5 Ways to Shake Up Your Sales Webinars and Wake Up Your Students

By Michael Pedone

Remember your favorite teacher or professor? How they captivated the class with their personality and flare for memorable presentations? How they got you to learn things without even trying?

Well, style is just as important in today’s virtual classroom. If sales webinars are an important training tool in your work, here’s how to make sure you’re one of those unforgettable instructors who can shake up a webinar and wake up their students.

1) Provide relevant, helpful content tailored to the group’s needs.

It sounds so obvious, but if you’re speaking to your students either below their level of knowledge or way beyond it, you’re going to lose their attention. Find out in advance what attendees are really interested in and prepare content that answers their needs.

2) Keep it short and sweet.

In my experience, webinars under an hour seem to be most appealing. (There’s a good reason why so many classes are 40 or 50 minutes long.) If you can’t fit all the information into that time frame, consider creating a series of webinars.

3) Invest in good quality images.

This marks you as a professional and gives your students attention-grabbing eye candy to sharpen their focus. Just make sure the images are carefully chosen so they accurately reflect the message.

4) Use multimedia features like video or flash presentations.

Live video is the next best thing to being in the same room together. And flash is especially useful for demonstrating how things work, like software. Not all webinar services offer these options so select your provider carefully.

5) Interactivity is where webinars really shine.

And using interactive features like polls and quizzes with your students is a great way to engage their interest and challenge them to think. It also helps you as the trainer gauge how much they’ve learned. When you add interactivity to your online training sessions, you’ve got a fun and effective learning environment.

Sure, you could just use a basic PowerPoint presentation with text, bullet points, and clip art. But when I decided to take my training sessions to the next level by creating slick webinars using the tips and tools mentioned above, there were some unexpected and happy results.

For instance, when I used better images and the polling feature in my webinars, there was a spike in glowing testimonials from my students expressing their appreciation for a positive learning experience. Sometimes it’s the little touches that make all the difference.

In Summary

Employers love webinars as a training tool because they’re so cost effective. They also save travel time and can eliminate production and scheduling hassles. Good for the employer. But what about the attendees? If you use my 5 tips to shake up your webinars, you’ll engage your students at a whole new level. And they’ll thank you for it.

About the Author:

Michael Pedone is the founder and CEO of SalesBuzz.com, a online sales training program. As a world-class coach and mentor, Michael developed an original sales training method that has helped companies and individual sellers increase conversions dramatically. Get a free sales lesson here.