Intro: Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX Studios in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s time for High Velocity Radio.

Lee Kantor: Lee Kantor here. Another episode of High Velocity Radio and this is gonna be a good one. Today on this show, we have Jeff Brandeis with Engaging Webinars. Welcome.

Jeff Brandeis: Thanks. We appreciate you being here today.

Lee Kantor: Well, I’m excited to learn what you’re up to. Tell us about Engaging Webinars. How are you serving folks?

Jeff Brandeis: So we, you know, obviously when we all went through Covid years ago, everybody jumped to Zoom. And, uh, you know, it got to me about a year or so ago that, uh, people were still using Zoom and virtual presentations the same way they did when we had Covid. And I just thought there had to be a more engaging methodology that people could use to make it easier to present and get people more visually attentive during the presentations and thus engaging webinars was born.

Lee Kantor: So what’s your backstory? Why are you uniquely qualified to be delivering this kind of information?

Jeff Brandeis: Well, I spent about 25 years in sales, uh, VP of sales, building sales teams, doing presentations, you know, my entire career. And so I think I’m, or I know I am pretty adept at doing presentations that resonate with buyers, sellers, clients and be able to just get people to be motivated to do business.

Lee Kantor: So what is kind of the foundations of a good presentation in your mind?

Jeff Brandeis: It’s the first thing is, and it goes with the name of engaging. It’s getting people engaged with your presentation. You know, nowadays a lot of people just come on. It’s almost like a silent movie. You know, they come on, they introduce themselves, they go into PowerPoint and they talk. They talk and talk. And every once in a blue moon, they come in with, uh. Does this resonate? Yes, sir. To chat. And that’s not really engaging from an audience perspective, especially in today’s environment where it’s so easy to pick up a phone or click another tab, turn off your camera and you, you know, you just move on.

Lee Kantor: So when you’re doing this kind of work, how did you test to know what is engaging and what isn’t? Is this just based on kind of you doing so many sales presentations, you kind of understand what resonates and what grabs someone’s attention.

Jeff Brandeis: So when we we work with executives or sales teams about presentations. It’s about having a movement every two, two, 2 minutes to 5 minutes. You got to be able to change the scene, keep people active. I mean, that’s what Netflix, the TV is all about. It’s constantly doing something different. So it’s whether or not you pull up a poll question right up on screen, if people answer your questions and they can see the results on the screen. That’s part of the app that we developed for our clients, where they can just simply just push a button and questions show up on the screen. People respond, or they push another button and their slide deck shows and, uh, I’m on the left, for example, and my, my slide deck is on my right. You don’t become one of those Hollywood squares where you go off screen when no one sees you. You’re the center of attention. You should always be there. And it has to be a fluid, you know, production environment. And that’s what we’ve created.

Lee Kantor: So now how did you kind of determine who your ideal client profile was?

Jeff Brandeis: It’s I mean, so the client profile is actually fairly easy these days because there are so many companies doing presentations virtually. And yes, we’re getting back into face to face conversations. So now we have hybrid events and we got more virtual events going on, um, every single day. I mean, I think there’s like 7000 events almost on a daily basis. So, uh, I mean, we have a, we customize the tool set to the client, but basically what we’ve seen from clients that have moved forward with us are the entrepreneurs, the sales teams, and the leaders that are looking to getting more return out of their investment when they do presentations.

Lee Kantor: So now, is their offering kind of a do it yourself offering where people just sign up and then they just kind of figure it out? Or is there a kind of consulting or coaching built into your offering?

Jeff Brandeis: This is a done with you offer. It’s coaching, it’s reviewing maybe a couple of your past presentations, understanding what you’ve done, what has, what you think has worked, how we can actually tweak your prior presentations, your prior webinars. It’s done with you. Um, this is not one of those where you go, sit and watch 20 hours worth of videos and try to go figure it out yourself. You know, I’m my team and I were invested in your success. We want you to have better presentations and convert more, uh, whatever your goal is from a presentation perspective. So it’s done. Done with you.

Lee Kantor: Now. Do you help in the, uh, kind of build an audience for the webinar? Or is it something that you expect the client to have access to an audience that wants to see the webinar presentation?

Jeff Brandeis: It’s both, we, we can help people, uh, drive attendance to the webinars as well if they don’t have a following. So we can understand what their, uh, methodologies, what their offer is, what their, who their avatar is. And we can build a cadence and a funnel for them to get people to sign up for their, uh, presentation. Obviously, I can’t guarantee people signing or attending, but at least we can get people to show interest. And then from there, um, it becomes part of their funnel to follow back up and engage with those people who signed up.

Lee Kantor: So a lot of our listeners are business coaches, and they’re always looking for ways to get in front of the right people to, you know, share their expertise. If you had a client that was a business coach, what would be kind of the steps you would take to build an effective webinar presentation around their expertise?

Jeff Brandeis: I mean, we would have a sit down conversation with the coach, understanding what their market is, what their salary to what’s their call to action is, what their goal is for a presentation perspective and really just dive into their business. That’s the first thing we it’s not a boilerplate, um, program that we offer. It’s every coach has a different style, a different unique uniqueness about them and a different offering as well. So you got health coaches, you got fitness coaches, you got mine coaches, you got weight loss coaches. It’s there’s so many of them out there. So we again, it’s really understanding that that marketing, that avatar of that of that coach and what they’re looking to drive.

Lee Kantor: So once you kind of determine that, how do you help them kind of take their expertise and put it into a webinar form or a presentation form that can drive revenue back to them.

Jeff Brandeis: One of the first things I would I typically do with them is to, as I mentioned earlier, is they’ve done the webinar before. I would watch their webinar. If they have not done a webinar before, I would ask them to give me a presentation. How would you actually sell me if I was a prospect? And I would understand really what their their language is, how they phrase things, understanding really what things are. But, you know, at the end of the day, me as a client or a prospective client to a coach is what’s in it for me, you know, how are you going to help me? Uh, you know, don’t tell me all about the features and benefits of your program. You know, talk to me as an individual. You know, I’m trying to lose 15 pounds. Don’t tell me it’ll work out more. I mean, that’s not one of those things that’s gonna really resonate with me. So I want to understand from a coach what makes you different than the other, you know, fitness coaches out there.

Lee Kantor: So then when you understand that, how do you kind of translate that information into something visually appealing that’s going to build the engagement?

Jeff Brandeis: So it’s either done through a, you know, a little bit of a, maybe it’s a slide deck, maybe it’s a little video of past success stories of what we’ve done. And maybe it’s also taking, uh, providing a story of a client that they’ve actually worked with and maybe even on the webinar, we have a client on our webinar and that can provide a testimonial about Jake or John or Sarah, how they took me through that journey. So it’s that validation. I mean, we’ve all heard the term people will buy from people that know, like, and trust. Um, you know, I like that to a certain extent. I don’t always have to like the person I’m buying something from, but I can learn from that person and they can help me. I’m good with that. So that’s what that’s what needs to be conveyed to the people on the webinar.

Lee Kantor: Now, what was it like to take your concepts and then build the technology around it to help your clients kind of benefit from all your learning? What was that a difficult process to kind of translate what you would like to have in one of these things and then actually build it out? Because that seems like that’s a different kind of business.

Jeff Brandeis: Yeah, it was a little different type of business. And I love the app that we built. And matter of fact, I started the business honestly, just trying to sell the app. But, um, one of my coaches said to me, hey Jeff, your app is really great. It’s interactive and people can see how it can use. But the biggest challenge that people had was really, how do I put on a webinar? How do I actually use what? You have to create a compelling message that will resonate with the audience. So that’s where we kind of step back a little bit and not just focus on the app, which is cool and science, but teaching people or providing them or having them understand what creates a, an engaging presentation, what resonates with your audience, and how do you actually have a very smooth and almost a production like webinar without having to spend, you know, $10,000 in a studio to create a great presentation?

Lee Kantor: Now, I’ve seen some webinars that are kind of evergreen where you can just put them on your website and people can opt into them and watch them on demand. Does yours offer something like that, or what are your thoughts about things like that?

Jeff Brandeis: Yes. You know, we can you can take any webinar that we do and we can put them into the evergreen platform. There are programs out there and we actually have one as well, that people can use it as their lead magnet or you qualify people before they actually speak to people as well. Or, you know, in today’s world, you know, you put the webinar on at 1:00 or whatever time zone you’re in, you know, and people sign up and life happens. You have an emergency, you know, uh, call from daycare or your, you know, client calls, things happen. You’re not always able to attend the webinar. So having that replay capability or functionality, you know, it does help.

Lee Kantor: So you think, is that a must have or is that a nice to have?

Jeff Brandeis: Um, nowadays I think it’s almost, uh, gearing to a, a, a must have. Uh, it is nice to have some people don’t like them or they’re not set up. I mean, part of this is also having the internal structure of having those on demand webinars and having to track that, having to sign the pages and making sure that you have that tracking ability. So, you know, not every coach or entrepreneur or business has all that set up yet? Um, but, you know, we can walk them through how that setup has to happen. Uh, but, you know, it’s a little bit of walk before you run. So you, you know, Rome wasn’t built in a day. Our houses aren’t built in a day, but, uh, you begin to build your foundation of creating a great presentation, and then you build that structure to continue to make it grow.

Lee Kantor: Now, when you have kind of a foundation, uh, available to you, I would imagine just like your service offers, is there something that you should be doing this kind of work, webinars, presentations, like on a weekly or monthly basis or some sort of a rhythm where that so you can get just more reps in and more practice to make it as good as it can be.

Jeff Brandeis: Exactly. Yes, 100% agree. I mean, you should get into a rhythm. Uh, some companies like to do once a month or some do once a week, every other week, but don’t do one every quarter or once every six months or once a year. Um, I mean, it’s almost like it’s one and done. People won’t know you, won’t find you. There’s no cadence happening. It’s repetition. People want to see you out there. You want to get known out there. Uh, so put on a consistent, uh, webinar, uh, at least twice a month if would be my minimum recommendation and be able to, um, again, just build that cadence, build that following, get the people to sign up and you’re, uh, getting people into your, your distribution, your newsletters, your follow ups, your, your, uh, maybe you do a daily update thing. But yes, it’s, uh, visibility is so important these days. And the other factor, if I may. Uh, Lee is as you do these webinars, they become, you know, you can chunk these down or you can, you know, cut down certain sections of your webinar and put them on social media as short video clips. And those also begin to work for you as well in building your credibility, building your brand. So that’s another thing that you could do with the webinars that you’re producing.

Lee Kantor: And like I mentioned earlier, a lot of our listeners are business coaches or is there a place for kind of a regular, maybe a live coaching, like, does this lend itself to kind of live distribution on a variety of platforms?

Jeff Brandeis: I mean, yes, you can put your, your webinars on, obviously on, on your website, you can put them on social media platform, you can put them on LinkedIn. You can, you know, do live LinkedIn live, you can do Facebook lives. There are lots of different ways you can, you know, now produce a webinar. If I understand your question correctly.

Lee Kantor: Well, I just wondered if your service allows me, can I sign up for your service and then kind of broadcast my webinar live on those third party apps like LinkedIn? Yes.

Jeff Brandeis: Yes. To answer your question, you can broadcast it wherever you wish.

Lee Kantor: So that’s included as part of what you get when you work with you.

Jeff Brandeis: Yeah. We don’t do the broadcasting per se. That’s not our functionality or our service, but the webinar itself. I mean, if you have the means and you’re hooked up with Spotify or other places to put the webinar out on, you can certainly do it. You know, typically we’re with Zoom or, you know, one of the other, um, virtual presenting software, but it’s all you’re able to stream this, the programs wherever you want to stream them.

Lee Kantor: And is there a story you can share about maybe one of your clients that they came to you with this challenge and you were able to help them get to a new level?

Jeff Brandeis: Sure. We had an actual fitness coach, uh, and, uh, Mark was a kettlebell coach. Fitness coach. Okay. Talk about unique. He’d never done a webinar before. He was local in his only, uh, area. Never did really a whole bunch of virtual training. And so we created a webinar for mock or with mock and mock wasn’t really, uh, really comfortable in doing his own presentation. So what we did was, uh, I became, you know, the host of Mark’s webinar and just like you’re asking me questions, I started asking more questions. And he, you know, we, we did this narrative, uh, interview for his webinar. And, you know, when we saw it promoting this mock, he asked me, how many people do you think you could drive to my webinar? And I said, Mark, it’s, you know, kettlebells. I mean, let’s go for, you know, 30 to 50 signups. Uh, so we ran our program and we actually had 108 people sign up, which was awesome. And then we did our presentation. And yes, 108 people do not show up, but the fact that 108 people raise their hand that was interested in Mark’s kettlebell training provided him more opportunity and more leads, more follow ups than he ever had before. So, you know, he got signups from the webinar, which was great. And then he had actual follow ups to do, which he got, you know, further revenue from.

Lee Kantor: Now, when you’re doing the promotion of an event like that, is that something that you have? Um, you have to kind of do it through your own database or your email list, or do you recommend paid advertising? What’s the best way to get the word out for an event like that?

Jeff Brandeis: Well, honestly, it will depend upon the client and obviously budget for cost perspective. You know, we do a lot of LinkedIn promotion as well, where we target certain individuals based upon the the business profile of what the person’s business is all about. Yes. You could do Facebook ads. Yes you can. Do you know, YouTube ads or you can do paid LinkedIn ads. Um, that’s not really how I like to try to drive traffic. You know, there are other, um, methodologies that you could drive traffic without necessarily doing paid, but if the company is big enough and they have the following and they have enough views in paid, then it could be worthwhile for them.

Lee Kantor: Now, uh, on your website, there’s something called the engage framework. Can you explain that to our listeners and why does it work so well?

Jeff Brandeis: It works well. The engage framework is part of the the process that we work with people to understand what it takes to be successful. When you’re going through the process of building a presentation or building a webinar. So each letter of the engage framework stands for something. So the first E is to establish, you know, the pain of the of the of the client. Why? Why are they here today? So you kind of like to remind them of what they’re going through, what their issues are, and then end it would be is to name what the desired outcome is. So if you work with me, this is what we’re going to produce, whether it’s maybe I’ll lose the 15 pounds or I add more muscle or I increase your your revenue by X percent. And then the, the G I’d like to kind of call that is give them a show. Um, not so much. You’re actually singing and dancing at them, but basically provide the value, teach them something, come up with a framework or an acronym that you can actually, you know, talk to them about like I am right now and tell some stories and just don’t make it a demo of a product that, uh, honestly, some people might like, but others will, you know, get lost really quick. The A is the authority. Why should people work with you? What makes you the expert in your field? Which is a question that you asked me earlier. And then the, the G the second G is the biggest part of challenge of getting a webinar together is how do you get people there? So you got to have that process in place of doing the promotion, doing the follow ups, doing the reminder emails, doing the text messaging, and even after the webinar ends, the follow up.

Jeff Brandeis: Uh, one of the things, for example, that we provide is, you know, that Q and A that I mentioned. So if you ask a great question and then now you’re, you should be getting the information from your audience. So to me, a webinar is twofold. I’ll digress for a moment. One is for you to provide your your information. But the other side of this is to get information from the people who are on the webinar. So you’re engaging with them, you’re getting information, and then your follow up. We’re capturing how they answer the questions, how they responded to you. So in your follow up, now you’re much more tailored, much more structured. And then the last thing is probably one of the most difficult things I’ve seen with people is how do you go from what you just showed to smoothly getting them into extending the offer or extending the next step? Is it a, you know, by now type of product or is it, let’s schedule a meeting and discuss more of it. So how do you actually move into from your presentation to extending the offer? So that’s the engage framework, six steps that we’ve worked with the our clients to go through and make sure that we nail all those six steps in our webinar.

Lee Kantor: Now, when you’re working with a person that’s brand new at that this, is there any advice you can share to help them kind of launch a webinar in a way that is effective for them and also maybe manage their expectations? You mentioned your kettlebell guy. You were only expecting, you know, a couple dozen folks. And then all of a sudden there was 100. Like, what’s what’s a reasonable expectation for a first webinar and, um, and, you know, if you can give some people some idea on what’s the best way to attract people to it to begin with, that would be great.

Jeff Brandeis: If part of that will depend upon, yes, it could be the first webinar, but they maybe have a, you know, a great following. Maybe they’re doing newsletters already or they have, uh, an email list as well. So it’s, it’s not a really, uh, you know, I have a, a expect to get, uh, you know, 20 people to sign up. A lot of it depends upon the situation, how long they’ve been in business, what, how many clients they have. Um, but, you know, the LinkedIn is again, depending upon what they’re selling, uh, specifically, it’s a great format to where we can actually target, uh, you know, directors or, or, uh, healthcare companies or telecom companies. So there’s lots of great ways to talk it within LinkedIn. But again, they all come down to the messaging of how you actually get people to sign up for it. Um, so, uh, you know, we’ve done webinars where we’ve had, you know, honestly, 20 people sign up and we’ve had webinars where we had thousands of people sign up. Um, it’s just the nature of the beast. Timing of it. Um, and really the, the amount of time that some people and the topic itself, to be honest with you, uh, and having a great, uh, title that resonates with people is also key.

Lee Kantor: Now, what about a call to action? How important is there to, at the end of this, have some sort of a call to action where there is a kind of an elegant, organic next step?

Jeff Brandeis: If if you don’t have a call to action at the end, you’re missing the boat of honestly, of, of doing an entire webinar. If your webinar ends with, hey, thanks for coming today, everybody. Uh, it was great having you here today. You have a great day. Uh, thanks. Goodbye. I mean, is that going to get people to call you? Uh, you know nothing. Probably not. So having a call to action, honestly, whether it’s a 1 to 1 meeting or a webinar or what, I like to phrase this as a next action step. At the end of every meeting, you have to have a next action step. So thanks for attending, folks. Here’s the link to my my calendar. Let’s book a call and let’s get your presentations generating more revenue as quickly as possible. So, you know, he’s going to speak with jeff.com, for example, for myself or, you know, what we’ve talked about today is, uh, here’s a starter kit for you for $97. I’m going to put it into chat, uh, a link, you can purchase this and let’s begin your transformation of whatever it might be. Having that call to action just kind of takes your the journey from where you started with the people from where you had them thinking about their pain and why they were attending the webinar, to providing them the solution that you talked about during your presentation. It’s imperative. It’s a must have.

Lee Kantor: Now, is it possible to sell kind of a 5 or 6 figure service or product at the end of a webinar? Or is it is the objective more along the lines of just kind of maybe getting them to make a small commitment or a more, um, a more robust conversation? Like what is a reasonable expectation at the end of a webinar?

Jeff Brandeis: So I think you can sell, yes, you can definitely sell obviously a single digit double digit. Uh, um, I am on impulse buy for somebody. I’ve seen four, nine, four, nine, nine, seven, $5,000 deals, $10,000 deals, and probably up to maybe 15,000 would be the top six figure deals. I don’t think you’re going to be able to sell on on a 45 minute webinar. And if you can, more power to you. I’d love to, you know, understand what you’re selling and how you’re able to do that. Uh, but if someone’s going to spend 100 K, I’d want to have a 1 to 1 conversation with you before I put that kind of money down. But definitely, you know, two, three, four, uh, figures are definitely doable in a webinar.

Lee Kantor: Now, is that kind of your recommendation is to start small and just kind of slowly deepen the relationship over time?

Jeff Brandeis: I think part of this comes down to really, what are you selling? What’s your product? What, what’s your goals? Do you have offer different packages for people? Uh, do you need to have a more in depth conversation with somebody to really understand where they’re at today? Um, you know, I don’t think there’s one blanket answer I can provide to you for that one. I think it’s really just, uh, who is your audience? What what is what? What is your product and what’s, what’s the price of your product that you’re selling for? And based upon what you’ve done in the past, because everyone you’ve sold had a, had to have a conversation. Um, or can we sell an introductory offer just to get them into your pipeline? It’s kind of a, we got to understand a little bit more about the client and what their needs are and what they’re trying to achieve.

Lee Kantor: Well, I mean, you mentioned your sales background. Where do you see this working best in a sales funnel? Is it best at the top of the funnel or is it best in the middle? Or do you make adjustments, um, depending on where they’re at in the sales funnel?

Jeff Brandeis: I mean, I’ve seen it work in all aspects of the, of the funnel from warming up. I know a cold audience to getting interested into your product, the people who you’ve kind of spoken to, but might need want to come into a webinar to get reminded of things and hear things again. And then the other aspect of a webinar that a lot of companies are now thinking about doing, and we’ve done a few of these as well, is you have a client now, you have upgrades, you have new new new features, new capabilities. You might be adding a new product on. So now it becomes to, you know, what I would like to look at is something called what I call the size of a wallet. So you have someone in product A, but you’ve also got product B and C, you know, introduce your current clients to products B and C, and, you know, the more you are able to get people to use your products, learn more about you, the stickier it gets, so to speak, it makes it more difficult for them to leave because they already know and like your products and they use your products. So it’s easier to do an upsell sometimes or usually to an existing client. So webinars have a lot of different facets, capabilities. You just got to use them and do them.

Lee Kantor: And then so you would recommend kind of a different webinars for different people at different times.

Jeff Brandeis: Definitely.

Lee Kantor: So if somebody wants to learn more, have a more substantive conversation with you or somebody on the team, what’s the website? What’s the best way to connect?

Jeff Brandeis: The best way to connect is let’s go to speak with jeff.com. That’s my calendar link. Uh, go to speak with jeff.com or go visit engaging webinars.com. Or you can look me up on LinkedIn with Jeff Brandeis on LinkedIn.

Lee Kantor: Well, Jeff, thank you so much for sharing your story today. You’re doing such important work and we appreciate you.

Jeff Brandeis: Thank you. I appreciate you having me. I totally enjoyed it.

Lee Kantor: All right. This is Lee Kantor. We’ll see you all next time on High Velocity Radio.