Today I am talking about Direct vs. Indirect selling on a webinar: what to use when.

We’re focusing on webinars this month and what we’re talking about is sales and whether to ask for the sale directly in a webinar or set people up to book a call.

I just talked to a client about this and she is going to transition because her offer is right on the cusp. She thinks maybe she’ll have a better close rate if she just pre-qualifies people. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Direct = buy now, Indirect = book a call or fill out an application

Imagine this – you’ve gotten through the teaching part of your webinar; you’ve even talked about the transformation part. The only thing that’s left is selling, and how you handle this one piece is going to be the difference between getting sales or not. So we need to talk about how to figure out whether to send people directly to the shopping cart or have them fill out a questionnaire or application. You need to ask yourself three questions:

How much of you is in this offer?

Let’s say if something goes bananas and you sell 20 units of whatever you’re selling. If 20 people buy, how busy does that make you?

If having 20 people sign up is going to make you 20 times busier, then you want to make people apply. You want to make sure that you’re in charge of that flow.

If it’s less – let’s say it’s a course with a live component and you’re planning on being accessible during office hours and to the group, but never one on one, then that’s way more likely that you’re going to want to do a direct buy.

What is the Price Point?

Excluding upsells and order bumps and add-ons and whatever, how much is it? This is a tough thing because the cusp is kind of a weird cusp. Let’s say the product is between $2,000 and $3,000. If the offer itself is under the $2,000 mark, or under the $3,000 mark, direct selling actually works pretty well. If something’s more than $3,000, an indirect approach really works better.

I know – it’s like it’s a thousand dollars of gray area, but you can test it out before you make a final decision.

I say this all the time but the great thing about online entrepreneurship is that you are in charge and it’s totally changeable. It’s not like you’re printing business cards. If you change your mind, if you want to see the data difference, just do that.

What is it that you’re offering?

Think for a moment about what it is you’re offering. If it’s something that doesn’t require a ton of your presence like software or an easy to access digital product, sell it directly. If it’s a mentorship or a one-on-one or a one-to-few coaching that requires a lot of your time, presence and energy, then screen people through the application process even if it’s not the price point.

I want to end with this – don’t be afraid to sell.

If you’re thinking that you want to shorten the sales cycle, if you think that too many people are booking sales calls, if your day is full of sales calls, change it up. Instead of having people get screened and then giving away too much while you’re doing the screening have them pay the deposit and then answer some questions. Get them involved, get them on the calendar.

You want to make sure though that when you’re ending your webinar you don’t end it with the sales pitch. What you want to do is reiterate the key takeaways, and that’s a different thing altogether. When you are ending your webinar you leave people with a good takeaway – that is the few things that they should have implemented or the key steps.