Join Us Live to Learn Smarter Ways to Sell with Webinars

When I first heard about “webinar hired gun” Tim Paige, I really was a bit skeptical.

I’ve read and watched a lot of sales education, and most of it is a horrible fit for me.

Either the tactics feel weird and manipulative (and I’m never going to get the personality transplant I’d need to implement them).

Or it’s “just be amazeballs and people will buy.” In other words, don’t do any of that terrible selling, just hope someone feels like making a purchase. Which I can handle on my own, thanks.

Because I do run a business and I like to do things like pay my mortgage, I’ve become a student of conversion, copywriting, and sales techniques that don’t make me throw up in my mouth (not even a little).

“Effective, ethical selling” has been my watchword for the approaches I gravitate to.

And I dig Tim Paige. Here’s why.

I caught Tim’s presentation at Social Media Marketing World this spring, and I took around a zillion pages of notes. Here are some of the things I particularly responded to (and some of the reasons I think he’s a great fit for the Copyblogger audience).

He gets that the audience is the source of all the good things

Everything from Tim’s topic selection to his vocabulary, even down to how he handles hecklers, shows total respect for the audience.

Which is important for all the good-karma reasons, of course. But it’s also critical because that’s where all your business success is created. Our audiences are our customers, our readers, our listeners. They share our content, they link to our sites, and they tell their friends about our products and services.

Your sales strategy can attract potential customers … or it can push them away.

Sales techniques that don’t respect the audience are a little bit like eating the corn you were going to plant for next year’s crops.

You might be tempted to do it if you’re starving — but you’re only buying a brief moment of relief and making your situation worse.

Thankfully, we absolutely don’t have to do that. Because respecting the audience is actually the smartest pathway to an ethical, effective sale.

He takes a “Goldilocks” approach to making the offer

Tim doesn’t counsel “selling from your heels,” where you apologize so much about what you’re selling that your audience sits there hoping you’ll get some therapy.

But he also doesn’t do weird, high-pressure stuff, like hiding the dollar amount of the offer until the end in the hope that you won’t run away screaming. (Tim wrote about that on the blog yesterday.)

Tim teaches a solid, sensible framework that makes it natural for the right person to say “yes” to your offer.

And it gives value to the not right now person, to build your goodwill and reputation with your attendees.

Which means when they are in a good position to buy, you’re the one they remember.

He bases his teaching on evidence

Tim’s advice can sometimes be counterintuitive — if you spend a lot of time studying other people’s advice on “how to sell with webinars.”

His thoughts on how to frame and present the offer, what kinds of bonuses to include, how to handle webinar “disasters” (you’ll have them, if you stick with it long enough), and even things like how much silence to allow in your presentation, all fly in the face of some “conventional wisdom.”

Tim has presented more than 1,200 webinars on all kinds of topics. And he’s made careful note of what works and what doesn’t.

Which is helpful for someone like me, who would prefer not to have to reproduce all of that research on my own, thank you.

Free workshop on Tuesday, June 26, 12:00 Noon Eastern U.S. Time

(Note, this is an updated date)

This month, Tim will host a workshop with us, walking through how to craft a compelling presentation topic that creates a great environment for sales.

He’ll work with us live, so you walk away with a solid outline you can use to deliver your own session. (We even have a handy cheat-sheet, so you can easily create as many scripts as you want down the line.)

Tim’s going to talk about:

• His favorite time-saving tip, so you don’t go down perfectionistic rabbit holes when you’re designing your presentation. Speaking as someone who creates a lot of presentations, I consider this one a must.
• Tim’s favorite “blueprint” structure for an effective webinar. (You truly don’t need to reinvent the wheel on this.)
• A one-minute fix to a common mistake — this can dramatically improve your conversion.
• Where to find a nearly endless supply of compelling ideas for future webinars.
• Some focused tricks for pinning down your topic, if you’re having trouble deciding.

Click here to drop your details, and we’ll send you the registration link, as well as that free cheat-sheet I mentioned.

Incidentally, our last live workshop was pretty jam-packed, and I think this one will be the same or more so, so you may want to swing by just a minute or two early.

Looking forward to seeing you there!