Saturday, November 1, 2008

How Web Conferences Can Help in a Recession

By Christopher Blanchet

On Thursday October 16th, CNBC's The Big Idea had a spectacular guest, Jim Cramer, an investment guru who provides great assistance to average, blue-collar individual investors. What Jim made clear throughout the program was that this looming recession will be deep and lengthy. A few callers during the program really stood out, however. Without going into details, Mr. Cramer's message came across quite clearly: fight with everything to keep your American Dream alive. Quote Stork Solutions provides more than just surface motivation or product recommendations; it provides tangible solutions to help you keep your Dream alive.

One caller from the show noted that this year's revenue would come in at only 20% of forecast, which means decades of strong sales have been wiped in a single year. For this caller, this has resulted in deep cuts to payroll, heavy layoffs, and reduced expenses. While Quote Stork recommends Reducing expenses in its 3-tranche model, this exercise has heightened importance at times like this when long-term survival is an actual goal for an enterprise.

However, Reducing expenses alone will not keep your business alive. Your business like any other needs one important component at the end of a recession: customers. So how do you pursue business development objectives and reach a wide range of prospects and existing clients when the economy encourages deep reductions?

Through web conferences. A lot of businesses and entrepreneurs have probably hosted seminars for their existing and new customers. These events might have been called open houses, information nights, or some other niche name. They might have hosted them at a central location like the business premises, a restaurant, or, most commonly, at a hotel ballroom.

Web conferences allow several great benefits when compared to a traditional seminar. One of them is cost savings, in particular the room rental fee or deposit. Another is time savings; with a web conference, you don't have to pre-book a room several weeks or months in advance. Also, you won't have to focus tremendous amounts of energy to filling that room. And cancelled web conferences don't cost your deposit.

Another thing that disappears with a web conference is that sinking feeling you might get when interest in your seminar doesn't pan out the way you intended. Instead of hosting a small group in a large room, your web conference attendees will not know whether you expected a thousand people or just five.

The easiest to use web conference provider on the market today is GoToMeeting which allows you to host up to 15 attendees for as little as $39 per month. This provider uses 128-bit encryption making your meetings extremely secure and safe from prying competitor eyes. The way it works is you send attendees an invitation (GoToMeeting integrates Outlook and Instant Messenger) and then the link to your web conference. Attendees sign in and listen to and watch your desk-top presentation on their computer. At your choice, you can allow interaction. GoToMeeting gives you unlimited meetings and can be accessed from any web-enabled computer. For larger groups, GoToWebinar by the same company can host up to 1,500 attendees for a slightly higher price.

Currently GoToMeeting and GoToWebinar offer a free trial. Through ProBusinessReview and QuoteStork.com, you can enjoy an additional discount of $10.

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