One of the biggest hurdles people feel they need to overcome, before putting together a webinar, is having a product to sell. If you don’t have a product to sell, how can you sell it on a webinar?

So they turn to affiliate marketing (marketing other people’s products for a commission) or multi-level marketing. People think, “If I have a product, I can sell it and make money”.
However, the reality is, having a product to sell does not guarantee any sales. It’s the process you take people through in order to close the sale that makes or breaks a business. This is why people can sell below-average products and still create income. By the same token, people who own products that could completely transform people’s lives for the better, might never manage to close a single sale.

The great thing about webinars is that you don’t actually need to have a product prior to putting together a webinar. In fact, selling on a webinar a product that does not yet exist is one of the best practices. Your customers may actually prefer it that way.

When you sell a product that hasn’t been created yet on a webinar, I call it the “webinar productization method”. In other words, you’re selling more webinars at the end of a webinar. That way, you don’t have to spend time creating a product, or spend money buying product stock unless it sells.

If you don’t have a product, you can simply sell more webinars!

You package webinar information into webinar series of four, eight, ten or twelve webinars, and this creates the perfect product.

Remember, people attend a 60-minute or 90-minute webinar because they have a hunger to learn about the topic covered. A percentage of those people (usually ten per cent) want to go further, faster by learning more. What better way to teach them more than by selling more webinars?

We usually recommend that people who opt for this strategy deliver each subsequent webinar on a weekly basis, using a live and interactive broadcast platform such as gotowebinar.com.

From our experience, most customers prefer this delivery method, as they can engage and interact with the expert directly, and ask questions while they’re being taught.

These live webinars can, of course, be recorded for future customers, allowing the product owner to leverage their time.

When outlining the content of your product or service you intend to sell on a webinar, simply follow the 3 steps below:.

Step 1: Name your product.

For example, if your initial webinar was about How to lose ten pounds in 8 weeks, you could name your product, The Weight Loss Acceleration Eight-Week Program.

Step 2: List the webinars (also known as “modules”) included in the program.

For example, The Weight Loss Acceleration Eight-Week Program could include the following webinars:

• Webinar 1: How to calculate your ideal weight
• Webinar 2: How to read food labels
• Webinar 3: How to clean your fridge and pantry
• Webinar 4: How to create meal plans
• Webinar 5: How to speed up your metabolism
• Webinar 6: The foods that make you feel full for longer
• Webinar 7: The food combination method for weight loss
• Webinar 8: How to maintain your ideal weight

Step 3: State the total value of the webinar series package.

Never assume people know the value of what you offer, so always make sure you underline its value. This could range from a few hundred dollars to a few thousand dollars. Then, price your product below its total value to make it an irresistible offer. For example, should the total value be $500, you could sell your yet-to-be-created product at $297, making it a no-brainer decision for potential customers.

How do you work out the value of something that isn’t created yet? There are a number of ways to do this. The most common way is to look at what other people in your industry are charging. By including the value of every element included in your product, you’re raising the perceived value of your overall product. If you don’t add a value as you itemize your offer, the prospect will think it’s not worth anything at all.

To increase the value of your product, and therefore increase the price of your product, it’s advisable to either add more webinars or offer additional items such as one-on-one coaching, consulting, templates, check lists, etc. For example,
The Weight Loss Acceleration Eight-Week Program could also include:

• Six 30-minute telephone consultations – value $297
• A calorie counter log – value $97
• A diet health checklist – value $47
• Access to a private Facebook support group – valued $97
• A portion size guide – value $47
• An interview with a weight-loss expert – value $297
• Case studies of successful people – value $97
• Etc. …

The list could go on and on. The key is to include items that are either quick to put together or already available, and that complement your core product—the webinar series. It’s poor business practice to add irrelevant items as bonuses to justify the price.

When people implement the productization method for the first time, we strongly recommend that they add one-on-one consulting into their product. Although, at first, it might appear hard to sustain if faced with many buyers, our experience shows that most customers never request the calls and some request just one call. That initial call has proven critical in the success of a business, as it is an opportunity for the product owner to survey customers, and ask the key question: “What made you buy the product?”

The answers that customers provide will enable you to understand the main pain point of your audience (what is the main problem they’re trying to solve). You can also discover what element in your product was their tipping point for making the buying decision.
Further critical information such as your customer avatar can also be gathered within that first call. This will become invaluable when fine-tuning your marketing message and targeting your customers.

Sean Allison for example, (ex-government employee from Perth) had considerable experience with options trading and had made a fair bit of money from trading options in his spare time. When he decided to sell an options trading course on his first webinar, he priced it at $997 for a series of eight webinars (he hadn’t created yet!) and some one-on-one calls.

He used the one-on-one calls as a very effective market research tool. To his surprise, the main response he received to the question, “What made you buy the product?” was: “We bought it because your strategy didn’t require us to sell anything to anyone in order to produce income.” This helped him to improve his lead-generation method. He included the headline, ‘The little-known strategy for producing income that doesn’t require you to sell anything to anyone’ in his marketing material. His business is now a multi-million dollar a year business.