The importance of securing new business for future growth is vital. However it must be matched with the effective management of existing clients. The consensus opinion seems to be that bringing in new accounts costs between 3 to 10 times the amount it costs to renew an existing account. So, it makes economic sense to look after your clients.
Webinars are an excellent account management tool for a number of reasons:
- Product Updates: seeing is believing. Webinars enable you to reach out to your clients to give them updates on new features and benefits of your product or service. Rather than talk about them you can actually SHOW your clients any prototypes or beta versions to give them a real feel for what’s ahead. This will make your client feel part of the development process and giving visibility on where you are going.
- Scalability: If you are managing large numbers of accounts it may be challenging to keep in regular contact with them, which good account management requires. Webinars enable you to reach out to a large number of people in many countries at the same time.
If recorded they can be distributed to clients to watch when it suits them. Using webinars to inform on updates and developments can ensure that no one slips through the net. Registration will tell you who has attended the webinar and for how long.
- Thought leadership: As you get to know your client, you should be better informed on what interests them and where they look to stimulate their own ideas or research. Hosting or sponsoring webinars on topics of interest can be a highly effective way of building relationships with your clients.
By hosting the webinar you are demonstrating that you have taken time to understand your client’s business and are facilitating innovative new research ideas.
- Polling of ideas: Webinar polling tools can be used to gauge your clients’ views on either your current offering or the future direction of the business. You may receive some anecdotal feedback from your clients through various sources but it is very difficult to take this information and compare with other clients’ feedback. Particularly if this feedback is verbal. Webinar polling enables you to ask specific questions to your clients and collect feedback in one format.
- Recording any problems or concerns: As well as promoting new ideas, you can use webinars to discuss and address specific issues that your client may be experiencing in detail. The way you handle this can be key when your client decides to renew their contract with you.
In preparing for a webinar your client will ideally look into the issues in advance and share them with you so that you can use the webinar to address them specifically. Holding a webinar to discuss enables you to bring in your company experts and technical specialists.
Your client will be getting the best of your expertise. You can record this discussion and distribute to your client after the event. Your client can then forward this to colleagues and use to help move things forward.
- Client referral: Before holding a Webinar, a great way to get new leads is to ask your existing clients if they know if any of their network of contacts would also be interested in the content. You may receive several names in similar business areas who may then become clients too. The registration process will capture any new leads and reinforce the mutually beneficial relationship between you and your client.
As well as the clear economic benefits of retaining clients, using webinars to keep your clients happy guarantees a good reputation which in turn will help bring in new business. The more philosophical among you may call it a virtuous circle or Karma! Whatever you call it, it works!
