eWebinar Interactions Master List: 20+ Interactions to Choose From
Jake Lizarraga
The humble webinar has become the swiss army knife of marketing.
It can do almost anything you can do, albeit remotely, and well too: almost sixty percent of B2B marketers say it produces the best results.
The automated webinar notches things up even higher – doing everything a webinar can but asynchronously (a fancy word for it doing the work while you do something else).
Imagine wielding that always-on power while selling your business.
You could pitch buyers while you sleep. Field inquiries while working out. Demo products while running your business. You then pick up where your webinar left off, continuing the conversations your webinar started.
If you’ve long wondered how to balance selling your business with running it, the automated webinar could be the answer. It cuts admin, saves time, and builds buyer trust. Below, we describe five ways an automated webinar could help sell your business.
What Is an Automated Webinar?
An automated webinar is a pre-recorded video hosted on an interactive platform like eWebinar. Unlike a live webinar, an automated webinar runs according to your attendees’ schedules. You can also recreate much of what makes a live webinar special with eWebinar, including interactivity and chat, making it a powerful ally to the busy founder.
I’m sure you’ve attended at least one webinar in your lifetime, maybe more. You’ll find them in everything from training to meetings to onboarding and more. Usually, they require you to run them, virtually, clicking through slides, answering questions, and so on.
An automated webinar, however, does all the hard work for you. You record everything in advance, the audio, visuals, slides, animations, or any other elements you want to include. Then, once hosted on eWebinar, your attendees sign up and participate anytime.
Why Use an Automated Webinar to Sell Your Business?
You’re the expert on your business. And an acquisition is as much about your goals as it is the buyer’s. But you can’t be everywhere, for everyone, at all times. With a bit of foresight and careful planning, however, an automated webinar can. Here’s how.
1. Cut Admin and Save Time
Have you ever written a book about your business?
Didn’t think so. But that’s what it can feel like to prepare and market your business for the first time, especially if you leave exit planning to the last minute. Suddenly, you have to communicate:
- What you do and why
- Your reasons for selling
- Financial performance
- Growth opportunities
- Tech stack and dependencies
- Customer profiles
- Employee backgrounds and roles
- Competitor analysis
- Unique value propositions
- And lots more
If you were to meet buyers in person or on a video call, you’d spend several hours discussing these points, followed by tens of other meetings, messages, and calls as the deal progressed.
Multiply that time and effort by tens of potential buyers and suddenly you’ve got a full-time job. How can you continue to meet your growth targets when you’re spending all your time presenting to buyers, fielding their inquiries, and answering the same questions again and again?
But if you hone and record your presentation, an automated webinar can automate the rest. You’re then free to focus on your business and maximize your valuation. Your webinar will pitch buyers, answer their questions, and help narrow down the people worth talking to further.
2. Sell Your Business Anytime, Anywhere
Your potential buyer pool includes people from around the world, in vastly different time zones, and where English might not be their first language. Even selling within the US could mean a time difference of up to six hours. Double or triple that when selling to buyers abroad.
And why not extend your buyer pool internationally? You might find the perfect match in your home country, but statistically, they’re just as likely to live abroad. Maybe your business resides in the US, but it could be the ideal acquisition opportunity to a buyer in Europe or Asia.
Fielding buyer inquiries across time zones can require late nights or early mornings. You’re likely an overworked founder enduring long days to build your business. Can you handle additional buyer-seller meetings too? Why not let an automated webinar pitch instead? Buyers for whom English is a second language may also appreciate a webinar that they can replay.
List your business for sale on an international acquisition marketplace like Acquire.com. Add your automated webinar to your listing and then wait as buyers review your pitch, asynchronously, and those interested reach out with further questions.
3. Engage More Buyers
Engaging buyers is no easy feat. Acquire.com, for example, lists thousands of vetted businesses for sale, so how do you stand out? While your opportunity should grab attention, how can you touch on all of the benefits while offering detail to those who ask for it?
One way is to foster conversation with a pre-programmed Q&A. How can you invite and answer questions without being present? When you build an automated webinar on eWebinar, for example, you don’t simply upload a video but create an interactive experience, including:
- Live chat for real-time conversations
- Emails for post-webinar replies to session questions
- In-webinar polls and questions
- Pre-programmed interactions and messages
- Sharing feedback and comments during each session
With the help of an automated webinar, you can create an engaging video presentation that sells your business and fields initial queries – all on autopilot. Buyers get answers to questions. You create further interest while whittling down your shortlist.
4. Build Trust
"All things being equal people will do business with, and refer business to, those people they know, like, and trust." – Bob Burg and John David Mann, The Go-Giver
You could argue that selling a business is the biggest and most important transaction of your life. A house is a close second, but your home usually doesn’t make you money (unless you rent it out or flip it at a profit). In many cases, businesses pay for your home.
While a business has bigger upside potential than many other investments, the risks are frequently higher. Buyers are discerning folk and must assess these risks before making an offer. That starts with whether they like you and trust what you’re selling is the real deal.
Getting people to like you is, thankfully, quite simple with a webinar.
A "face-to-face" meeting, even one that is virtual and pre-recorded, can accomplish more in a few minutes than weeks of written correspondence and phone calls. That is the power of video. People get an immediate sense of who you are and what you are about.
Introduce yourself, be polite and honest, and invite questions. Show your face, describe your background and aspirations, and be honest about your and your business’s failings. Only then will buyers take you seriously.
Facts and figures only tell one side of your story. The rest is you – the person behind the business and what you want from the acquisition. Introducing yourself to tens or even 100s of potential buyers could take a while, but if you do it in your automated webinar, you’ll save time for the most serious buyers – those who want to close an acquisition with you.
5. Show Your Preparedness
Preparedness in any acquisition is an advantage. Why? Because it makes the buyer’s job easier. Imagine, for a moment, you’re on the hunt for a new business. You’ve got the capital, and now you want to find a business that’ll give you the biggest return on investment.
First, you browse startups to create a shortlist of potential candidates. Then you need to examine each in detail before hopping on founder calls to ask more questions.
If the founder hasn’t prepared, doesn’t know what they want, and can’t give you the data you need quickly, how would you respond?
You’d probably mark it as a red flag and move on to better opportunities.
Your automated webinar should demonstrate that closing with you will be fast and easy. While your pitch, product demos, and financial data sell the opportunity, showing you know your way around the acquisition process will warm buyers to you even more.
Buyers don’t want to waste time asking basic questions and waiting for answers. When it’s their dollar on the line, they want instant gratification – reassurance that your business is worth acquiring.
Don’t fret too much about predicting every possible inquiry in advance. Not only can you refine your webinar with buyer feedback, but you can also answer questions in chat or after the webinar via email so no one is left without answers. Responding promptly to questions and concerns will leave a positive impression of you, the business, and your acquisition knowledge.
Selling your business is a complex process. Much of that complexity happens before you list your company for sale. It’s in the preparation phase, where you collate, correct, and enhance everything about your business to ready it for exit.
But once you finish that initial phase, perhaps even during it, consider using an automated webinar to help you sell your business. As your in-absentia acquisition sidekick, it can only ever be a proxy for your presence, but in the early stages of selling, it can attract and filter interest so you spend most of your time on the conversations that matter.
Join the on-demand demo now to experience an automated webinar first hand. Then, once you’re ready, list your startup on Acquire.com where you’ll meet qualified buyers serious about acquisition.
It’s so easy to get started.
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