is vital if you want them to hear and understand your message.

The best way to do this is by asking questions and asking the attendees to answer in the chat box. You should always wait for the answers to start coming through and then read the answers out to the audience including the first name of the person whose answer it is. This helps engagement because:

  1. Some people are more likely to type in an answer if they know their question is going to be read
  2. By addressing people by name you are bringing them into the conversation and starting to have a dialogue with your audience
  3. Even is an attendee doesn’t write an answer ,if you ask the right questions, everyone will be interested in the answers that are provided. It may be the first time an attendee hears what struggles and issues others in their industry are having. You can also ask attendees what they are doing to overcome those challenges so everyone can hear the responses

I normally include one open question at the “Why” and “In Action” section of each of the three points.

Teach and Sell

The worst approach to selling on a sales webinar is to save the hard sell until the end of the presentation. The best approach is to use the Teach and Sell method. Throughout your three points, you should teach something and then sell a little, then teach something new, then sell a little, then teach something new, then sell a little. You intertwine your sales into the education of the client.

If you do it right the attendee won’t even know you are selling to them. Why? Because you won’t do the traditional hard sell. You show them how you have helped clients in the past, teach a point, then explain a case study. Teach another point, then show how part of your solution helps with that pain point. Then teach another point then tell another war story about a project that went well.

By incorporating this process into your presentation you will be educating and validating each point with examples from your business. Each time you do this it validates your expertise.

By the time you reach the end of the presentation and the section for the sales pitch you will hardly have to sell at all. You will just have to outline what you can do for the attendees. The battle will already have been fought and won during the presentation. You would have already established credibility and proved you understand their pain points better than they do. Now all you will have to do is explain how you can help them.

Don’t Over Teach

Another mistake presenters make on sales webinars is they teach too much and give away so much IP that the attendees don’t need them anymore. You need to teach just enough for them to know that you have the solution to their pain.

Of course, if you provide a product then the attendee will always need to buy it, but it gets trickier when you provide a professional service. Some services require expertise that has to be done by a professional, but others can give away too much like business coaches and accounts.

A good rule in these cases is to spend most of your time explaining the Why, What and In Action parts of your points, but reduce how much of the How you give away as typically your IP and expertise are in the How.

Q&A

You should always have a Q&A at the end of a sales webinar. If your presentation follows the principles outlined above you will find that many of the questions  asked will be buying questions around your service offering, not just on the topic of the webinar.

Q&A also allows the attendees to get a deeper understanding on points that are important to them but may not have been explained in depth in your presentation. You should incorporate these extra questions into your presentation for next time.

I find the length of time attendees stay for the Q&A is a direct reflection on how engaged they were in the presentation and your business.

Summary

Presenting webinars that convert attendees into clients is not difficult once someone shows you how and you have done it a few times. This post has laid out the anatomy of a high converting sales webinar, now it’s up to you to put this information into action. if you want to see a high converting webinar in action, sign up for my weekly webinar where you can watch me put theses principles into practice.

Let me know if I have missed anything that you think is important in the comments below.

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