Great content, sales pitch or both?

January 6, 2010 at 8:14 PM | Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment
Tags: author, entrepreneur, high content, high quality, leadership, speaker, speaking, teleconference

I dialed in to a teleconference today. Many of us use free teleconferences to build an audience, promote an upcoming event, and share information and a bit of ourselves with potential clients. They are a wonderful, proven tool.

I was curious. The teleconference I dialed in to was given by someone I had never listened to or really heard of before- although she claimed to have hundreds of clients.  I thought this would be a good way to learn more about her and her content before I invested significant time and money with her.

Unfortunately, I was disappointed. The experience did raise an important topic for me. I strongly believe we need to provide high value- high quality, high content- products to our clients. Even if the products are FREE.  After all, everything we do is a reflection of who and what we are.

Today’s teleconference was about 60 minutes long. The first 20 mins. the leader (I won’t disclose her name) spent a few (3 or 4) minutes introducing herself then spent the rest of the time talking about her fabulous upcoming course. The following 20 minutes included the actual content of the call.  There was no drill down or detailed explanation of even one of the points. The final 20 mins. was another push for you to sign up for her upcoming course.

I understand that we use teleconferences to promote upcoming events and we all have to make a buck. In this case a full 2/3^rds of the call was spent on promotion and the content left a lot to be desired.

I tried to look at this from the perspective of a potential customer AND as someone who holds teleconferences.

As a customer my primary interest is the content of the call- not the sales pitch. I don’t mind a sales pitch. I might even be really interested after I hear some great content.  But please don’t hit me right away with the sale, sure you can mention that you’ll talk about the event, give me a few choice tidbits but leave it at that. I’m here for the content first! After you’ve provided some great content I’m happy to listen to the event information for 10- 15 minutes- 20 minutes was over the top. I have even signed up for events I’ve heard about on free teleconferences.

As a presenter you simply must keep your audience in mind all of the time. I don’t know any audience members that dial in just to hear a sales pitch when the title of the teleconference is Top 5 Ways to Create the Perfect Cake!

Provide great content, share some information about an upcoming event and the attendees will come.