How To Overcome Perfection & Sell On Webinars
Webinars give you the opportunity to present a program offer to a perfectly primed audience excited to learn more, but what if making the pitch leaves you stuck in perfection mode or feeling yucky about selling?
In this episode, we talked about...
- how to avoid the dreaded crickets at the end of your presentation
- an easy strategy to get your audience engaged and ready to ask questions
- the power of adding call-to-actions throughout your talk
- why the audience roots for the underdog and how it helps you forget perfection and fear during live talks
- planning for problems that crop up
- focusing on the right kind of feedback that improves your presentation
- tips to sell effectively on your webinar
- trading perfection for what makes a really good pitch
...and much, much more
Things mentioned in this episode
- Learn from Heather in The Speaking Workshops, a free 3 Part Training Series
https://www.heathersager.com/speakingworkshops
- Get Heather's free cheatsheet, 19 Magnetic Phrases for Stages, Podcasts & Live Video to send your ideal client running to your opt-in page https://www.heathersager.com/magnet
- Connect with Heather Sager at https://www.heathersager.com/
Learn more about Heather Sager
Heather Sager is a speaking coach and trainer who helps online entrepreneurs clarify their message and boldly lean into their unique personalities so that they can attract their ideal clients and run a sustainable business.
After speaking on over 1000 stages globally, coaching hundreds of business owners and dozens of rising influencers, and hosting her own top-rated podcast, Heather’s seen firsthand how learning to be a masterful communicator can be anyone’s golden ticket to impacting more people, smashing your business and life goals, and that it’s possible to do it all by owning your purpose and personality.
Read the full transcript so you don't miss a thing
Sara: Webinars give you the opportunity to present a program offer to perfectly primed audience excited to learn more. They get potential clients a chance to ask questions and chat amongst other like minded people introduce your service. And most importantly, webinars can humanize your offer and skyrocket that all-important know like and trust factor with a real face and voice on the other side of the screen. But at the end of all that teaching, you're left with a pitch. And that might feel kind of awkward, or feel like you're a pushy salesperson. So you turn off your recording, feeling yucky. And that's why I call today's guest i.
Your listening to the launch playbook podcast, the weekly podcast for service based business owners to discover the starts, stops and tools to transformation that go into launching their online offers. I'm your host, Sara Vartanian. And if you want to launch your ideas into the world faster, with more success and less burnout. Well, friend, consider this show your secret playbook to get you there.
Heather Sager is speeching, Coach and Trainer, who helps online entrepreneurs clarify their message and boldly lean through your unique personality so they can attract their ideal clients and run a sustainable business. After speaking on over 1000 stages globally, coaching hundreds of business owners and dozens of rising influencers and hosting her own top rated podcast, Heather seen firsthand how learning to be a masterful communicator can be anyone's golden ticket to impacting more people, smashing your business and life goals. And it's possible to do it all by owning your purpose and personality.
Heather, welcome.
Heather: Hi, Sarah. I'm so excited to be here.
Sara: I'm so very excited. Now, Heather, I hope you don't mind. But I thought I'd mentioned how we met a few years ago now.
Heather: And I hear your side of the story. So go for it.
Sara: Okay, cool. So in late 2019, I think it was the last conference I went to before our whole world went sideways.
Heather: And then we had these everybody remembers their like, first kiss. We all remember our last conference.
Sara: Last time I was at a group of tons of people and felt totally like cool and chill about it. And not like really actually secretly worried full time. It's not so secretly everyone's working now. Anyways, we had these mini breakout sessions and I joined in Heather's because it was all about speaking. And so some of your listeners know that I would consider myself an introvert and speaking would not be my top choice of things usually to do. I feel like it's a little different here on this podcast. Because here to me, it feels more like a like a intimate conversations. Like we're one on one. I'm just talking to you. Whereas I would I'm getting on to more of like a stage or something. It's like, just lots of people feel differently to me.
So Heather. I don't know if I ever told you this. But within minutes of watching you in action, I knew you were the person I wanted to learn from you are going around the state the table asking everyone's worries and questions about speaking on Instagram and you're writing them on these like little post it notes like really quickly. And then you went through and you answered or your role played every single question in this like really fast and fun session. And I was seriously so impressed. Because you were like living proof to me that it's possible to have a talk without everything being scripted should really always been my fear.
Heather: I love that. Oh my gosh, I love that so much. And you know what's so funny is on the other side, like what you just described is how I teach I lead all of my workshops and everything that I do is usually stemmed from the audience requests, but it always gives me huge anxiety because I've always wondered like, oh my gosh, is this good? Is this gonna land? Is this gonna work? And then it always it always does so have like that parachute level of confidence that knowing but there's always a slight moment or have a freakout of going, oh my gosh, this could be a total and absolute, like train wreck. But yeah, it never is. So I think that's the fallacy that we all have in our brains as we always think that what we're saying isn't making any sense, or we're second guessing it or anyways. So I just love that feedback. Thanks for that.
Sara: Welcome. Oh, my gosh. And that actually brings me a question. I was gonna ask you later, but this is the perfect time. Let's say we get into that situation and nobody asked questions. What do we do?
Heather: Okay, ironically, I literally just did a reel on Instagram about that this week, which is very exciting, because that's a whole new stage that I'm playing on these days is Instagram reels. So follow me on Instagram. If you want to, hilariously try to figure about that thing around questions. The hard part is wouldn't people get to the q&a part whether they ask questions of the audience at the beginning or the end, every speaker has been met with this blank blank face stares or the empty chat or in a Zoom Room. Everyone's avoiding eye contact with the speaker and they're multitasking like it happens. And I'm going to start with a pretty bold statement. I am not a subscriber of the idea that there are like lame audiences that there are bad audiences are just highly disengaged audiences, I actually think there's never truth to that. I think there's bad facilitation.
And as speakers when we're in the front of the room, it's our responsibility to create a environment where people want to engage. So the first question I would ask if somebody is met with no questions, you have to ask yourself, How did you set that up? Because a lot of times, people are going 90 miles an hour in their presentation, and all of a sudden, they stop and go, who has a question? And the audience is still trying to keep up with what you said, and they're not ready for that. So part one is really making sure that you're doing your best to encourage participation by the types of questions that you ask the audience. But the second more like sneaky, straightforward way to do it. Sneaky, straightforward. If we're gonna make that a thing. Forward, is have a list of questions ready to go. So that way, when you get to that point, you can just say, you know, a question I get so often is this, or, you know, one of the places that people get stumped is this. And then you can start with real questions that people are asking to get them thinking in question mode.
Sara: Amazing. How can we set people up to be ready to ask us questions?
Heather: Okay, so this is kind of like, let me use a weird analogy here. We've all heard heard of the term friend zone, in the dating world, like when you think about the friend zone, there's that hilarious movie with Ryan Reynolds, where he just stuck in the friend zone for his entire life. And it's because you're treating the other person and kind of treat that relationship, Morris friends versus a romantic relationship. So how does this apply to what we're talking about with presentations and questions we have to do is we have to prime our audience to be considering questions throughout the presentation. So whether that's like setting it up by you asking questions, or even explicitly telling them, hey, at the end of this presentation, like I thrive best, and find that my audiences do best when we come up with questions together.
So I want you to challenge yourself to come up with one or two really good questions that you would like me to explore for, like telling your audience that at the beginning, that actually tells them to come up with questions throughout the presentation. But the key operative with that is you have to give them a reason for that. So the reason I just use was, we're going to have a better experience. If you guys help me come up with a content. So be thinking about questions. So you have to think about how you engage your audience. I know when it comes to speaking, it feels very one sided, like you're preaching to an audience. But the magical thing of what you described in that very first presentation you ever saw me give is I modeled a classic conversation, where I actually asked questions, I listened.
And because of that activity, I was able to serve up what felt like custom content to you. But what it really was was my core content that I talk about all the time. So what we do, we have to ask ourselves, when we're engaging with an audience, how do we mimic natural conversation by either asking questions, or eliciting feedback, or leveraging the feedback and responses that we know our audience would give? Because we know our ideal customer? So well?
Sara: Oh, my gosh, that's so good. So really, it's like we're setting them up to ask questions about things that we know about. We can.
Heather: That's the sneaky but very direct way to put it, right. It's the the funny part is, I think a lot of people get thrown off by the idea of speaking to an audience, because they feel like they have to come up with something so profound, or in order for it to resonate, it has to be this really elaborate story, or this really unique idea. And the reality is, it just has to resonate with the actual situations people are having in the room. So we have to give to me, like marketing. You talk about this all the time, Sara you have to meet people where they are, which means that you have to consider where is my audience coming into this presentation? How can I speak to that? How could I pull that out of them? Or how can I use my prior experience to go? How might somebody be thinking or objecting or feeling about this particular conversation? Go there, and then you can guide them to what you actually want to talk about, which is the fun stuff in your area of expertise.
Sara: I love that so much. And Heather, I don't know if you know that I used to be an elementary school teacher like I was been 10 years in the classroom. And as you were saying around having folks like kind of listening for the questions and helping you know, you as speaker asking them to like, pay attention for that question you want to ask for. It reminds me a little bit of teaching because when I was teaching young kids in the classroom, that'd be something I'd have to say the beginning of a lesson or before we read something a book, I have to be like, okay, want you to pay attention for or like listen to this and so totally resonates with me about that. Because that you have I had to remember you had to set them up to know to listen for basically.
Heather: It's funny because as adults we hate being told what to do, which is actually it's so it's so ironic, right? I talk to people all the time like he can't give that's why how to content for me. That's really why people struggle is because it's not that how to content is over teaching or effective, and I can go on tangents about all of that. There is some truth to that, right? But my big beef with how to content is we don't want to be told what to do. At the end of the day, even if we sign up for the best online course with the best step by step. I mean, I don't know about you, but I'm not like, tell me what to do kind of person, I get into a course. And I'm like, let me do it my way. Like, let me customize.
Sara: Always change it.
Heather: But the irony with that is that we resist and say, We don't want to be told what to do. But we also need to be told what to do. So an example of that is like something as simple as in marketing, we talk about call to actions, right? I know, in copywriting, you talk about this all the time, like have a clear call to action? Well, I think people forget that when they're speaking, the same thing holds true. What do you want people to do? What do you want people to think? What you want them to feel? Like actually explicitly, what do you want them to do? Like? Do you want them to go sign up for something? Do you want them to write down that idea you just shared? Do you want them to come up with the question? Like, you have to be so explicit with that. And I find speakers who are more explicit and say simple things like oh, my gosh, write that down. Or if you're going to take one thing from this presentation day, let this be it, write it down, like being that explicit, without being condescending, like you can have a very, very powerful and effective talk, which is what I jam on. It's not just about being entertaining, I think you have to have an element entertainment. But you have to be effective. When you are an entrepreneur leveraging speaking, as a way to grow your online business.
Sara: It's amazing. It's like you're telling them what to highlight and pay attention to.
Heather: Totally, totally
Sara: Cool. Okay, so let's pull back a little bit here. And I want to ask, Why do you think there's so much fear about hitting live on a talk, whether that's a webinar, or let's say, Instagram?
Heather: The live element has so much risk? Right? We don't necessarily know how the words are gonna fall out of our mouth. We don't know what's gonna happen if especially virtual, a lot of people get freaked out about the tech, what happens if my microphone goes out? What happens if the camera goes out? What happens if the internet goes out? What if what if we run all these scenarios in her head, so specifically, the live element, it freaks people out. But in my opinion, it also makes people step up to a level of performance that you cannot produce artificial. And what I what I mean by that, I think there's kind of two types of people when it comes to speaking. There's people that love speaking live, and there's people that freaking hate it.
And there's not one right over the other I am definitely a person who actually prefers live. And here's why. When it comes to live presentations, whether it's a live webinar, or a literally like a Facebook Live, or a live on stage presentation, people love the the CD lately, spontaneity that happens in life. And quite frankly, people are far more forgiving. So if you stumble on your words, or for me, one of my challenges, I used to have a super, really high heels when I would speak on stage. But if the stage was risers, and they were not all the way pressed together, my heels has pumped through the stage multiple times, and I've literally fallen on my butt on stage. But it creates actually this like shared moment and an underdog story that work to buy advantage in those situations. Like that's an extreme scenario.
Sara: But the Jennifer Lawrence following up the pope staged the Oscars.
Heather: We are like to her all the time, and honestly, I think probably she does it on purpose sometimes because it works out so well. But the point is, I think the thing that actually freaks people out about live could actually be your advantage. If you embrace that when things happen and go wrong, how you react to that can become the best part of your presentation because it's memorable. And people go like, holy crap. If she like thank God, that didn't happen to me. But if she can navigate that, like what else can she do? So I actually find me out live element takes the pressure off because it's you don't have to be as perfect. You can stumble on your words a bit, you can go off on tangents, you can have a mistake happen and people are more forgiving for that. So it's interesting. It's a double edged sword. The thing that freaks us out if you embrace it could be your best asset.
Sara: Okay, so my next question for you is really about like, what do we do for you live on Instagram or something, there's a brain freeze or you start rambling? And how do we recover but you're saying that we just like we just keep going basically, we shouldn't we shouldn't end it essentially.
Heather: Oh my gosh, don't laugh and part of this comes with your personality too, right? Sub people are more equipped to be able to let say think on their feet. That's a common expression. I always hear from people whether I want to get better at speaking off the cuff or thinking on my feet. In fact, one of my like, number one podcast episodes on my show is it's like literally like thinking on your feet. Like it's just it's funny. We all have this desire, but let me be clear with this really good speaker or presenter, they don't just show up and wing it. Even if they're just showing up to an interview like this. I don't really know the questions that you're asking me before here. But the idea is like, I'm not just showing up and making this up, I have a body of work that I'm pulling from that makes it makes me more prepared for these kinds of conversations.
I know where to take the conversation, regardless of the question you asked me. So on a live, let's not confuse the idea of being impromptu and rolling with the punches. Like we can't replace that with an element of preparation. So even when you when you go live, you should have a game plan. But what am I talking about here? And what what are my main points? How am I going to open it? How am I going to close it? What are the top three things that I want to talk about? We should have a game plan, even if it's just on a post it note, like that's my go to way it's just put it on a frickin post you don't and that way you have something you can stick right next to the camera and have a game plan.
But what I think people underutilized is the our ability to problem solve before the problems come. So I just wonder for a moment, how much better would you feel going into a live if you just took a moment say, hey, let's be morbid for a moment, what could go wrong? And ask yourself, Okay, what happens if my internet drops off? What happens if my husband walks past me naked? Because he doesn't know I'm on camera? I don't know, right? Come up with whatever scenarios you can come up with do the doomsday thing, and then ask yourself, so what would I do? And I just think as asking those questions for a moment, I think it really is humbling, because then we go like, okay, none of those things are probably going to come up. But if they do, it's not the first time you're facing it, and you could have a plan with it. So that handling the tech piece, or if I fumble on my words. So what laughs and be like what, like I did earlier, what I said, What did I say sneaky and like direct to the point, something like that, like that those two things do not go together. And as they came out of my mouth, I was.
Sara: Like straightforward.
Heather: Yeah, that didn't even make sense. But we're gonna go with it, because it kind of made sense. So I called it out, I laughed at it. And I've actually referenced it now like three or four times. So the point is, like, have a game plan to the tech things because they could go wrong. But embrace the imperfections and actually make them part of your personality, people will like you more for it.
Sara: That's so helpful. So just really preparing. And it doesn't have to be like you're saying I love that I love her, she doesn't have to be like overly prepared, it can be a post it note, it could just be like thinking about what could happen. So you have that plan doesn't have to be this whole big scripted thing is what you're telling us basically.
Heather: And understand the kind of person that you are. So I have some clients who really need that preparation, in order for them not to be sweating bullets on the live. So if you need a little bit more structure, if you need to write out for yourself a little bit more detail on that outline, you go for it, use a Google Doc, whatever works for you. But if you're the kind of person you're like, I do kind of thrive on it. But I do go off on a lot of tangents. Alright, get yourself disciplined with a post it note, see get back on track. So you got to understand your own style and just know there's not one that's better than the other. Just got to know yourself to figure out where you can show up with a level of confidence.
Sara: So this question I have for you, Heather is kind of like one of those celebrities or just like us moments. I gotta know, you're an expert speaker, do you have a thing that sometimes trips you up? Or that you find yourself focusing on improving before your talks?
Heather: Oh, man, that's probably let me know i'll tell you like the real things right. Just because of the actual speaker, I get paid very handsomely for giving talks on stages virtually and in person. And I teach people it for a living and I still struggle with the exact same thing so many clients do. And it's this idea of when you give a presentation or you do an interview, or you're in the moment, like there is a element of second guessing and regret. afterwards. I call them like the regret hangover or the speaking hangover. Where immediately after you go like Oh my gosh, what did I just say? Or? Oh my gosh, I don't know if that was an overshare of the story. Or was I too casual today? Oh my gosh, I swore like was that. Okay, oh my gosh, like, we all do this? Immediately after, regardless of how the hi felt right, if people in the chat are saying, oh my gosh, this is amazing. Everyone's giving me this really positive feedback. You embrace that for a moment.
And then you start questioning, you start second guessing like, oh my gosh, did they get it that I rambled too much today sound like an idiot, that that debrief that happens it's not constructive by any means. It's a takedown that we put on ourselves, and I am not immune to it. It still happens to me. And this is what I see. Hold so many my clients back because they put truth to this narrative that happens whenever they speak. And for many of my clients, it happens in real time when they're speaking, which completely it completely erodes the value of their message because they're so in their head and then they start trying to act a certain way because they're not trying to be so casual. All this happened. So for me, what I've actually learned is after I give a talk, that spiral will happen for like a hot second, and then I'll laugh and then I'll guide myself to how I teach my clients how to do feedback with The very first question you ask yourself is what did you Brock? Like, what did you do?
Well, and when you shift the focus on to the positive, but more specifically, an actual thing that happened in your talk, like a great story that you shared, a funny exchange between you and an audience member, something funny that you said on the cuff, that was a little wild, unexpected that landed well, just something specific. When you focus on that you're able to reinforce that you know what you're doing, you're doing a great job, you can be human, but you're, you're on the right track doing the right thing. So for me, like, I still struggle with that. But it has become an asset because it helps me focus my energy on thinking in a more positive, constructive way.
Sara: That's really helpful. How do we take, I guess, I guess what I really want to know is those things that are no trying to pull us down, let's say after the talk, or how do we know which ones you need to pay attention to? Who's to say let's focus on like, what we rocked when we and what was like, went well, but how do we know when ones are actually legit? And we need to, let's say, work on those for next time?
Heather: Yeah. Okay. So a really good way, like, looking at this from a very high level, a question that you can ask yourself that could help you figure out is this constructive or not? Is the question, is it changeable? Is it and here's the thing that happens so often with people, and this isn't just speaking, right? It's everything. Especially as women as entrepreneurs, we have a lot of things going on in our heads and a lot of negative self talk, or we're questioning our decisions, we're questioning our strategies requesting our speaking like it, this is not new, it happens. What we have to think about is a lot of times that negative feedback is on a very generic level, that is actually not helpful. And it's not changeable. So let me give you a really weird example of this. Let's say you get done with a talk. And you're like, Oh, my energy was so low, like, I don't know, maybe that's something that will say in a different way. But that piece of feedback, you would think like, oh, this solution is more, more energy next time. But actually, that's such a generic, unhelpful piece of advice. Like, how do you have more energy at like, that is such a generic buzz phrase that people set, but there's nothing specific, that actually helps you do something different. So if you're hitting a topic, and you're like, Whew, that was low energy, you can't stop there, because it's not a helpful piece of feedback. And having low energy isn't really changeable.
What you can do is say, You know what, I was sitting down and it was a little bit hunched over. I wonder what would happen next time if I stood up? Or maybe the maybe your face wasn't very smiley, and you were like, really, really serious? I would never look like if I made myself laugh, made the audience laugh in the presentation, would that bring more energy? What we want to focus on is specific things that are like actionable that you can do something with. Because if you're just staring in the rearview mirror, looking at this general phrases like oh, is low energy, or people were unengaging, or I didn't really have any questions, or just like noticing things without focusing on so what do you do next time? Like, what's one action you can practice right now? If we're just focusing on what we did wrong and generic statements, you're not getting better? So that you have to ask yourself, is it generic? Can it be more specific? And is it changeable? And by asking those questions, you're wicked smart, you can figure out simple things that you can do to elevate even if it's just one or 2%. Next time. Well, it's just a small, incremental changes that will help you become a more magnetic speaker. But if you come up with a laundry list of all the things you have to change, I mean, I hate to say it, but like, you're not going to change any of them. So all you just did was prove to yourself that you're not good enough to speak on that stage, which is not going to serve you next time you get asked.
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Sara: Oh my gosh, that that was so good. And I hope you're listening and you're taking notes because I think what you're saying about finding those like constructive pieces of what's the next step things that you can do. I think we can apply that to like across our business right not just speaking like, whatever we're doing our offers or sending our sales calls like it applies?
Heather: like this. And I think it'd be it's interesting right that I do it A lot of audits for my clients and my students have been programmed, where they submit videos and I go through and look at them. And I'll tell you, when I first started coaching, I made a really, really big mistake, where I would sit there and I would come up with all the things that I could help them with, right, I could help them with their body language, I could help them with their facial expressions, I can help them with better storytelling, like there's a list, I mean, a big giant list. And what I learned very quickly, is if I start sharing that list, even if I can help them, it becomes destructive, because they become so overwhelmed by the list of things they have to learn and to do differently. And remember, for next time, that they can't do any of them become paralyzed. So what I what I do now, and what I actually encourage anyone who's listening, anytime you debrief or evaluate your own work, you probably will have a tendency to come up with a laundry list of all the things that you need to fix. And that's fine.
If you want to go through that process, just so you can prove that you know what you need to fix go for it. What I would recommend is you look at that list, and you pick two things. And everything else, you just tear that list out of your notebook, and you throw it away. Because the thing is, those things are there. But the things that you wrote on the list, they are not going to be deal breakers for you becoming the more like successful speaker a more effective webinar creator. Like even if you were to do all the things that you have on that list, that is not necessarily going to change the outcome. What will is you having confidence when you show up to a microphone? So just pick one or two things to focus on and just let the other things be true. But just because they're true need to work on them doesn't mean that it's actually going to help you right now in the moment?
Sara: And how do we choose which ones to work on first?
Heather: What if we go technical here for a moment, let's say we're talking about a webinar here, right? And let's say your webinar is not converting. So big, glaring thing I had people show up, let's say you had 100 people registered for a webinar, only six people showed, and of those people nobody bought? Well, let's think about one of the big things that people do right away is like, oh, my gosh, I have to discount my program because no one's buying and everybody said it was too expensive. Like that's the easy out. And if you even if you cheapen your program, it does not mean it's gonna sell because one, we have a big problem here that your issue but people didn't show up to your webinar. That was the big that was the big thing, right. But if we go in further, let's say 30 people showed up to your webinars, you had a decent amount of people show up, alright, if 30 people sitting there, and you go through it, and you're like, Oh, nobody bought, okay, the question is, what do we change, you probably can go through a laundry list. And one of the big things that probably happened was most likely, you're an online entrepreneur listening, you probably felt clunky, when you were making the pitch.
Most people do they have this really awkward moment that happens when I'm teaching teaching, how fun is this and teaching teaching? And then the awkward moment where they're like, Oh, crap, now I have to ask them. Now I have to invite them into my program. And it's going to be so awkward, and they get awkward about it. And then they go into this really clunky pitch where they feel like a ShamWow. Commercial. Yeah, they're like, oh, wait, there's more. And the value is $93,000. But you, Fred, get it for 17 cents. Like it's just the whole voice changes. So I'm going off on a tangent here. But like when I think about what to change, we have to start by asking ourselves from a practicality perspective, what was the goal of the presentation, if you're giving a webinar, your goal is to make sales.
Let's not sugarcoat it, the point of a webinar is to make sales. And we can argue around how you get there, how you obviously do it a non schmucky way don't sound like the ShamWow man. But what we have to think about is the goal. You're a business owners to make sales. But thinking about a different kind of presentation, let's say Sarah, that I book you to be a guest inside my program, which I have you deliver the training, the really great training, by the way around how to put together good freebie inside my program. But let's say you were coming in live, okay, and you were doing a one hour talk to my people. Well, for you coming into the program, your goal is to show up with a Tegrity hit the objectives for the content. And for you, you're probably like, Okay, I really would like to get some like leads out of this. I would love people to sign up for my freebie. Those would be very normal goals for someone to have if they were a guest speaking. Well, the question for you is you can sit down and evaluate how did it feel? How was my body language? How was my this like, you can come up with a list of things. But the question is, what was the goal of the presentation? And then did you hit the goal or not? And just asking that question, we call this purpose. Inside my I have something I teach called the magnetic talk formula where there's four things that go into any effective presentation. The number one pillar is purpose, what was the goal of the talk, and that should help direct you with what are the things you should focus on first? Because if you're not aligned with what the reason of the talk was, we have a bigger conversation we need to have.
Sara: Definitely. Okay, Heather. So that brings us really into webinars. Let's talk a little more about selling on webinars. What can we do to really rock that sales pitch on a webinar as opposed to show up as that ShamWow type person.
Heather: So I could share Well, that's gonna be the quote of the episode is. Okay, let me yeah, let me help y'all with a pivot that needs to happen when it comes to webinars to see the the big issue that people have when it comes to webinars is selling component because they think like, Okay, if I teach, teach teach, if I show it a value, if I help people get them really excited, well, then when I go to pitch, of course, like they're gonna want more, right? And this is the big mistake of waiting till the quote unquote pitch to sell your program. The thing with a webinar is you're actually selling to your audience the entire time. No, are you actively selling? Like, here's my program with my 42 bonuses and my payment plan?
No, but you are selling them into the idea of a solution? And what we have to think about is, the big question is, is the content in your webinar is it actually related directly to the problem your person is having in the pathway of them getting on the train, that is your program to help them with the solution. And what I actually find is most people's content is like the three pillars, or the three secrets, or the three things that are they matter to what the person is experiencing, like they're in the content, ballpark, but they are not on the direct path to the person's program. So if you want to be more effective at selling on a webinar, you really have to get present with what is the content of a webinar? And is it actually guiding my ideal person to a decision to participate in the solution? And the solution being what you teach in your program?
Sara: How do we figure that out? Any tips?
Heather: That is the big question and why people pay me the big bucks. What you have, okay, is let me let me be clear with this, I think it actually takes a while for people to figure out what is that sweet spot on the content that aligns to their program. And here's the big thing, what you're not trying to do is you're not trying to throughout the webinar, make the case that your program is the best solution on the planet, and they need to buy it, when you're actually trying to do on a webinar is get them to buy in to a solution that you teach. So let me give you an example of this. So I am a speaking coach. I specifically work with online entrepreneurs.
And the idea of public speaking on a laundry list of things that entrepreneurs need to focus on, it's probably not very high on the list. You need to learn copy, you have to learn how to write emails, you need to get your website up, holy crap. Now you have to learn social and whoa, we have to learn reels and oh my gosh, what about SEO for Pinterest? Well, I have to have pillar content, I need to learn how to write blogs, like all these other things go on the list of things that we need to learn. So what I have to think about is when somebody is coming to one of my webinars, one I know they're interested in speaking, because they've signed up for the webinar. So for example, one of my webinars I teach is how to grow your authority through speaking without second guessing what you say, think that's the title, something like that. But it's the the idea of how do you grow authority by speaking on stages.
So when people come to my webinar, they're interested in it, but what I have to do is actually help have to help them see how speaking is actually the most critical, essential skill as a business owner. You see, I believe that as a business owner, your voice is your best brand asset. You can outsource your copy. At the end of the day, you can outsource your tech, you can outsource a lot of things in your business. But the one thing that you can't do is you can't outsource your Facebook Lives can't outsource the person speaking on your webinar, if you're a personal brand, at least, like you can't outsource the actual speaking. So in my webinar, I have to make the case that that is true. And then I have to make the case that okay, there's actually a way to speak as an entrepreneur, where you are speaking to persuade and influence others. It's not just about having confidence behind the microphone is having the right message and the right level of delivery so that people want to listen to you.
So you hear what I'm saying here is I have to make the case that one speaking matters to an entrepreneur number two, the way in which you speak, ie a more magnetic way a more effective and persuasive way that becomes highly interesting and exciting and necessary to the entrepreneur. So when I then talk about my program, which by the way, is called Speak up to level up. When I talk about my program, I have already gotten the audience onto the bus of oh, I'm interested in speaking. Well, I understand that speaking is a unique skill that I need to master the entrepreneur. And now I understand the recipe in which speaking actually serves my business and helps me scale. Now they're going Holy crap, help me do that. Heather, give me your program before I've even pitched it. So you see, like, and I just did that, what three minutes. Like you have to get people bought into the idea.
So what people have to understand is what are you actually selling? It's not your program. For me when I'm selling it I'm helping entrepreneurs understand that their voice is their best brand asset. And they have to learn how to use it effectively. Because at the end of the day, their voice is actually a marketing tool. It's not just a skill to go speak on Facebook Lives, you're actually speaking in a way where you're developing hunger and desire for what you do. Because what you do actually helps people get to their end result. That makes sense. Definitely the question like, okay, so what do I do in my webinar? Well, it takes a little bit of work, you have to understand how what you teach fits into a bigger picture.
And what I find with so many entrepreneurs is this truth around the statement, you can't read the label from inside the jar, in what happens for most entrepreneurs that are so close to their content and their expertise, they don't actually know how to zoom out to have the perspective to persuade, and that that's exactly what I do. And that's why I specialize in online entrepreneurs, because it's not just about the skill of public speaking, it's about the skill of public speaking, to persuade, and not in a schmucky way. But it's in a way where it's the I know that if more entrepreneurs had the power to persuade and sell, they would be able to impact the people they serve, and help them get the results more effectively. So there's good in that it's not schmucky, for me to convince everyone to want to invest in public speaking, I think everyone needs to understand public speaking is the number one skill as an entrepreneur, so it becomes my duty to help people see that so that they can grow their businesses and make their impact.
Sara: So Heather, you've worked with a ton of business owners, and you've launched your program multiple times now speak up to level up, what are those most common bumps or roadblocks you see show up in people's pitches?
Heather: Okay, so the pitches especially, I think a lot of people get stuck in the clunky structure of the quote, unquote, traditional webinar model. And what I mean by that is, most people have learned how to do webinars from a template, which there's nothing wrong with a template, the best practice scripting, the templates, like you can go by a slide deck on creative market right now or in other people's programs. But people get caught up in the structure or the on the slides, where what happens is, instead of them communicating to like a real human and real human language, about the programming, the exciting opportunity, and all the pieces of it, they become robotic, and they go into the click mode, where it's the Okay, so now my program is, and then it's like a list of it's 43 video lessons with supporting workbooks and a jumpstart action plan. And they go through a list of features, and then they slide the next slide, and then they talk about, so by the end of the program, you'll feel confident and feel happier. And whatever, right they there's a list of things that there was a placeholder for them to type something in. And so what they do is they type that something in based off of the template without really thinking about, Okay, what kind of picture is this creating for the person I'm speaking to.
So what happens is they fall victim of the script, they fall script victim of the template, and they lose their own voice and their own power to connect, like, if they were put on the phone with their ideal customer and talk through things, the way they would describe it, I bet would be a lot different. So what I help a lot of people do is how do we leverage like the the template, the script works? Let me not let let's not confuse that they do work. But they only work if you know how to talk about them in a way that's not clunky. So if you've ever feeling when you're going through a webinar, where you're like the slides are driving you versus you driving the slides, you know what your problem is I do we just identified it, if you are reacting to the slides, reading the slides are feeling like they are the ones driving the car. That's the pitch. That is your problem. A pitch should be led by you with the slide as your backup dancers. So the question is, is do you really understand what the core messages on each one of those slides in the pitch? Do you understand why you keep bringing up that slide, that price slide, that price slide that's like, and you can get started today for one payment of 697? Or pay in full for whatever the price is? Right?
Are you just saying that when every time that slide comes up, because somebody told you you had to? Or when that slide comes up? are you leveraging an opportunity to bash an objection? Are you able to I just did this with one of my clients last month, on one of those slides, it was the second price slide. What we did there was we're gonna bash the objection of Holy crap, this program is expensive. So what we actually talked about on that slide was you can get started today at whatever the payment plan was, or a single payment of this. Now, let me help you address the elephant in the room here. This program is a lot more expensive than what you probably have seen before. And I don't know what you were thinking about or what you were hoping to pay when you join today or what solution you have. And the fact is there's a ton of solutions that can get out there including a $37 swipe file online on Creative Market. We flat out bash the objection we call it out the elephant in the room of what somebody might be thinking. And then we developed language for her to use to position her program in a way that showed why it was different and why it was worth the price. So the exam Apple like us here is what we have to think about is what is the opportunity that each slide has? What is the message that we're bringing? And how is the slide the backup dancer?
Sara: That's so good. So I hope again, you listening took note to that one. I love the idea of the bashing objections. And it's something we talk about on the podcast sometimes here is about having conversations with our clients and having those surveys and having those interviews to bear really finding out what those objections are, and being able to pull them into our copy. But you're talking about how we can pull that into our speaking and our webinar. Yes, love to hear that.
Heather: Let me just give a little bonus here to get a shout out to you copywriters, like so many people do what they can to either follow a template or hire a copywriter. Like that's what I did when I launch my program. First I don't like I've hired a copywriter because I don't know what to write the emails. But here's the challenge is a lot of times people have all this brilliant objection bashing and all this really awesome language on their sales page. But they don't understand the language, they don't know how to talk about it because it was all the copywriter speak. If you did one thing differently or dear listeners, go read your frickin sales page. Understand that language that is used in the top half of your sales page. That is the language you should be using on your webinar. So there's just like a little hack copywriters know how to write conversion based copy? Well, that is a huge element of persuasion. So your webinar and your sales page shouldn't be these two separate entities, they actually have a lot of overlap. So it really would behoove you to learn how your copy on your sales page comes out of your own freaking mouth. So practice that.
Sara: My gosh, Heather, I really love that you call that out. Because I often talk about this with my personal clients. I'm like, once you have your sales page, you have like the core of everything you need, because we can use it for social copy. And you know, and like other emails, and now you're affirming that you can use it into your webinars as well.
Heather: So yes, please, please think about that at all. Like, what an incredible messaging that you're a good copywriter is the epitome of helping you read the label when you're stuck inside the dark. Like that's really what it is. What we have to do, though, is get really comfortable of how do we understand that and how does have those words come out of our mouth with spoken version of that versus the written version, because they're going to be a little bit different. You have to figure out your voice to it. And I think part of that is just getting more comfortable speaking out loud. But the problem is so many entrepreneurs live in a Google Doc, or unfortunately, we all live in our own head. And we have all these ideas that we're reading through our head all the time. But when you say things out loud, it's never going to sound as good as it did in your head. Because the way that you think is not just in words, you're thinking and pictures and imagery and ideas and memories, and you can't put specific words to that. So the only way you get better at articulating your ideas and thoughts is by practicing saying them out loud.
Sara: Oh my gosh, that made me think about how when you're singing it's on it's good in her head how like, you know, singing I think if I sing that's gonna sound really good. When I say it out loud. It never sounds like it does in my head. Really applies here to like
Heather: when you're in the shower,
Sara: or your car? Yeah.
Heather: Yeah, I'm sorry, I don't actually sound that great. And it's okay. We all can't be music
Sara: As well, though, too. But yeah. So there you mentioned talking about the slot in the slide and webinars about the pricing objective talking about objections and busting objections. We also brought up something else around that slide where people love to list all the features, the PDFs, and the workbooks. How can that change to be something that is more enticing? What can we do with that slide?
Heather: So I Okay, so for before starting my own business for 10 years, I taught sales to doctors. So let me just clarify this. So I my past life. When I spoke on stages all over the world, I was speaking primarily to private practice doctors who were hearing care doctors. So specifically, what that means is they sold hearing aids to patients with a hearing loss. I didn't there was a point to this. But the most medical practitioners, they go to school because they want to help people and they want to get into health professionals so they can make an impact and help people.
The challenge with hearing care was it's the one singular profession in the medical space where they actually learned that holy crap, I am going to help people but it means I have to sell hearing aids, because in the US and in many places around the world hearing aids are actually not covered by insurance. And they're also not cheap. myself. I wear hearing aids I have had a hearing loss for 15 years. These little tiny computers that are inside both of my ears right now cost a good $8,000. And just like any form of technology, they start plunking after four or five years so fun fact, you get to buy him all over again every five years or so. So I bring this up because my job was to teach audiologists and hearing care employee How to Sell hearing aids, keeping their own integrity IE as a health care practitioner who wanted to help. How do they do that in a way, that's non schmucky.
So one of the things that I taught is a very classic, it's very, if anybody ever studied marketing, you'll recognize this term. But it's the idea of talking about features, advantages, and benefits. And what I want you to envision for a moment is that I am holding a beach ball in front of me. And let's say that I'm the expert. And we're going to use the the idea of hearing aids here for a moment. But let's say I'm the expert in hearing care. And I'm holding that beach ball. When I hold that beach ball, what happens is, I'm communicating in language that I'm comfortable with. So I'm communicating in like features like noise reduction, or features like sound amplification, or I don't know, I don't even remember the terminology at the end of the industry for so long. But I'm seeing technical things that really make sense to me, and I understand what they mean. But you on the other side, do not have the beach ball in your hands, you're going, What the eff is she talking about here, like I get kind of understand what the point of that is, but it's not really relating to me. So what we have to think about is, if I were to take the beach ball, throw it up in the air, so it's neutral, it's like in the middle of the two of us, it's like, I won't ever throw in it, what's that word, it'd be like hanging out in the air. I don't know, words are escaping me right now. But if it's in between us, what I could do is translate that language into something that's more general.
So if I were to say something, let's say a specific as, like noise reduction, you're like, I don't even know what that means lady, like, I get it kind of, but if I were to translate that into an advantage, what that would be is like, okay, so essentially, have you ever been in a noisy situation before? Yeah, so what the noise reduction does is it actually pulls out all that background noise, so that you can actually hear people's voices, specifically the person in front of you that you want to hear. So what I just did was I translated that feature meal to the beach ball in my own comfort language, I threw it up the air and made it neutral by translate it into normal human everyday speak. Are you tracking with me here?
Definitely. Okay, so what I just did is throw it in the air. And that's what most people do when it comes to communicating things about their program. So let's make this relevant to an online entrepreneur. So what we do is we're like, oh, we have feature, we have 43 video lessons, and 17 PDFs, and we have all these things that we're talking about, right? Just throw it up in the air, we have to translate and be like, what the f like, why does that even matter? Well, what we're actually saying is we have all of our bases covered soup to nuts of everything that you would ever need to understand when it comes to writing a sales page. Let's say that you're teaching how to write sales pages, right? So like, the whole point of those 43 lessons, isn't the facts, 43 lessons. And quite frankly, I probably wouldn't advertise that because a lot of people are like, holy crap, I don't want to watch 43 lessons. But what we're really saying is, we have soup to nuts, we're gonna teach you every step of the way of what you need to know, without all the extra flux around how to write effective sales page copy, that is me translating it into normal shared language that makes sense to your eye track with me. So the ball is in the air, we know translated into Oh, that's what that frickin means, okay, but what we have to do is take it a step further, and we translate it to a benefit. And this is where people screw it up.
The benefit is the actual benefit that happens because of the thing that you're talking about. So back in the hearing aid one, let me give you that example. And then we'll translate it over to your copyrighted sales page that I just made up here that you're gonna benefit, right is I said, the noise reduction, right? That's the feature. The advantage was the quiet sound, the background noise, so you can hear the person in front of you. That's great. What I'm going to do is take it a step further and say, okay, so what that means is when you are out at the park with your granddaughter, when you're doing those daily are those weekly dates on Thursdays that you told me you love so much. What's going to happen is all that background noise from the football players and how you describe the birthday parties and all that other stuff. Those are going to be reduced so that you can actually hear Carolyn's voice when she speaks. And you'll actually have that connection with her and be able to refocus and enjoy your Thursday's and get back to doing that.
Like you said, that was so important to you benefit, I just put it in the language of the person sitting in front of me. Now let's translate this benefit, translating this to like a webinar or two. I don't even like a video that you're doing. Let's say you have a training around how to write a great sales page. We said the feature that nobody cares about was the 43 lessons, we translate it and said what we really have here is everything you need to know soup to nuts without all the extra fluff. That was a translation, the balls in the air now let's really put the ball in the hands of our ideal customer. So what that means Sarah for you is when you learn how to write an effective sales pitch Paige your hub like you're going to be able to go through and get this done within six weeks, whatever timeframe is right, you're going to know every single step of the kind of copy you need to write, so that you can connect with your ideal customer. So that you can have a sales page that people land on that they had that they get excited reading it because they actually feel seen and understood and heard. And what that's going to mean is more people are going to be buying your program.
So what you're doing is painting the picture of you might not know who that person is, you don't know their granddaughter story at the park, you're not working one on one. But what you do know is your ideal person and need to describe what the power of your program does for that. That's what we want to focus on with benefits. And when you do that, you have a far more effective pitch.
Sara: Oh, that was such a good mini training in there other Thank you. I can't help it. I can't help that girl. So amazing. Okay. So Heather, what do you wish people knew about pitching their offer?
Heather: Okay, I think you asked me this other questions before we started, I can't remember what I wrote. But let me tell you what's coming up for me right now, after our conversation, I wish people knew that it was really less about having the perfect sequence of slides for the pitch, and far more at painting the picture around how your ideal customer will experience success through your program. That's the thing, it's not about the program, it's about how your ideal person is going to experience success through your program.
That's a combination of the immediate benefits they're gonna get, and the longer term benefits. And with my little mini training, we just did on benefits, hopefully, you can take that start thinking about how does that actually translate for my ideal person. But a really good pitch illustrates that clear benefit and helps your ideal person see themselves in it. So it's less about the tech stack, it's less about the tech stack, the pitch stack, whatever you want to call it, although all those elements help you have a more compelling pitch. At the end of the day, if you cannot paint that picture in the language of your audience, you will not sell your program. Another thing
Sara: I've really taken away from listening to about these pitches is also just this ability to let go of that perfection in the moment of when you're being live, you know, as part of the pitch, like, we want to, we want to nail that message. We want to talk to the right person, but also for ourselves that we can remind ourselves that like we can be human right that if we prepare for those human moments that we can be more ready for the pitch so that people can be open to what we're saying and that we don't have to be again, subscription. Perfect. And I know for me, that was a huge takeaway. And I thank you for that.
Heather: Yeah, you're welcome. And I think just like really putting the exclamation on that point, we, if you think about us as people, when we consume other people's content, when we observe other people, we don't like perfect. In fact, we actually don't trust perfect. When we see somebody show up all too polished, too perfect, too dialed in, there's something off here, we don't trust them. So one of the things to really consider is if you consider yourself a perfectionist, right, or you just really want to do a phenomenal job and you want it to be right. Ask yourself, even if you work to get it right, is that actually the result you want? Because what people actually want is to be helpful. They want things that are going to resonate with them, and they want realness that really should be the goal to be helpful and to be real and relatable, that's going to get people resonated with you far more than me perfect.
Sara: At the time of this recording. It's still early in the year, and a lot of people have visibility as a goal for their business. What does that look like? 2022? How can we get some traction with it?
Heather: So visibility, essentially, is the idea of how do you get more eyes on your business and what I said earlier on my little tangent around how, as a business owner, you're the best brand asset that you have. Visibility can look like a lot of different things. I know a lot of times when people think about PR and visibility, they think about getting on TV or getting placed in Forbes. And all those things can be well and grateful that I actually find his visibility in more micro moments helps you connect with your ideal customer really effective.
So what I mean by that is simple things like showing up on live streams on Instagram or Facebook showing up consistently for your audience. So they actually see like, Oh, she's here, she's still talking about that thing. You stay top of mind when you do those little micro stage moments on your own platforms. He also can be something like going doing live webinars. I know there's a lot of conversations around how to automate webinars how to like reduce how many launches you do, but let me just tell you this y'all like one of the trends that I see that I think I'm gonna I'm actually going to be trying this this year, but I'm going to call it out the people who do the classic show up on live webinars more frequently, and they practice their messaging and they show up with their audience. I think those people are really going to excel because they're going to find their ideal person and more importantly, they're in their messaging down. So I think finding opportunities to do live webinars. Oh my gosh, like webinars are not dead. In fact, they are like they're, they're better than ever in my opinion, but we have to do is innovate how we do them.
So they don't feel like another one of the classic sales pitches, how do we create experience for that? But visibility, one of my favorite ways to do it is simple. Get on podcasts, and also guests speak in other people's programs. The whole point around visibility is to you get in getting in front of new audience. So the big challenge that I gave to all of my clients and students this year, and I'm going to issue to all you is how do you Yes, show up on your own platforms. But if you really want to get seen and get traction this year, how do you get your message on other people's stages. So for example, what I'm doing today with Sarah on her podcast, me speaking to potentially a whole new audience here sharing my message, and when I share the right message and share it in a compelling way, hopefully I did today. And I get people excited about the idea of them speaking, there's power in that, like, if you resonated with what I talked about today, if you're like, Man, this girl's got funny stories, she allows me to be perfect. I like this idea of speaking, most likely, you're going to come check me out online, or you're going to go be like, what else can I learn from her? That is the art of his ability is not just showing up. But it's showing up and shepherding people back into your tools, your programs, your your social media, whatever that looks like you're taking people on a journey. When you show up on other people's stages, you invite them to continue to follow you back to your resources.
Sara: Speaking of that, Heather, you've got a special event coming up that can help us with our speaking and our pitching. Will you tell us all about joining? I sure do.
Heather: I'm super excited. But I don't do a lot of live trainings very often anymore. My program I put on evergreen over a year ago, as with many parents, I had to figure out how to survive homeschool, and, and zoom and sanity and all those Gosh, all those things. Yeah, I don't do a lot of live events anymore. A lot of my stuff has been recorded. But I'm very excited. Both my kids are back in school, back in preschool in first grade, and I get to do some live stuff. So if you're an online entrepreneur, and you've resonated with what I've said today, and you're like, oh my gosh, I love the idea might freak me out a little bit. But I love the idea of me becoming more of a brand ambassador being able to speak more effectively. And in a more entertaining way on stages. If you like the idea of getting on podcast doing what I'm doing today, if you like the idea of figuring out your messaging on a webinar, so that you're not living inside the jar, but instead actually speaking in language that resonates with your ideal person, and getting them hungry for your programs. If those kinds of things really stood out to you today. And you're like, yes, I want to learn more about how to do that. Then you love we have coming up in February, it's been called the speaking workshops, which is a three part workshop series, all designed specifically for online entrepreneurs to help them become more comfortable and powerful with their voices. So they can show up and actually attract leads and sales into their programs. So if you want to hang out with us on that it's the speaking workshops, you can get your seat to it. Heather sedar.com, forward slash speaking workshops.
Sara: That sounds so good, Heather. I'm definitely gonna check it out. And we'll put all those links, of course in the show notes. Heather, thank you so much for talking, selling and speaking today on the launch playbook podcast.
Heather: Oh, it was such such such a pleasure. We had lots of fun today. And more importantly, I really hope that there was one or two things that stood out for listeners today. take action on it. Don't just sit on the information, do something with it.
Sara: Oh my gosh, I think their notebooks are going to be totally full. I know. Mine is I've been taking some notes as we've been chatting. So I can't wait to go back and listen to this episode myself. But Thanks, Heather.
Heather: Thanks, Sara.
Sara: Thanks for tuning into the launch playbook podcast. If you want to get weekly launch secrets in your ears. I hope you'll hit subscribe on iTunes. You'll never miss an episode. Because who knows? It could reveal just a thing you've been looking for to make your next launch a success. And be sure to leave a five star review in iTunes telling me how this episode inspired your launch plans. Until next time, keep putting your big ideas out to the world. I'm rooting for you
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