By R.L. Adams
We live in a new world. A digital one. Where the ether of cyberspace offers a resplendent haven for a new type of sales tool. The webinar, which is the evolution of the teleseminar, has its roots in those in-person meetings that often involve lengthy flights and costly hotel stays just to watch some salesman pitch a slick presentation that has buyers lining up at the end, clamoring for a chance to purchase whatever's being sold.
For Jason Fladlien, co-founder of Rapid Crush, and an individual who's sold upwards of $100 million of products through webinars, the journey towards the perfect pitch was born well before 2006. However, it was back then that the seed was planted in his mind, one that involved selling online through this medium. He knew that it could be done, but the technology just hadn't been created, nor could internet speeds largely support this web-based sales channel back then.
However, Fladlien, who's come a long way since selling his first product for $4 in 2007, has now perfected the art of selling through a webinar. In fact, high-profile individuals and celebrities turn to him to help concoct and construct the perfect webinar that they can turn into an automated selling machine. These systems operate almost entirely on autopilot once they've been filmed in a live setting, but there's so much that goes on behind the scenes before that can happen.
Today, everyone knows the power of webinars. It's a chance to get your clients in a setting where you can command attention, deliver real value and sell high-ticket digital products. It's the perfect storm. An ideal environment for selling just about anything to anyone at just about any time of the day.
Creating the perfect webinar is a mixture of buyer psychology and sales know-how. It involves leaning on statistics and numbers, and carefully analyzing feedback and reactions in a live setting. What actually goes into the perfect webinar is hefty and carefully scrutinized formula, one that Fladlien shared with me openly.
While it's no secret, actually going about creating and crafting the perfect webinar, with the right language and the right approach, is something far more different. People like Fladlien are lavishly paid for a reason. He's done over 50 unique webinar pitches and has easily delivered well over 300 live webinars, honing his skill set over time, and spending well over 10,000 hours on his craft.
To distill all of that information, knowledge, and experience down into a simple framework only offers you a glimpse of what it takes to build the perfect webinar. However, this should be the approach that anyone takes when building their automated selling machines.
Step 1: Determine your offer.
The first step in building your webinar is to position your offer so that it's too irresistible for them to say no to. You need to leverage the principle of scarcity in order to get them to act right away. How will you do that? Will the price go up soon? Will a bonus disappear? Does the offer expire soon? Fladlien says that you need to properly leverage the most enticing elements of the offer if you want people to sign up right there on the spot.
The problem is that there's only a brief period to really hook them in. How can you position it so that, at a mere glance, your attendees are going to be desperate to purchase? Will you offer some extra bonuses that will make the audience feel like they're taking advantage of you when they buy?
Step 2: Plan your objection strategy.
What most people don't realize is that consumers have natural objections during the sales cycle. Whether you're sitting in a room watching a presenter pitch something, or you're about to test drive a car with a pushy car salesman, you're naturally objecting to certain things in your mind. The salesperson's job is to overcome those objections.
In a webinar setting, you have to battle hard to do this. You can't see the other person and you're not in a one-on-one scenario. Think about what four excuses your audience could use to not buy what you're selling. How can you obliterate these objections during your pitch? How can you invalidate some of these during the content section of your webinar? These are all important considerations to include.
Step 3: Conceptualize your sales funnel.
At the heart of every good webinar is a sales funnel. Your sales funnel is critical to your ability to succeed. Fladlien says that you need to determine if you'll sell at the end of the webinar or if you'll do a replay. Which do you think will give you better overall results when it comes to your revenue?
You also need to conceptualize the number of days ahead that you'll begin to start promoting the webinar to get registrants and attendees. Will you send them pre-webinar content that'll ultimately put them in the mood to buy when they show up? Will you attract them through a lead magnet or some other incentive?
Step 4: Craft your webinar's content pieces.
You have to be extremely clear about what you're going to show or teach people. Clarity is key for the content section of your webinar. Craft, in one sentence, exactly what the defined outcome you'll be sharing. Share this as your goal with your audience on the webinar. This will also help you keep on track.
When you give away your content for free, you want your audience to be dazzled and amazed, bewildered even, wondering just how incredible the paid content must be if you're giving away content this good for free. It's about teaching them in a way that'll make them more optimistic about the future and empowered as a result of the insights that you deliver.
Step 5: Design your content-to-pitch transition.
The perfect webinar provides a smooth transition that segues from content to pitch, in a way that almost makes your audience beg you to see your offer. Figure out a way to show whatever you teach within your content, as valid as it is in its own right, to be that much more valuable when fueled by the power of your offer.
The goal? You have to feel completely confident and comfortable with this transition. It has to be free of mental obstructions and easily move into a pitch from a teaching perspective. The better you can do this, the better your webinar will be at selling to your audience without much-added friction.
Step 6: Create your hook.
Your webinar needs to have a solid hook. It needs to immediately pull in your audience, reducing and removing all of the distractions around to get them to pay careful and uninterrupted attention to what you have to say. If your hook isn't powerful, you'll lose your audience very early on.
Fladlien's most successful webinar teaches people how to sell physical products on Amazon. His hook for the webinar is "traditional retail is dying" and he expands upon it by showing how many big retailers have gone bankrupt. Then he compares it to how big Amazon is growing and polishes it off by explaining how he's going to help you take advantage of it with your own Amazon business.
Step 7: Use your testimonials.
The perfect webinar leans heavily on testimonials. What testimonials can you show that'll not only show your audience that what you teach and sell gets results, but that it gets results for people who are just like them. Decide on which ones will be used in the introduction, content, and pitch sections.
The idea here is to cram 10 to 20 great testimonials throughout your entire webinar presentation that will have a major impact in a way that won't distract or bore your audience, otherwise making them tune out. You have to figure out how to keep them engaged and hooked throughout the entire presentation if you want to make the sale.
Step 8: Establish your authority.
Authority is important when selling in a webinar environment. You need to establish authority quickly. In the introduction, you need to immediately get them to believe you and follow your instructions and advice. If you don't establish your authority early on, not only will they not believe you, but they'll quickly disappear and disconnect.
Can you show five to seven results throughout the webinar that will absolutely wow your audience and make them desire those very same results for themselves? Convey authority by relaying the things that other important people have said about you and the outcome you can achieve, then put those outcomes on display in the most enticing and dramatic fashion that you can muster up.
Step 9: Elicit commitments.
By getting your audience to make small commitments, you can lead them down the road towards bigger ones and eventually into buying from you. Commitments set up a specific mentality for selling in an environment like a webinar. It's entirely a mental game.
Uncover ways you can get them to agree to the things you show them in the webinar, and figure out a way to involve them in your conclusions, getting them to agree on them. This involves making requests that they're willing to accept and accepting them automatically, making them more likely to buy your offer.
For example, here's an excerpt from one of Fladlien's webinars where he gets commitment:
"I am going to give you my a-level best for the brief time we are together today because I have faith that you will actually use what I share with you. Nothing pains me more, nothing hurts me deeper than someone encountering a life-changing idea, and letting it go to waste. So I'm going to give you my best, but in return, I ask you for your best. I ask you right now, as we go through this, to see yourself doing what I show you. To make it yours, to see the future show up right now in the present because as a friend and mentor, Bob Proctor told me "thoughts become things. If you see it in your mind, you will hold it in your hand'. Is it okay for us to move forward with this agreement in place? Don't just nod your head or say it to yourself. This is serious stuff. Prove it to me with the simplest yet most powerful of gestures – a yes in the chat box right now."
Step 10: Map out your 'flow.'
Decide what's going to fit where from the previous steps. Are you going to do a shorter and punchier introduction, or are you going to draw things out to build up greater tension? Is your content going to be delivered with intensity or in a more laid-back fashion?
Are you going to cover a lot of ground with the content or are you going to go deep and narrow? How can you use your introduction and content to foreshadow your offer in a positive way? And how can you make it smooth and seamless as you go from introduction to content to offer? Fladlien says your flow is a critical component of your chances for success.
Step 11: Script your entire webinar.
Begin with your pitch. Create slides. Build up value for the offer, then reveal the price. Position the price as a bargain and tell them where to go to buy. Reveal your scarcity. Add bonuses. Crush objections. Sprinkle testimonials throughout. Reverse risk. Close, close, close!
Next, create your content section. Tell them what you will teach them. Break it down into four to seven steps. Fit in testimonials here that validate your claims. Put in your own results. Tease parts of the offer in advance. Now connect these two sections with your transition. Finally, write the introduction. Start with the hook and then establish your authority, get a commitment from them to act on what you'll teach, and strategically place your own results and testimonials in the introduction while hinting at some of the amazing benefits they'll discover throughout the webinar.
Step 12: Tighten it up.
Once you put your webinar in front of an audience, you have to gauge the response. Understand that a good webinar is never actually finished. You need to figure out where people got the most excited or confused and what took long to deliver and how can you make it punchier?
Were their objections you didn't address that you should? Are there things in the webinar you should get rid of completely or replace? What can make it convert better now that you have real-world interaction you can analyze? It takes time to build the perfect webinar. Don't expect it to happen quickly or easily. But it will as long as you don't give up.