How to Build Business Relationships with Webinars

Business is business, you might say. But you can’t establish and maintain good relationships with your clients and business partners without considering the human factor.

The human factor is crucial to building strong, long-term bonds in business. For a company, it is much easier to win new clients when they can meet the team, talk to real people instead of receiving automated messages, and shake hands when closing the contract.

When meeting face to face isn’t possible, and in many situations, it isn’t, you have to rely on email, phone or instant messaging. Although these allow you to communicate quickly (often in real time) it’s not the same as face-to-face conversation.

There is good news! There is a tool that lets you put the human factor back into your business communication, even when your clients and partners are miles away. In this article, we will share how webinars offer the opportunity to build long-standing business relationships.

What webinar features support you in building business relationships?

With webinars, it’s easy to enhance your speaker’s experience. Not only are you able to communicate in real time, but webinars provide you with many features that allow interaction.

• Invitation – When establishing new business relationships, nothing works better than clear communication about upcoming meetings both parties need to attend. A good webinar platform lets you craft a customized invitation you can send to selected contacts. It includes all the necessary details about the topic and agenda of the event, as well as a clear call to action so everyone can confirm their attendance.

• Audio and video – During a webinar, attendees can see and hear you, as if you were sitting in front of them in a conference room. They can hear the tone of your voice and observe your gestures and facial expressions, which makes your message more authentic.

• Chat – You might wonder why we mention chat as a feature that will enhance your audience’s experience. It’s a well-known tool, after all. But imagine an attendee writes you a message on the webinar public chat, and you read it out loud and answer immediately instead of writing them back in the chat window! It validates the importance of their question and keeps them engaged in your webinar.

• Whiteboard – In a traditional meeting, when you need to explain a complex issue, in a traditional meeting you grab a Sharpie and start writing or sketching on a whiteboard. You can’t do that over the phone. With webinars, thanks to the whiteboard feature, you can sketch or write during your online event to provide clarity.

• Screen sharing – Sometimes sketching things or showing slides is not enough to make things clear for everyone. You might want to teach your audience how a system or a program works or take them through documents, photos or spreadsheets without having to send them via email. The screen-sharing feature lets attendees see your computer desktop. If a participant needs more help, you can even take control of their screen and operate it remotely.

• Audio modes – When hosting a webinar, you can moderate who speaks. With various audio modes available, you can give voice to everyone attending your webinar at once and have an online discussion or let one participant at a time speak so they can ask you questions during a Q&A session.

• Polls and surveys – After the webinar is over, it’s good to gather feedback from your audience. The polls and surveys feature lets you learn whether you managed to meet expectations and what topics need to be discussed in the future.

What business goals can you achieve with webinars?

You can reach several of your objectives if you decide to use webinars to build your business relationships. Let’s take a look at four of them.

• Conquer new markets – Thanks to the fact that your audience can join your webinar no matter where they are (assuming they have an Internet connection), you can find prospects in the most remote parts of the world.

• Give an elevator pitch – With webinars, it’s easy to present your business idea to a large number of potential business partners, investors, and prospects. You don’t have to travel to meet them in person. Simply invite them all to your online event and pitch your idea in a concise and clear way.

• Present your product – Fewer and fewer people are willing to read lengthy descriptions on product pages. That’s the case both in the B2C and B2B communication. What your audience needs instead is a visual product presentation; webinars are a great way to meet that need. Use video and slides to effectively showcase your offering in an engaging way.

• Manage your network – When you have an extensive network to supervise, e.g., a franchise or MLM network, webinars allow you to get an important message across to your members, give them training or present new products. With webinars, you can stay in touch even if you are not able to meet in person.

Conclusion

When it comes to establishing and building business relationships, you need the human factor to make them strong and long-standing. When you can’t meet your partners on a regular basis, and phone calls, emails and instant messaging won’t do the job for you, try webinars and enjoy real-time, interactive, and effective communication.