you know one untapped resource for sas leads is webinars getting people into a webinar educating them showing them what they need what they've got to have and then getting them into your product funnel so you can give a demo you can close them so many people are missing this completely i talked with chris sharma from webinar grow and he walks us through exactly how to set up a webinar so you can get a bunch of leads in the door and close them quickly give it a shot i think you're gonna love it welcome to sastery in the making the podcast that features the people who made the software world what it is today and the leaders who are shaping the future of technology here's your host matt wallach that's right i am matt wallach i am your host this is sastry in the making and i am really excited to talk to my guest chris sharma chris how you doing great thanks for having me absolutely i'm really really looking forward to today's conversation let me tell everybody about you chris chris is the founder of webinar grow this is a marketing consultancy that really does a great job of launching highly profitable webinars for b2b sas companies worldwide and really webinar grow helps fast-growing sas companies create webinar campaigns to generate leads increase sales and create fans for life i love that saying you have their create fans for life that's fantastic so once again chris thanks for coming on the show hey my pleasure it's i'm excited to be here great great well tell me what's going on lately what's been going on on over at webinar grow and what's coming up for you guys you know just doing webinars taking names but yeah the webinars have been the main offering for the past few years uh we do done for you webinars and then also a consulting program that's more of a done with you and then we're diving into the lead generation space and demo production so the eventual vision is to have a full pre-sales engagement stack where you can say okay we're going to do a webinar and then we also have the outsource sdrs booking appointments and then handling the demo production so that when they do get on the phone with the sales rep they've already seen a lot of the product and can go into a more interactive call oh i completely believe that let's let's talk about why is a webinar a great part of a b2b sas funnel what do you see there webinars really do two things extremely well particularly in the sas world and first is answering the question what do you do which surprisingly a lot of sas companies struggle with this right you go to their website and it says we help you sell more like what the hell does that mean i don't know what you're talking about so being able to see the value prop and see the assassin action and then two answering the question of can you help me so you're with the webinar you're going to have that real-time interaction you can share your social proof you can share your best practices and really have a back and forth at scale and that's actually i got started with this i was doing sales at a tech company and talking to one person at a time losing my voice even though it's like i you know reached the leaderboard but kept losing my voice and i thought i need to talk to more than one person so uh webinars were a natural extension of that absolutely and i love you're saying it can do that i feel like it can also you know kind of get people a little more educated on what's going on out there a lot of times in a webinar you're pushing your product but sometimes they don't know that they have a problem they don't realize that they're there is an issue that they have and the webinar can be an educational tool to share you've got a problem there's a thing that's happening and you need to talk to us because we can solve it absolutely yeah and that's that's actually the biggest mistake i see with sas brands is that they'll do webinars that are too product focused right nobody cares about your product i don't care even products that i'm a customer of i don't want to hear about it you know what i mean like i agree these people email me and i'm like look i don't care about how i use your software i want to care about solving my problem so if you focus on those problems and those desired transformations and then show how your software fits into that transformation that's where the money is i love it so tell me how does webinar grow deliver on this capability because when people think of webinars there's all kinds of different things that might pop into their head what exactly is it that webinar grow helps with so for the our signature program which is the bread and butter up until a couple months ago it was completely done for you so writing the copy you know three thousand four thousand word script building the funnel designing everything co-hosting the webinar repurposing the content writing the emails writing the ads you know you name it really the entire campaign uh was the the offering which is uh a weird business model to be sure because you're like how do you do this i'm like i don't know i don't know why but really taking as much off their plate as possible and we found that for for our customers that the ones that gravitated towards this offering that they knew that it could be valuable for them they had a good product but just didn't have the bandwidth to handle it there wasn't one or two or even three people that had the time or expertise in doing it so being able to take that off their plate was immensely helpful and then a couple months ago we launched a consulting program which is more of a done with you where they do have the bandwidth but just the best practices may be missing or maybe they just want some guidance and so that's been a lot of fun being able to walk them through our playbook and we've had some some good successes on that side and seeing them execute on it is it's a lot of fun oh it's super fun when that happens isn't it yeah so so when you talk about a webinar and you do it you're doing the script you're building it for them is this a one-off webinar is this an evergreen it's always playing or something like that so it'll be both we'll uh we'll do a live version i'm always a fan of if you have something do it live if you have the audience because you get that shot of connecting with them in real time but after that we repurpose that webinar so we'll repurpose that into an evergreen presentation into shorter bite-sized videos social media posts ebooks checklists so you can take that one piece of content and turn it into a dozen different pieces you know the gary vaynerchuk model of of squeezing every bit of value out of it yeah i think that's genius i think not enough companies in sas are understanding that how important that is and how easy it is to create a ton of content once you have one pillar of content and you got you got one piece there like a great webinar that works really well that people get really excited about i'm sure you can turn that into a bunch of different things oh absolutely yeah and i recommend really squeezing as much as you can and being lazy can be a virtue in this sense right you don't have to reinvent the wheel what are we going to talk about you already talked about something great turn that webinar into three different blogs turn it into a video turn it into i did one where years ago where i'd done different webinars with uh allstate insurance and so i took the best pieces of it and said secrets of top allstate agents now this took me five minutes to have an editor cut it together but everyone's like wow this is so cool because people don't have time they don't have time to to absorb every bit of content you have so you can always throw a new angle at them and provide that value in a different way i love it i love it and we by the way we do the same thing with these episodes these podcast episodes they get repurposed all over the place so one episode actually generates about 11 different pieces of content so it's absolutely the way to go nice you mentioned that you know you guys have a great method so what are some of your best tips when producing webinar content so that you can generate leads yeah so i think number one is to get as granular as possible with your audience so for example like when i talk about the lsat insurance i would actually do webinars for different brands of insurance companies right so like instead of someone might say oh we have an insurance technology product okay that's that's a good start but can you get narrower can you get narrow in the role in the use case because you can look at the way people speak the jargon they use and the closer you get to them the easier it is to turn them into a customer because they go oh i didn't i didn't know that you knew so much about my business right because you're just those little bits and i think being a generalist can hurt you in that sense of saying oh we're gonna do one webinar for everybody it's like no if you're gonna do one for ecom let's do one for direct to consumer ecom let's do one for enterprise econ let's do one for people starting out and you can take the same content the same eighty percent of it and use the remaining twenty percent to customize it so again you're not reinventing the wheel every single time but you are personalizing this content and then once you do that once you have a you've got your ideal customer zeroed in right you know okay this person you know this ideal person is our our buyer then to create your content you're not just coming up with it from the vacuum go out and do your research what are they saying what do they say in their g2 reviews or the cafeteria reviews what do they say in those facebook groups when they're complaining about a vendor what do they say in their own blogs what do they say to their customers right the easiest copywriting hack in the world is to take what your customer's saying and just say it back to them right i don't know how many times people said like how do you know so much about ai like i don't know anything about ai i just took what you told me and wrote it and wrote it down so i think that's really having that that structured empathy with your customers going to be extremely helpful not just for webinars but any type of content and then when you're doing that so on the content side you've got that and then with your channels starting with the lowest hanging fruit first right so i always say hey start with your opt-in subscribers and that's one of our my red flags if someone comes to me and says hey we want to do a webinar but they don't have anybody on a list i'm like okay well that means your other marketing is probably not working right because someone says oh i've got i'm great at cold email it's like okay well you should have some people that you have conversations with right oh well no then you're not good at cold email right exactly so starting with that and then yeah and you know going with channels that are you know cold emails are great channel um influencer marketing is a great channel you know a partner who else serves that audience paid traffic can be great and again as you dial in each channel then add a webinar to it so again you don't have to do 10 different things start with one or two and then really focus on creating a journey so not just the live event but what happens afterwards because i always tell people your money comes in the two or three weeks after that live event sometimes people whip out their credit card on the call that happens but especially like you were mentioning the higher ticket iltv sales you've gotta have a conversation there's not one person you might have to talk to the cto you might have to talk to the i.t director so how is that follow-up connected to your webinar what's your email nurturing sequence like what's your retargeting sequence it's a huge the easiest money maker i think in ad in pbc ads is a solid specific retargeting oh yeah right yep because i see sometimes people go oh you know we struggle with google ads we struggle with facebook ads and i'll just say put 10 bucks a day in retargeting oh my god this is unbelievable like yeah because they know who you are don't start with cold traffic like you're going to lose a ton of money start with what's working and then expand on it yeah people already know you i mean absolutely it's the way to go um so yeah i i like what you're saying of drive traffic to that webinar from different sources of course you've got the ads you've got the cold email all kinds of different sources i think that's something that i've struggled with is i usually just say okay here's our webinar we're getting people there from this thing which is i don't know why i never thought of it otherwise because i in all my other areas i have multiple channels directing traffic to something but that's that's genius to have multiple different things pointed at that webinar so that that can be kind of your hub to generating the lead getting people booked on the calls exactly yeah and like in you know you can have the active and passive traffic right like you know it's looking on your website you've got the opt-in for training that's a great place to have it hey check it out i do the same thing right if you want to check out a trainer you can go to my website i walk through this stuff in 20 30 minutes and have that there you can have that as a cta at the end of a blog post you can have it in any other bits of content you know a sneaky fun thing to do is if you release an ebook in the hyperlinks in the ebook put a link to your webinar hey you want to learn more click here right so it's just just as many ways as possible um and then obviously as you're adding on paid traffic you got to be more cognizant of your conversions but i think that's the future is really going to be this holistic marketing where you've got an ebook or a blog or a video and you're consuming all of it in different ways because you're going to discover what that person wants with regards to content oh very true completely agree what are you seeing chris are some of the biggest mistakes when you see when creating a webinar so if people do it before they get to you maybe you look at it like oof what what are some of those mistakes number one is too boring i don't know what people are thinking they think they're in a conference room where everyone's locked inside and they can't leave but man there are some boring webinars out there you got to treat it like a tv show you got to treat it like a netflix show where you can click away at any time like look you've got to front load with your best content keep your intro short i don't want to hear about where you went to school i don't care you know what i mean like i've seen some of these with you like when i got my nba it's like shut up dude please please shut up right i got stuff to do and so i think again front loading the content and really making the content memorable and actionable so i always tell people like if you have one transformation that you're offering hey we're gonna learn how to double your lead conversion right give them two three bite-sized mini wins in that process and then they can walk away from it and a good test of this like hey how do i know if my content is good i always say invite your customers to the webinars and be ready well this is supposed to be for lead generation i'm like do you do not think it's gonna be helpful for your lead generation if your customer is in the chat going man i love this part of the software like it's easy amazing right yeah absolutely and then even having your customers on i do this all the time where i'll say hey who's you know who's your top customer who loves you because usually hey if someone loves your your product they're probably killing it in their areas that's actually my very first webinar i did was that one of the number one insurance agents in america because i didn't know anything at the time it's certainly not about that market so i said hey what do you do i just asked him like why are you so good at your job and so that's an easy way to create content too right so again take the pressure off yourself and think about what your customer wants and then finally having a clear no-brainer offer what you don't want us to do some great presentation to get to the end go okay guys well you know just uh reach out if you have any questions like what that's like you know going to a a singles bar and talking up a stranger and then saying well nice meeting you and leaving like no ask for their number do whatever you got to do so having a free trial contact us for a demo do a marketing blueprint do a strategy call do something to get them to create a micro commitment and then take that next step yeah you got to have a call to action something for them to take i love that take that next step from where they are now because they've made a commitment to spend time with you here on this webinar that's one level of commitment get them to that next level that's really what marketing is too many times people think hey we got to get them all the way to purchase no if you have them just step down it makes it much easier for them to be able to do it and easier for you to get more people to take those little steps and this webinar thing sounds like a fantastic little step as part of your funnel i think it's great chris awesome yeah and that's exactly right i think just walking them down that staircase is is so key and i think probably a very missing piece of a lot of people's strategy it's like there's this ugly gap between marketing and sales right where it's like okay we made an ebook to hey get on the phone with me and it's like there's a whole desert that you have to cross and connecting that's i think honestly like if at the end of day like hey what do i do well it's just bridging that gap between marketing and sales that's what the webinars do and that's what our new stuff for new product demos and things like that are going to do as well because it's sometimes just the lack of alignment or or lack of focus on that journey can make people make teams feel siloed right because like the marketing team is doing one thing the sales team is doing something else and like hey what are they doing so if we can get on the same page it makes everything much easier i totally agree so how important is education in this process i mean when you do a webinar you're thinking hey i i need to get them to that next step so you're kind of focused on creating those call to actions or you're or you're trying to get them emotional but how about education how educational should these webinars be it should be i mean really 80 educational right right you're there they're there for a reason like look i got stuff to do i'm not going to your webinar unless i'm going to learn something and not just learn something but learn something actionable that will help my business that gives me a clear concrete transformation so i can go and say oh this is how i double my landing page conversions this is how i automate my qa for my data warehouse or whatever that is right so like i want to look at a clear benefit and the obvious benefits are the same ones you do with any marketing right are you saving time are you saving the money are you making the money are you increasing productivity are you you know giving transparency where there wasn't before like what is that right are you are you able to encapsulate what you're offering in the webinar with some core desire like that and showing them how to do it i always say like the software is just a piece of it right i'm gonna show you how to do x now once we go through these best practices some of these best practices may have nothing to do with your software but it's something you need to know if you're a cto if you're uh an i.t director if you're uh we did one for the aviation industries for uh private pilots right this is what you have to do for your record keeping which is that webinar right you got to do this and this and then here's how we do it with the software wow isn't that cool how we do it now you could do this manually you could do this with other people but this is how we do it and then the software sells itself right once you show the value prop and show the use case walk them through it hey do this this and i think as a side note as a rant this is what the reason we started doing started doing product demos for some of our clients is that we would go they were they're asking about like hey we want to do these demos and so many people don't have anything showing their software in action and it's such a simple thing but it's like could you just show me what it looks like i don't want to see any stock photos i don't want to see any illustrations can you for the love of god show me what i do when i click into your crm could you just show it to me right it doesn't have to be overly produced it doesn't have to be a hollywood production and i think honestly the one secret sauce the webinars that we just i always stress like hey we're going to do a live demo we're going to do a mini demo on this call like no no i want screenshots and i'll just refuse i'm like no no we're going to do i don't care if your software breaks if it breaks that's your problem because that's something people want to see right like when i when i want to you know even doing a demo with somebody right it's like why i'm doing a demo am i doing a demo to talk about my problems no i want to see what they can do for me so i think if you can you lead up front with that content that value prop these best practices and then show how that product fits within those best practices so it's not like a full demo that's where that's where the magic happens because you're not talking about how great your product is you're letting your product shine within that context yeah i i completely agree and i think too many times by the way i as you know i coach people on how to create and give amazing demos and it happens too many times where they just show screenshots even within the demo not just on the webinar but in the demo they're just showing screenshots or just showing a powerpoint of the of the product the beautiful part of a demonstration is that you can show things happening you can show the product working doing its thing living and breathing and that is critical for a buyer to see and connect that you can solve their problems that your solution delivers because they saw it they saw it happen and we're very lucky that we're in the software world that we have the ability to do that you know you can't have somebody from new york buy a caterpillar tractor from california and have them experience it like you can with software so it's very powerful don't just show screenshots actually walk them through it and do it the right way i love it i completely agree chris and i i want to ask you you've been able to start and grow this very successful company webinar girl you guys are doing awesome what tips would you give to other founders just starting out good question um i think getting clear on your ideal customer even overly clear would probably be the thing that's going to be most helpful because i found when i first started i was saying oh i work with software founders that's you know who i how the business i'd worked in in the past i worked in a tech company so that's who i wanted to work with but if you can get as narrow as possible where you know the revenue the the role the sales cycle whatever like all the little pieces of the puzzle that are that you can help the most with it makes it so much easier to not only deliver on your solution but also to market to them right because my my biggest mistake i think i made early on was i was doing 10 different things because people come in and say hey can you do this and i go yeah yeah i can do that and then i'd find out okay well this person has a startup they haven't launched at all we're writing blogs this person wants a webinar and i finally have to stop and say okay wait who are we working with let's get clearer on that because it makes it easier to create systems it makes it easier to take best practices from one customer and map them on to another right because if it's like oh i've got one enterprise person and i've got one person with an iphone app it's like well there's not really a lot of learning you're going to do one from one that applied to the other and also being able to look at what that customer needs versus what you can do yourself that was the other big mistake i made was i i said well i'm good at writing and i'm good at talking right so with the webinars and so i'll never forget like this one person this one customer years ago and i said well can you handle the landing page design and development because i'm not really good at that and it's like well yeah but couldn't you hire somebody to do that and like and it's so silly but i went i could do hire somebody to do that i don't have to do it i could hire somebody and if so now it's like oh yeah my design is amazing my landing page developer is amazing the zapier automation expert's amazing so getting getting out of that that rut of feeling like you are the only person delivering focus on what you do best create systems and an accountability for for everything and then look for people that are great at it because nobody's great at everything right and i'm always very skeptical when someone says like oh i'm a writer i'm a designer i'm a this is that i'm like you're probably good at one of those things and the rest you're probably okay at so i think i think that was the biggest shift i think for me was being able to look at what i did best that zone of genius and then slowly bringing on people to handle the things that either a i'm terrible at or b just don't like doing that's exactly what it is and i've coached my clients to kind of make a list of all the things that they do and anything that they don't like or don't want to do or they don't know how to do get that taken care of by somebody else and i love that you figured that out that is awesome advice chris um we have unfortunately reached the end of the day of our session here this has gone really fast for me because i've loved it i've soaked up everything you've said but i want to know how can our audience learn more about you and webinar grow yeah if you just go to webinargrow.com uh you can check out some of our uh testimonials and other stuff there and then i'm also on linkedin chris sharma so hit me up anytime okay perfect we'll put that in the show notes for everybody out there so chris thanks for coming on the show this was great thanks matt i appreciate it this is a lot of fun absolutely likewise and for everybody out there please make sure you're subscribing to the show once you subscribe you'll get notified of new amazing innovators and creators like chris and that way yeah exactly somewhere it's down here somewhere somewhere down here uh and you'll be able to see all of the cool stuff get all the great knowledge that we're putting out there for you so thanks for listening thanks for watching and we'll see you next time take care [Music]