Pitching to customers and selling online requires a different skillset to face-to-face. There’s an art to selling online. The great news is, it can be learned.
With ‘Zooming’ being a popular thing because of COVID, we’ve had to adapt to communicating, interacting, pitching and selling online, almost overnight. Webinars went from an ‘option to have’ to a ‘must have.’
You may have been avoiding webinars out of fear. Or perhaps you’ve hosted a couple but nothing came of it. Or, you’re not comfortable asking for the sale, so you think it might be a waste of time
Without the ability to read a room and feed off the audience, webinars can be tricky. But once you get used to sitting or standing in front of a camera and engaging with a chat box, the world is your oyster. It’s an opportunity to think further afield, beyond local boundaries to national and international audiences.
This could be the catalyst you’ve been waiting for to take your business global.
The ‘staircase’ analogy
First of all, think strategy. Hiding behind power-point templates detracts from your tone and message delivery. The ‘staircase’ approach strategically walks your audience to the sale.
Start with seeding the sale early. What they’ll end up buying from you, then add the touchpoints (steps) along the way that helps them reach it.
Imagine the sale as a seed. It takes time and good conditions to sprout. In the webinar, the seed is their attention. The longer you occupy it, engage it and flip it to ‘solve’ the customer’s needs, the more likely you are to appeal to their emotions and lead to a sale.
Struggles to Successes
In the webinar, two of the most important components are understanding their struggles and envisioning their successes. The webinar is the vehicle to get customers and clients from struggle to success, subtly addressing those pains, so they’re inspired to move away from it as fast as possible onto what they want.
Use softening words like ‘maybe’ or ‘probably’ as to not be too direct or obtrusive.
Succinct Saleable Solutions
Create a system that helps you move people from struggle to success. Succinct Saleable Solutions is a great example of a system you can apply. You’ve got the solution, now you need to make it saleable, then shrink it down as small as possible to simplify what you do.
Let’s say you’re hosting a webinar about improving finances. You’re leading the audience to a sale which is a one-day intense ‘master your money’ course. You’re selling a solution to the feeling of being disempowered about money (Solution), in the way of a course (Saleable) and titled in three words (Succinct). This becomes the system for the basis of your webinar.
At multiple points throughout the session you’ll highlight the struggles and demonstrate successes by showcasing what you do. Testimonials, stories and interviews help bridge the gap and bring you to an empowering ‘this could be me, too’ place.
It’s important to let people know about your sale early in the webinar and say things like “coming later on” and “which we’ll explore in due course” but you must be subtle about it.
Within your webinar, there are three elements to cover: What, Why and How. You’ll cover the What and Why naturally as you work your way down the ‘stairs’ but the How is the thing that’s going to get them from struggling to successful.
And remember, you’re never selling a product or service. Always sell the end result of saying yes to the sale. Just like Uber takes you from where you are now, to a desired destination, your staircase strategy is the same. Go where your customer is, speak their language, paint a picture of successes, tell stories of lives transformed and sell them a solution to their problem.
Are you transitioning over to using webinars to connect with customers and make sales? Check out our upcoming free webinars for guidance, advice, and practical strategies.
Scott Perry, Workforce BluePrint