According to a market research by Wainhouse Research, more than 90% of sales managers plan to use webinars in 2009. Moreover, it is widely believed that today’s difficult economic situation will only accelerate the use and acceptance of sales webinars. So, what makes webinars such an important tool in sales executives’ eyes?
There are four main reasons that make webinars very suitable for sales teams. Those reasons are:
1. Cost Effectiveness
2. Targeted Reach
3. Interactivity
4. Actionable Insights
Cost effectiveness: Cost effectiveness is the most obvious reason for marketers to move towards webinars. Webinars represent a much more efficient way to reach your target. Production costs associated with sales webinars are very low compared to traditional lead generation techniques such as direct mail, trade shows and telemarketing. In a down economy when companies are striving to cut back on travel expenses, face-to-face meetings, and expensive conventions, webinars offer a highly cost-effective alternative.
Targeted Reach: Unlike direct mailing or cold-calling, you can exactly know to whom you will be addressing in a webinar. You can even get more information about your leads by simply adding some questions on the registration page. This information help you to better understand the needs and the wants of your audience. Sales executives can utilize the information to increase their closing rates.
Interactivity: The interactive webinar tools, such as movie player, application sharing, integrated video and voice sharing allow sales represents to better illustrate their products and services, which yields to a higher ROI.
Actionable Insights: The advantages of webinar continues even after the webinar. Thanks to event reporting, you can get detailed information about your events such as where your attendees came from, how long they stayed in the room, what questions they asked and much more. Sales managers can easily analyze these reports to make more informed decisions about their targets as well as identifying new segments.
In conclusion, webinars are great marketing tools to efficiently communicate with your prospects. If your organization has not used webinars as a sales tool yet, you may have some learning curve disadvantages. However, it is the best interest of your company to join the wast majority of sales people who utilize webinars as a sales tool. And finally, if you are a sales person who is looking for a new job, do not be surprised to be asked about your webinar skills instead of telephone skills in your next interview.
