I am Pooja Keswani an Inside Sales Representative at Dista for 4 years. Generating leads, creating interest has been an integral part of my role.
We use different strategies to reach out to the client, some of which could be e-mail reach outs, LinkedIn messaging, cold calling, seminars/conference, and so on having said that one has to focus on a messaging strategy that makes sense to the audience based on the relevance of the content which may interest them to invest their time in understanding our product offering.
There is no rule of right or wrong in sales. Somethings may work for you but may not necessarily work for others as said sales is an art and there is no science behind it
During Covid time, generating interest and even receiving a response from a client was difficult which might be the case across industries since most of the industries used a wait and watch strategy and were not very keen at thinking in the lines of investing in new software or products rather the major focus was resolving internal operational challenges, working around the changing government, state regulation & guidelines and most importantly working around the financial health considering future contingencies
During these troubled times, we kept thinking about several strategies like shifting our focus to selling Google Maps with rising demand for doorstep services and startups we thought of encashing on this opportunity in the market but after a hit and try and cold response from the market for almost 2 months we had to revisit our strategy and try something else. After brainstorming in a couple of virtual meetings we boiled down to focus on the marketing & branding of Dista.
What better than Webinar?
Webinar gives an opportunity to address mass audience virtually which is cheaper for the businesses and gives flexibility to the audience to choose whether to stay involved and continue till the end, if the subject matter is interesting, or can choose to leave in the middle if it’s not worth your time
I have had experience in the past of conducting seminars/conferences in different geographies like India, Srilanka, Indonesia, Singapore, etc. With different geographies, I experienced the difference in culture, knowledge, and response to the same product offering, we had to shift from seminars to webinars based on changing situation and market demand so webinar wasn’t an alien concept
Our team executed the strategy by defining the target audience, industry, registration goals, market focus, frequency, and the time interval between webinars. We started driving registrations by rolling out invitations to prospects through various channels which include LinkedIn groups, e-mail reach outs, marketing campaigns, past data, and lost clients. We scheduled 1 webinar/ week for 3 months.
Webinars were a very interesting way of engaging our past clients with new developments and educating the new audience on the best practices (technologically) followed in their industries across geographies. Although it was very challenging considering the internet connectivity, also to our speakers it was difficult to understand the audience’s reaction so as to modify their pitch.
After conducting the first two webinars we were very confident of continuing to do the same. Some webinars had an overwhelming response with 40 registrations followed by 25 participants whereas we conducted a few with less than 10 participants with 25 registrations. The difference in the registration and participation could be because of industry, time (growth at which market was opening), and many more.
Webinars helped us market our brand and product indeed resulted in quite a few opportunities and helped us reinitiate the deal which was on hold or lost.
Disclaimer – The blog is written by one of the finalists of an internal blogathon competition we held recently at Dista.
The author of this article is Pooja Keswani, Sales Executive.
