How to make money with teleseminars
From: Jonathan Mizel
Cyberwave Media, Inc.
Fifteen years ago, we started using a marketing technique many people are only now discovering. This method has personally put over $250,000 into our pockets, and has generated thousands of new customers for our business.
It has increased our credibility in the marketplace, given us awesome new bonuses to share with clients, and helped us to determine exactly what people want to buy.
And the best thing is, there's a killer application for nearly any business owner, from e-book publisher to restaurant owner to health club; even consultants, retail stores, and service businesses can use this strategy to make more money!
What is it? Quite simply...
The Power Of The Teleseminar!
Teleseminars are an awesome way to stay in touch with your best prospects and customers. They are perfect for launching a new product, training your affiliates or employees, or simply testing the marketability of an idea.
Just recently, I was interviewed by Preston Campbell, author of Teleseminar Success Secrets, about how to use this amazing technique in your business. What follows is a comprehensive discussion about setting up a system to deliver content, capture contact information, and make more money.
Preston: Hello, this is Preston Campbell with Profit Zone Marketing. Today, we are very fortunate to have with us Jonathan Mizel. Jonathan is one of the legends and true pioneers of Internet marketing, with a background in direct mail and online advertising since 1993, when most people still didn't know what the Internet really was.
He's highly sought-after to participate in teleseminars with other marketers, and conducts many of his own. One of the most interesting is his Cyberwave Coaching Club, where once a month, from the comfort of his home in Maui, Hawaii, he coordinates coaching sessions with members from around the globe. Jonathan, thank you so much for joining us today. Could you start by giving us a little background about you and how you've come to use teleseminars in your business?
Jonathan: Well, it's kind of funny because I was thinking about it the other night and realized the very first teleseminar I ever attended was about 15 years ago. I was in the insurance industry, and we had a sales trainer in Cincinnati and our office was in San Francisco. We were flying him out every week to work with us, which was getting expensive. At the time, we had a sales force throughout California and Nevada, and it was cumbersome to bring everyone in to our office as well.
This sales trainer said, "You know what, why don't we all try a call-in one day?" At the time, there was only one service that would do this. You had to go through your phone company and it was very expensive. But I marveled because I didn't have to go into work that day. I could call in and attend the seminar in my PJs. And I thought, "This is the coolest thing in the world!"
We had people from all over the West coast on the call, and the whole thing was being led by a guy in Cincinnati. To me, that was an amazing way to do a seminar.
It also taught me that a lot of the content from a live event does translate well to a teleseminar. And in some ways, you get even more participation since people who don't pipe up in a live meeting because they are shy often ask all sorts of questions on the phone.
And I'll tell you, we had some really productive sessions. We ended up having the sales trainer come out just once a month, and three times a month we did teleseminars instead.
Preston: You certainly pointed out one of the things I love about teleseminars, and that is the ability to be at home and relax and do it in the comfort of your own environment, instead of having to go to an office setting.
Jonathan: Right. And the other thing is you eliminate that travel time and expense of physically getting together with other people. It's so easy to call in, whether you're in England or South America or Australia or wherever. It's a wonderful way to interact with others.
We use teleseminars for a couple of things.
1) We use them to announce new products to our customers and affiliates: Just recently, we rolled out a new product to our affiliates, and I sent an e-mail to everybody, and maybe it got read, maybe it didn't. I certainly couldn't put the excitement as if I individually called each of my affiliates and said, "You know, I got this really great new product and the conversion rate is this, and the sell-through and visitor value are this, and the sales letter's here, and here are the tools to promote it." If I could pick up the phone and individually call every one of those affiliates, I would make a lot more money than if I send out an e-mail saying, "Hey, I've got this new product."
So what we decided to do is have a teleseminar. We had a tremendous number of our affiliates get on the phone, and they listened as we gave them the stats as if we were calling each one individually, and darn if they didn't go out and start selling stuff right away.
We really jazzed them up. It was informational in that we were telling them about the new product and the new tools, but it was motivational in that we talked about some of our affiliates who were really making sales, and even discussed some of the techniques they use.
So even though it was a free call, we didn't charge any money for it, we immediately saw a surge in sales. And not just in the product we had released, but in all of our products. All of the affiliates who got on the call were excited. And man, they all started mailing to their list and sending pop-up traffic to their affiliate pages and a few made some very good money that month.
We use teleseminars as an information conduit, where we're going to give information about a new product, a new service, or something else we are doing. It's a great way to inform people.
Alex Mandossian taught me teleseminars provide what we call a touch-point. In other words, unlike e-mail or a letter or any other sort of written contact, you can really elaborate and get emotional and excite people with your voice.
We've also done teleseminars to announce physical seminars, where we'll have a free call to talk about a workshop or other upcoming event.
2) We do paid teleseminars and create products: We've done this a few times, where we mail to our list and say, "We're having a teleseminar," and it's a cheap and fast way to develop a product. We'll charge $29.95 or $39.95, and the topic is either a standalone subject, where we deliver the value right there on the call, or it's a precursor for something more expensive, like an additional course or consulting.
We did a promotion about six months ago, where we charged $29.95 for an hour-long content call. And then at the end, we had a brief 90-second promotional close. I think we must have closed about 40 or 50 percent on the upsell, which was not a hard pitch.
So teleseminars not only are a good free product, they make a good paid or lead product.
Preston: That makes a lot of sense. If it's a promotional call, it gets people excited. And if it's a paid call, you're going to be able to close people a lot easier because they have paid to participate and clearly it's a topic they have interest in.
Jonathan: That's right. I want to elaborate for a moment on the idea of a paid product. If someone has paid you for something, even if it's just $29, they've qualified themselves as a real, genuine customer. They are really interested in the topic.
If you've got a product that's more expensive, like a course or coaching services, you can use an inexpensive paid teleseminar as a lead product, which brings people in and qualifies them.
3) The last thing we use a teleseminar for is our monthly coaching call: It's for people who love marketing and it's totally unscripted. And if you love marketing, you'll love the call. If you don't love marketing, you'll hate the call. Because all we do is talk about marketing.
Our now closed Coaching Club is a paid membership program that costs a minimum of $250 a month to join. Our refund rate is very low, and in fact, we still have some of the original members from when we started two years ago, which tells me you can have a regularly scheduled teleseminar on just about any topic you like, and people who share your interest will pay to participate.
So you can also use teleseminars to deliver paid content, like what you are doing with your course, Preston, like what we do with our coaching club, like what some other marketers do with a series of calls, or even a one-hour call. It's just a good interactive way to share information with people, especially those who are auditory and learn better by listening.
Preston: That's a fascinating perspective on how to use a low-cost, paid teleseminar as a lead-in to a higher-priced item. When you do a free teleseminar versus a paid teleseminar, do you see a lot of difference in the quality of participation you get from attendees?
Jonathan: Well, it depends. They say it's all in your list. We've done some paid seminars, where we mailed to customers, had phenomenal response and high-quality attendees with great questions who give back to the group.
So the quality of the prospect is important. We've done general mailings to prospects, and I find the difference between a paid and a free teleseminar is not nearly as dramatic as the difference between mailing to customers versus non-customers.
Alex Mandossian and I did a free teleseminar recently. It was a five-hour Q&A session, just answering questions. The only people we invited were customers and everybody on the call had some exposure to Alex or I. They'd spent some money with us already, and they were familiar with our marketing philosophies.
So we did it kind of as a thank you to our customers. We just wanted to pay them back. And especially since there are so many teleseminars now, where people are just getting a big sales pitch, we said, "Forget that, we're not going to have any pitches at all. We're just going to reward our customers with the kind of content we know they are interested in." The product is called MarketingBraindump.com.
So it's more about who you're mailing the offer to than how much you're charging. Does that make sense?
Preston: It sure does. And you just hit on something critical that may not be obvious to our listeners. You're using these calls, like this one with you and Alex, to build a relationship with your customer base. You may not see a sale off the backend of that phone call immediately, but you'll see a sale next week or next month or next year because you've built a relationship and you've enhanced that with your teleseminar.
Jonathan: It's funny you would say that, because we literally did not pitch anything on the MarketingBraindump call. I don't even remember if we gave our URL. The key to that type of call is to just have an existing relationship. There were a couple of reasons we did it:
First, because it was a question and answer call, we received questions. And guess what we did with those questions? We learned what our customers are really interested in. So it was a massive market research experiment, whether it started out like that or not.
Second, it helped us really touch and get in touch and interact with our best customers. And these are the people who support our businesses.
When I look back at all the clients who bought stuff from me in the last 10 years, those are the people who I have a lot of loyalty to because they have taken good care of me. They have allowed me to live in Maui, to have a nice car, and to make a good living. So I want to help them the same way they've helped me. It's reciprocity.
So there is a research element, and there is reciprocity. And a funny thing happened. A couple hours after the teleseminar, we checked and there was a surge of orders for all sorts of our products. Some people renewed newsletters, some people upgraded to the new amazingpopups.com course, some people bought new products, and a whole bunch of people signed up for our affiliate program.
When you touch your customers, they touch right back. The key is, it only works if your products are good and you really have something to offer to people. Teleseminars quickly eliminate marketers who have nothing to offer or aren't real. People can sense in your voice whether you're telling the truth and whether you have integrity and whether you are walking the walk or just working down at the plant, pretending to be an expert at something.
Preston: You bring up a good point there. You need to have a quality product or service. And people may be asking themselves, "Can I use a teleseminar with my product or service?" Is there any kind of limitation? Can anybody do this?
Jonathan: I think teleseminars can be used for any business. A while back, we didn't have the facilities that are available today. That's why we used to send tapes and CDs. But now, you can turn your audio presentation into an event!
Because today's technology is so advanced and we've got teleconference services like Sparks and Voice Text, you can have a teleseminar on very short notice for an affordable price.
Here's an idea: Invite your top 20 customers, and do an interview with an expert in your field. Maybe it's carpet cleaning, or restaurant supply, or whatever. After the interview is done, open the lines and you let the real, live customers interview the real, live expert.
That's something anyone can do. Look at what that does, it gives you content you can send out to everybody on your list and post on your Web site, it helps train you and your staff with regard to what's really important to the customer, and it gives your best 20 customers the opportunity to spend some time with you and an expert that's going to help them.
It's huge credentialization and it creates something called reciprocity. If you understand this (and you guys who don't, read the book Influence by Robert Cialdini), it creates a situation where if you do something for them, they're going to do something for you.
Preston: That's a great example. As my friend Joel Christopher says, that's a golden nugget. What about tapes? Certainly, one of the great things about teleseminars is there are a lot of backend products you can create, tapes being one of them. What are some other backend products might you create from a teleseminar?
Jonathan: Well, there are a couple of them. My friend Declan Dunn, wrote a book called The Complete Guide To Affiliate Programs. I remember talking to him about it and he said he was going to write it. And then two or three weeks later, it was out. And I said, "Man, you're a fast writer." He said, "Oh, I didn't write it." I said, "What did you do?"
"I just sent e-mails to a bunch of people saying, "Can I interview you," and we did. And then I had them transcribed and turned them into a book. I spent more time on the sales letter than on the product itself."
And the reason he could get away with that is because he was using the content from other people who had agreed to do the interviews because they wanted the publicity.
So the backends are phenomenal. You can actually turn the tape and transcript into a product itself. You can use that as a product. You can make CD's, you can make tapes, you can put the transcripts into a binder, or just publish them in PDF.
You know, one really neat way to go is a frequently asked questions application: Take a question and answer session, the most asked questions of your business - and again, it doesn't matter what you're selling, you could be selling custom tennis rackets or golf clubs or hot rods or whatever - take the most asked questions and put them up as an audio file on your website, just a 10-minute or 15-minute segment. What a credibility booster! It's also a great awareness raising process for your customer and a great way for you to eliminate some customer support too.
Preston: That's a great idea. How much can you charge for a teleseminar?
Jonathan: In terms of prices, let me give you a great quote by a marketing guru by the name of Ted Nicholas.
I did a seminar with Ted about 10 years ago, and asked him, "Ted, how much is the most amount of money you can charge for a product that you're selling with a four-page sales letter?"
And he looked at me and said, "How good of a copywriter are you? Because if you're not very good, not a lot. But if you're very good, you can probably get $5,000 or $10,000 or $15,000."
So your ability to sell anything - and this is sad, but it's true - has very little to do with the quality of the product itself. It has to do with the marketing.
Now, as you and I both know, if you've got great marketing and a bad product, you're going to burn your customers and they're going to be upset. So the quality has to be there, but I think you can get just as much for the transcript as you can for the product itself, for the initial call, which would be somewhere in the $50 to $200 range, slightly less if you are qualifying them with a lead product.
Preston: That's very interesting. Jonathan, would you point our listeners to any specific sources on how they might get a better handle on writing ad copy?
Jonathan: If I were lost on a desert island and I only had one copywriting book, I would make it Tested Advertising Methods by John Caples. And we've got a classic copywriting resource you can go to at http://www.twipress.com/mizelclassics.htm. It's basically the classics of marketing. I also recommend The Robert Collier Letter Book and How To Write Advertising That Sells, by a Clyde Bedell.
You know the very best way to learn how to write? Just find great ad copy that's been running a long time, so you know it works, and rewrite it either by typing it or in your own hand. This exercise will help you get in the mindset of what really good copy is all about.
They say the best copywriters are the best salespeople. So if you don't think you're a good copywriter but you are a good salesperson, you definitely have everything you need inside you to be a great copywriter too. You just need to bring it to the surface with little bit of training and some resources.
Preston: Jonathan, let's talk a little bit about something I'm sure is on the minds of a lot of people listening to this. They have a topic and want to do a teleseminar. How do they set one of these up?
Jonathan: Well, let's make a couple of assumptions. We're assuming you have a web site and a group of people you can mail to (your list), and you have some sort of topic that's hot.
Unlike an e-book, you don't have to spend weeks and weeks writing. You can take all the work you'd do with a normal product and cut it by two thirds. You do have to write a sales letter and have an order processing system, but that's pretty much it outside of hiring the teleseminar service. The product itself is delivered live, in real time, or is recorded.
Let's talk about different teleseminar formats, because some are easier then others. The format that I like the best is find an expert - and we'll talk about how to get experts to work for you for free - and get the expert on board to do the teleseminar. Go for 60 minutes of Q's and invite your best customers, those who will have good questions, and have an unscripted call.
And that does a few things. You see, when someone does a canned presentation, from a script or talking from their notes, they talk about what they want to talk about. They get the information out there that they want to get out there. However, questions remain in the minds of the people who are listening, and they are all secretly saying, "I hope he answers my question!"
One way to make the teleseminar really effective as a learning tool is to open it up and get feedback and questions from people. The reason I love this format is because sometimes, just a couple of really good questions can move the entire presentation up two, three, or four notches.
Of course, this can be a little dangerous because you never know what's going to come out, but I find impromptu stuff really produces the best information. Plus, you might find somebody in the audience who even has more experience in an area than the speaker, elevating the level of the call far beyond what was originally intended.
Preston: Are there any strategies you employ to help you manage your callers, so you can have more control over a potentially embarrassing situation?
Jonathan: I'll tell you, you need to be very careful. Now, on our coaching club call, it's fully participatory so it's wild and open and free. And for your $250, if you want to pipe up, you can pipe up.
On content calls or where we have a presentation, we tend to use the mute button. It mutes everybody except for the speaker and the host. I would say if you're mailing to prospects or suspects, you're going to be a little more judicious with the mute button than if you're mailing to customers.
If the people on the call are good, if they're quality customers, they're going to respect you and you're going to respect them and I'm not afraid of an embarrassing question. I'm afraid of someone mouthing off and using profanity or slandering somebody. That, I know, is going to offend a lot more people.
Make sure your content matches your audience. A lot of people think a free teleseminar is free, but it's really not. I bill $350 an hour for my time when consulting. So if I want to spend an hour listening to a teleseminar, that's costing me $350 I could be getting working with a client.
And I'm certainly not alone. Most people in our business value time above money. So the worst thing I think you can do is have a seminar where you're promising one thing, you're going to reveal this big secret, and then the whole thing turns into a pitch; or you're supposed to talk about one subject, but you actually talk about something different. Be mindful to maintain continuity between your content and relevancy with the expectations you create.
Preston: Can you kind of walk through the process you go through in pulling one of these together?
Jonathan: Typically, I'll go through the same process as when I create a product, I'll think of what the topic is first. And I'll make sure it's hot. Because again, people can't be expected to log on, even if it doesn't cost them any money, and spend their time listening to drivel. We want to come up with something that's not just hot and not just current and topical, but something there's a real passion for.
If you ever want to know what people are talking about and interested in, look at the discussion boards, go look at the top searched-for keywords, look at your e-mail, look at your spam, look at the pop-ups hitting your screen. See what kind of solutions people are selling, what kind of stuff people are promoting, what's out there in the stream of consciousness.
Once you choose your topic, then you've got to choose your guest and/or speaker. I'll usually choose someone who is known in their field, someone who is respected. And even more so, someone who really understands their material, and not just how to speak.
In fact, I'd rather have someone who's a little awkward as a speaker but who really knows their stuff because the audience and I can get the information out of them, as opposed to a really hot speaker who's slick and knows his presentations but they can't go into any depth.
Typically, we'll figure out how many people we're going to have, and whether we're going to charge for it. And the very first thing I do outside of picking the topic and calling the speaker and saying, "Would you be interested," is write the sales letter.
We've got multiple in house lists we can mail to, so that takes care of promotion. If we're charging, we'll set it up through our affiliate program so we can pay commissions, or through our real-time AuthorizeNet order processing system so we can take orders online.
And really, the whole goal is just to facilitate an easy and enjoyable sales process. For a teleseminar, it's pretty easy. You don't need a digital delivery system. All you need is a mailing list to send the offer to, a sales letter that sells the event, and an autoresponder that confirms the time, number, and call-in code.
Preston: Jonathan, that list doesn't need to be your list, necessarily, because you can probably JV with somebody.
Jonathan: You can JV with people. Then you start looking at the revenue share opportunities. If it's a paid seminar, it's a whole lot easier because you simply negotiate a split. If someone else is going to be mailing their list of 50,000 or 100,000 and they have a vested interest in the event, I usually have them write part of the sales letter.
I'll start it, and then say, "Could you spend some time on this letter? I want to make sure it's right for your audience," which not only saves me some time and energy but it really does help the audience respond better. Yanik Silver knows his list better than me. Alex Mandossian knows his list better than me. So why should I write the whole letter? I'll do the first draft, and then they can do the punch-up, change the headline, do what they need.
Once the sales letter is done and you mail, and you've collected the money, it's just a matter of following-up once or twice before the event itself and saying, "Okay, we're ready to go," and reminding people of the date and time.
During the event, I recommend working off an outline. In the case of a really hot topic with a scripted presentation, it's nice to send the questions out to the audience or maybe just the topics that one is going to talk about.
If it's something like a coaching club call, where it's largely impromptu, you can't do it beforehand, but we always make the tapes available afterwards, and then we'll have the transcriptions for people who prefer to read it instead.
We have used nearly all the Teleseminar companies, and the one we use now is VoiceText.com. You use Black & White. They're all about the same in terms of pricing, some are a little more, some are a little less. You can expect to pay probably $100 for 200 people for an hour, something like that. It's not a lot of money. It's significantly less than the time and hassle to put together an e-book. And it's a LOT easier to execute than a physical seminar.
Preston: That's great. And that is a very reasonable price to pay.
Jonathan: Right. Now, there are a couple of other accessories I'm going to recommend to people, if that's okay. Get over to Hello Direct and pick up one of the best headsets you can find, because the cheap ones will ruin your voice and make it all fuzzy. But a good one will really help you. You can walk around and you can talk and work on the computer at the same time. Like I'm walking around and I've got my computer on, I've got my coffee. I don't have to have the phone with me or be restricted. It facilitates creative energy. So using a headset is great and very important.
Most of the voicemail companies and conference companies have a record feature, and they do the recording for you for a fee. I recommend a back up and I do this myself using the Radio Shack Telephone Recording Control Device. It's about $29 and it's the best quality for the price I have found.
And you also need a clear phone line. We used to use a cordless, but you've got to be careful if you've got static and noise in the air. Generally, it's best to be on a landline with a high-quality headset.
And finally, use your mute button judiciously, and let people on the call know beforehand how to mute themselves.
Preston: That's great. In fact, let me just point out to our listeners that whenever you do a teleseminar and you have a large group of people, it's important to let them know, in advance of the call, what the teleseminar etiquette is. And maybe a quick reminder at the start of the call on how to mute themselves, that will help a lot.
One of the things our listeners might be wondering is how do I get a speaker for my teleseminar? Are these people going to be accessible?
Jonathan: Well, it's not difficult to get speakers to work with you. The key is to find people who are knowledgeable in their field, call them, and say "I've got a teleseminar I want you to speak at, and I'll make it real easy for you and I'll prepare you, and you can pitch your website and you can promote your URL. And any money you make, you can keep, plus you get the rights to a professionally prepared presentation."
You basically make it a "can't refuse" offer. I've called speakers and said, "Hey, do you want a really killer bonus?" And they're like, "Yeah!" And I said, "Okay, let me interview you on this topic, and then you can take that and make it a bonus of your product."
When you call someone and say, "Do you want a really killer bonus with a professionally-recorded interview with me and you," it's a lot different than saying, "Can I take an hour of your time and maybe an hour beforehand, so I can sell a product you help me create and you get nothing?"
You need to position this to the expert or the person who is speaking in a way that it makes sense for them. And the easiest way is to give them reprint rights to their section they can use it as a bonus. Let them know that they can promote their URL and even mention a special offer, if they can do it subtly.
Sometimes, people are going to want money. If we hire someone, my main question is, how quickly can I make the money back and make a profit?
Preston: That's great. On this arrangement, is there any back end potential for them as well?
Jonathan: No, the only money they get is the fee we pay them. That's what they are giving up. Unless you're doing a full-blown JV, where no money exchanges hands because everybody's putting in their effort, where the development fee is split, sales letter costs are split, mailing or media costs are split, it's you taking the risk, and thus, you keep all the upside. But you know what, many people who start out asking for money can be convinced to do it for the publicity if you are nice and respectful and make it easy for them to participate.
Preston: That's a great observation, don't be intimidated. When you ask somebody to be your speaker, one, you're flattering them. Two, you are giving them credibility. And three, there's an opportunity for them to get business because of the exposure. Money doesn't have to change hands here.
Jonathan: No, not at all. I just talked to a guy yesterday who has done joint ventures with the biggest names in the business, and he's only been around about a year and a half. He said, "People keep asking me how did I get so-and-so to do a JV with me. How did I get this guy to mail his list of 200,000?" So I said, "How did you?" And he said, "I did just what you do. I picked up the phone and asked - Hey, you want to do a joint venture?"
Here is a great tip for getting the most out of your speakers. The best way to get people involved is to do exactly what you did with me Preston.
Call them beforehand, introduce yourself, say hi, talk about what the objectives are, talk about an outline, provide a good, strong list of open-ended questions, review those questions, tell the speakers, "You really are going to need to spend about 30 minutes going over this, taking notes. A lot of it is in the preparation. If you want your speakers to do a good job, do a good job of preparing them for the presentation, and things will go well.
Preston: That's great advice. Do you have any last recommendations for our listeners?
Jonathan: Well, some take-aways people can leave with are these: The three things I think are most important about teleseminars, no matter what your business, personalization, interactivity, and uniqueness.
You could do a teleseminar on how to use pay-per-click search engines, and I could do a teleseminar on how to use pay-per-click search engines, and five other guys could do it too, and they're all going to be different products.
Now, the e-books might all be very similar, but the calls are going to be totally and completely unique and people really can't rip you off. They can copy your work and your outline, but they can't "cut and paste" the essence of your teleseminar. Remember, people are always looking for unique. People always want a variety of different perspectives on how to solve their problems so they can relate those examples back to themselves.
Also, teleseminars are easier, faster, and in many cases cheaper, than other types of products to develop and roll out. And if you're selling something complex or a big backend sale, like a seminar, this is a great way to present real, live examples to hot prospects.
Let's say, you're selling pop-up advertising and you're selling it for $5 per 1,000 impressions via a sales letter. You write about the pop-up ads and how they are this big, and the window is this big, and they are going to load this fast, and you are going to host them on your server and there is going to be a click-through page and it'll all be tracked, yadda, yadda.
But you get one of your customers on a call who says, "Man, I couldn't believe it! The traffic came pouring in, our staff went crazy, and we were making sales right and left. In fact, in the first day we made $4,000 worth of sales that we wouldn't have made before." It's like a live testimonial. It's a real example, but it turns into a testimonial.
Preston: Those are a fantastic set of key take-aways. Jonathan, I just want to thank you so much for your time.
Jonathan: Thank you Preston!
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