As we know, in the Wire Harness Industry, face to face meetings are the best sales tool we have to reaching a potential opportunity, but this is not always feasible. We want to be able to “show or demonstrate” our products and provide them with our knowledge of the industry. We currently use Sales Tools such as trade shows, whitepapers, technical articles, case studies and more to position ourselves as the Industry Expert in our field. We know that a good brand carries a lot of weight. It gives our prospects and customers a name to trust, our business an identity to market, and a company name to attach to quality and reliable products. These are all quality sales tools but can take time to become exceedingly effective.
One of the Sales Tools that is most overlooked in this industry are Webinars. Yes, I know what you are thinking, “My company sells “XYZ product, such as terminals, contractors, tubing, actual harnesses, etc., we can’t do webinars on that.” Well, I’m here to tell you, YES, you can, and you should! You are missing a great opportunity to market your product, services and gain insights into an audience that is interested in your product and your knowledge.
There are a couple strategies you can take when hosting a webinar:
- Product Demonstrations: During a webinar, you can showcase your products or services to your attendees and explain how your company can help them achieve their goals. If possible, show your product in action, if you are a software vendor, have an engineer provide a “live” demonstration or if you have other products or services, show a short video and/or provide images, data, charts and/or graphical representation of your solution throughout the webinar. When wrapping up, close the webinar with a live Q&A session. This will give your audience the confidence in your company’s knowledge of your products and give you the insights into what your customers want from your products.
- Case Studies. One of the most attended webinars are webinars that tell a true story. What better stories are there than your actual customer case studies! Whether you highlight using your own customer telling their partnership with your company or you have someone in your company share successful projects, audiences yearn for truthful projects on your product in real world situations. The good and the bad. They want to hear the nuts and bolts of the project and how you reached successful completion and even lessons learned.
- Educational Webinars: Not all webinars have to be about your products or services. Think about hot topics in your industry and host a webinar on that topic. You can invite an industry leader to speak on the topic or someone in your company. The topic can highlight something such as explaining a standard within your industry ex: “IPC/WHMA-A-620” or a new survey that has come out or a Political Topic, cough, cough, I think you get the idea. The benefit of these webinars is that it positions your company as an industry expert. When you conduct these webinars, you will share your knowledge and expertise with your audience. If you can mention your products or services within the webinar, great! If not, that’s ok too. After the webinar, have the webinar tool take them back to your home page. Always put a company slide into the webinar, either at the beginning or at the end, this way you are able to present your company in such a way that your audience leaves your webinar feeling that you know what you are talking about, you will improve your credibility within your industry.
Above I’ve highlighted some great ways to incorporate Webinars as Sales Tools for your organization. I hope it starts your company thinking of possible scenarios to use this low-cost sales tool that will build brand awareness and enable you to engage with more prospects at one time.
Webinars can seem like an over-whelming task but there are many software automation solutions on the market that can assist with the process. They vary in cost but even the low-cost solutions can be easy to use. I’ll leave you with a few tips on how to successfully run your webinar program so that you will be generating new leads and sales in no time.
- Promote Your Webinar Early and Frequently. Give yourself at least 4 weeks to promote your webinar. My recommendation is to send emails at least once a week, social media, website and if possible through an Industry Publication and don’t be afraid to ask your partners or associations to promote through their channels.
- Be Sure to Engage Your Audience. A great benefit to live webinars is a live audience. You have the opportunity to ask your audience questions. Most webinar tools have polling capabilities so plan polls ahead of time and ask these polling questions throughout the webinar. This will give you more insight into your audience and keep the webinar engaging.
- Record the Webinar. Offer an On-Demand version of the webinar. Many registrants try to make the webinar but due to other responsibilities are unable to attend. This is a great way to follow up and offer an On-Demand version of the webinar. You will be able to see who watches the On-Demand version and follow up with them after they have watched it. You can even take it one step further and offer it On-Demand on your website so that new website visitors can watch it but only after they fill out a form giving you their contact information. It’s a great way to repurpose this content.
- Follow Up with Your Audience. To decide what type of follow up is needed, you can have a survey at the end of the webinar to gauge their level of interest, so you’ll know which webinar attendees it may make sense for sales to reach out directly to schedule a demo or call. Or do they go into a marketing funnel. Depends on how you ask the questions. An example would be: Would you like for a member of our Sales Team to contact you ASAP? Or would you like for us to send you more information? Always send a post-webinar email to all attendees with the recording and any other resources that are relevant. Keep that interaction funnel going.
Hopefully this explains all the reasons why I believe that all areas of the Wire Harness Industry can successfully use Webinars as a Sales Tool! If you have any further questions or comments, I would love to hear from you. Please contact me at christine@siebertcg.com.
By Christine Siebert, Owner
Siebert Consulting Group
Featured in Wiring Harness News