Have you ever been on a teleseminar that just didn’t keep you engaged? You know the ones I’m talking about. The presenter just goes on and on and on and on … yada, yada, yada. And it’s like you, the listener, didn’t even exist.
I’ve been on a few of these calls, but usually not for long. Unless there was something somewhere in the content that I really wanted to hear, I got off the phone. I’ve spoken to a lot of seminar participants (mine and others) and the common sentiment, is “keep me involved and interested or I’m outa here.”
I remember one of my early teleseminars on How To Create Killer Offers. I was really busy and (shame on me) I got lazy. I had a lot of great information, but I didn’t prepare well for the call. It was a small group of about 15 people (coaching prospects). After the normal introductions, I muted the call because one of the listeners was on a cell phone and we were getting background noise. Half way through the call I opened up the lines and asked for questions and comments. Guess what? ….. Dead silence. NOBODY WAS THERE. I bored the living $#%@* out them.
I didn’t keep them engaged and they all got off the line. Boy, did I feel stupid. Well, believe me, I learned my lesson.
As a teleseminar host you absolutely must keep your listeners involved in the call. If you don’t, they won’t stick around for your offer (if you have one), they likely won’t have a very good impression of you, and you may not get the chance to do business with them in the future. It’s plain and simple, keeping listeners involved in your call translates to dollars in your pocket.
So, let’s talk about some great strategies to keep your callers on the line to the very end of the call.
First. STOP right now. Think of a few strategies you could use to effectively keep people on your calls. Go ahead. Do it. It’ll be fun.
Did you think of any? Some people find keeping their listeners involved really easy, others find it a challenge. The good news (some would say really great news) is there are many very easy ways to keep people fully engaged in your teleseminar.
1. Create strong, interesting, relevant content. If your content isn’t interesting and relevant to your audience, you will likely lose them quick.
2. Greet and have people introduce themselves when they join the call. This gets people involed right from the start.
3. Change the rhythm/pace every 3-7 minutes. If you just drone on talking and talking and talking about the same thing at the same pace in the same tone, you will bore your audience to tears. You can use any most of the involement techniques listed here to change the pace of your presentation. I also like to break my talks in to subtopics of around 3-5 minutes. If you are doing a Q&A format, each question offers a chance to adjust the rhythm of the call.
4. Make your call a “safe space” to interact. Acknowledge and encourage participation. Thank and if appropriate reward people who do participate. You could tell people who participate that you’ve written their name down and to send you an e-mail so you can send a reply with a special free report as a reward.
5. Ask the audience lots of questions. Questions get the client to think. In fact, you can lead the audience with questions. You might ask the audience to write the answers down. You can also open the lines and let callers answer. Another strategy is to let callers IM or e-mail answers to you.
6. Open the call up to questions from listeners periodically. You can do this after each major subject area or offer Q&A breaks an periodic intervals (I like to do them at least every 15 min if there aren’t too many people on the call).
7. Take questions via Instant Messager or e-mail during the call. Answer them as they come in.
8. Open the call and YOU ask the listeners questions, ask for feedback, ask for inputs, their experiences related to the current topic. This can’t always be done if you have so many participants that the background noise is high.
9. Conduct a survey during your call. You can ask for responses via e-mail, IM or even send people to a web site with an online form. You might want to offer to share the results at the end of the call. If it is a yes/no set of survey questions, you can have everyone who thinks the answer is yes hit a key on the phone so everyone can hear the key tones and then have everyone who thinks the answer is no hit the same key or a different key. Make sure the key is not a teleseminar function key that mutes or unmutes or causes some other impact to the call.
10. Relate your subject matter to the listeners personal experiences. Get them to associate what you are talking about with their past experiences. For example if introducing the excitement of something new you have to share you might ask: “Can you remember a time you started something new and you were so excited you could hardly sit still? Remember what that was like? It felt good didn’t it? (pause) That’s what this will be like. Imagine …”
11. Use fill-in-the-blank notes. This is a fantastic strategy to keep listeners paying attention. If they want to get the great content in the blank space, they will stay engaged.
12. Have exercises and quizes. You can even offer prizes to the people who e-mail or IM the right answer first. Save the answers for later in the call. You can score
13. Use stories/metaphors. People love stories. Your stories can have outward and hidden messages for the listener. Your stories can help people connect with concepts. Stories allow people to connect internal experiences with the characters and other elements of the story to drive home your messages and help people understand concepts.
14. Paint mental pictures. Use vivid language that helps make your subject come alive. For example, someone selling an internet marketing course could say “once you implement these strategies you will be blown away by the flood of reponses. Imagine your e-mail box full of auto responses saying you got a sale, you got a sale, you got a sale. Picture the big smile on your face as you walk into the bank with all the check you collect. Imagine how great you’ll feel as the teller hands you all the cash you earned … all for just a few hours of easy effort.”
15. Use visual aids and props. Refer the listener to notes, to web sites, things that they would have around the phone they are using to call into your teleseminar. You can ask listeners to bring things to the call such as books, articles ar anything else that might be relevant.
16. Include interesting facts, quotes, and case studies. People love fact quotes and case studies. Further, these can be used to build your credibility, get your message across more effectively and promote your product.
17. Be excited and enthusiastic about your topic. If you can’t be enthusiastic, why would you expect your listener to feel any differently. Get pumped up for your teleseminar, have smile on your face, project energy and enthusiasm in your voice. Some people find it helpful to have a mirror in front of them so they can see themselves. Try this and as you look at yourself during the teleseminar, you’ll get a feel for what you are projecting to the listeners.
18. Use curiosity. Ask a question, then don’t finish it until later. Start a story don’t finish it until later. Promise some interesting or even startling information later in the call.
19. Get the audience to take physical action. For example, to illustrate for hypnotherapist trainees a suggestibility test you could say: “every body stand up and now, go ahead this will be fun, yeah that means you, do it. Put both arms and hands straight out in front of you. With both hands palm down. now close your eyes. Turn the right palm up. Now imagine a heavy dictionary on the right hand pulling, pulling down and then a string attached to the left hand, getting lighter and lighter, lifting lifting. Open your eyes. Has anyones hands moved apart?” Most hands will have moved apart showing suggestibility.
Remember, listener involvement is one of the most critical aspects of a successful teleseminar. There are other critical elements as well, any one of which if done well can can make your event great or if done poorly can lead to a disaster.
Until next time, make it a great day!
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