by Kathleen Gage The Street Smarts Speaker and Author

Teleconferences are fast becoming one of the most valuable strategies you can use to increase your market position, your opt-in subscriber list and your profit margins. You can quickly become known as an expert in your field and within your market through the power of teleconferences.

Consultants, coaches, speakers and trainers can literally make tens of thousands, and even hundreds of thousands, of high profit margin dollars without ever having to leave your home.

Vendors can easily educate their client base through the proper use of teleconferences.  By doing this you are becoming a more valuable resource to clients.

However, as quickly as you can gain great visibility, position, revenue streams and credibility you can also experience the flip side if you don’t know what you are doing.

Here are only a few the benefits of teleconferences, also referred to as teleseminars:

q  Market reach

q  Cost effective marketing strategy

q  Visibility

q  Expert status positioning

You can feasibly host a call, record it and distribute the audio file via the Internet with no hard costs whatsoever. In some cases, this will be very acceptable, but in other cases you will need to invest in very high quality recording equipment, editing services and distribution methods. Again, it will depend on your purpose for the session and who your market is.

You can also use a teleconference to promote other products and services you offer such as eProducts, books, training program, mentoring session, and/or coaching sessions.

Selling on the back-end of the call is an art and science. It doesn’t happen by chance and those of us who are making thousands of dollars per call don’t dare leave it to chance.

Most people who do extremely well at revenue generations from teleconferences have been trained by a qualified expert or experts. Additionally, we have a clear vision of what we want to accomplish and we prepare for the sale.

On the other hand, there are countless individuals who have failed miserably when they have attempted to make money from teleconferences. Often it is because they have not been trained in how to position the call, create enough of a market demand for what they are selling, there is no call to action, nor do they have a solid follow-up plan.

With the right vision, plan and action steps you can do extremely well with teleconferences. Here are a few of the steps involved in successful teleseminars.

1. Decide on the purpose of the call. Is it to inform, educate, motivate, inspire or promote?

A simple way to determine the purpose of the call is to address a problem your market needs a solution to. You can find out by asking your market. An online survey can provide you ample input. You can even send a fax or letter to a portion of your market to receive great input.

2. Decide on a date and time. There are optimum times based on your market. For some markets, day time works best. For others, evenings.

3. Secure a bridge line. There are numerous services available ranging from free to very high fee.

4. Market the session. How you do this will be determined on whether or not the call is open to the public or only a select group of your current clients are invited.

5. Host the call.  

6. Develop support materials. You may want to consider providing a handout or learning guide for the call. This allows your listeners to easily follow along, write down those points that are especially important to them, and refer back to the notes long after the call is over.

Additionally, you can use the learning guide as a promotion piece for other products and services you have available.

7. Record the session. There are software programs available that allow you to record from your phone and computer. Some experts prefer this method while others prefer to outsource all the recording, editng and distribution of the audio file and call transcripts.

8. Follow-up. After the call you should have a definite plan of when and how you will follow-up with those who were on the call and those who were unable to make it. If you are selling something, often sales are made hours, or even days, after the call is over. If you don’t have a great plan in place you may miss thousands upon thousands of dollars in potential revenues.

If you have not yet utilized the power of Teleconferences this may be a perfect time to begin.

Kathleen Gage, The Street Smarts Marketer™, is an Internet marketing advisor who works with spiritually minded speakers, authors, coaches and consultants who are ready to turn the knowledge into money-making products and services. Visit http://www.kathleengage.com for free resources to build your online presence and credibility. 

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