Guest Article

Have you ever wondered what teleclasses are all about? And have you ever wondered how exactly you could use them to grow your business and make money?

Do you remember the last time you decided to schedule a workshop in your diary? If your diary is anything like mine, it probably needed military precision. The kids may have been shipped off to your neighbors to allow you beat the morning traffic. You may have spent an hour or so on Google maps, trying to make head or tail of the one-way system and figure out the best place to park. Not to mention the indecision of what to wear (“Should I wear a suit or could I get away with jeans?”)

I know for a fact that a few ladies I have spoken to recently admitted to being “too busy” to make the time for learning something new. “Frankly, Karen, I just lack the confidence to go to a workshop where I may have to admit in public that I don’t know very much” was one comment I got. But surely that is why this lady needed to go and learn about what it was she felt she knew nothing about.
And I believe this is why teleclasses are proving more and more popular in today’s business community. A workshop or a class that is held via the phone allows us to fit in an hour here and an hour there without all the organization of childcare, traveling time and dress-stress.

I am not suggesting that teleclasses will ever replace the need for face-to-face human interaction. Human connection is essential when you are running your own home based business — we would go mad talking to the cat all day, wouldn’t we? But teleclasses are appearing more and more in businesses’ offerings and many of you reading this may be able to think about how to use the teleclass structure to help promote yourself AND make additional revenue streams.

These are my top 10 ways of possibly using teleclasses to help get you clients and make money.

1. Offer a free introduction to your services. What better way of reaching out to groups of people without the need to hire rooms, spend money on refreshments or even handouts. Invite your newsletter readers to phone in at a particular time to listen in to your “Top 10 tips on — whatever your expertise is.” This is especially useful for the coaches and consultants out there who are selling themselves on a one-to-one basis.

2. Record your teleclasses and build up an audio library to have on your website. Great for reputation building and getting Web visitors to hang around.

3. Go that one step further and sell your audio recordings as downloadable products. A simple passive revenue stream that can be automated.

4. Interview a leading expert in your field and invite your prospects to listen in. If you are running a wine tasting business, your client base may be interested in a quick 20-minute interview with one of the top wine growers in the country. And why not charge for it?

5. Offer quick 30 minute How-To Guides on your latest products. You may be running an online community magazine or local advertising directory and by giving a group guided tour over the phone, directing them through a website possibly, you could be bringing your product to life and people may understand the benefits better.

6. Hot Seat Sessions. These are great for experts who may be PR specialists or website designers. Invite your prospects to phone in and you will be there to answer all their burning questions about the problems they may be experiencing. You may get a few freebie hunters, but by sharing your wealth of knowledge, people will trust you and be more inclined to spend money with you to buy the full service that you offer.

7. Get your audio recordings transcribed. Wow — instant ebook!

8. Design accessible group programs. If you are selling one-to-one support, for example as a nutritional therapist or image consultant, you may like to consider group programs that could be delivered by phone. It can bring your rates down to capture prospects who couldn’t afford your one-to-one fees as well as dramatically increasing your overall hourly rate. Design a workbook to run alongside if you still want to work with visuals.

9. Get podcasting. We often talk faster than we can write. So if writing articles isn’t your thing then record yourself talking on a particular topic for 5 or 10 minutes. Bingo. An instant downloadable audio recording that can be fed through your blog, by email or direct to someone’s MP3 player.

Actually, I only intended to have a top 5 and I can’t quite believe that I came up with 9. Writing this article has just proved to me that there are plenty of opportunities for you to use teleclasses to promote your business and make additional revenue.

So, what’s next? Where do you go from here?

If you want to take action but the how-to aspect of running teleclasses is proving overwhelming, then check out this Step-by-Step Guide to Running Your First TeleClass.

Karen Skidmore is a business coach and mentor for women starting up in business. She created CanDoCanBe in September 2004 because she was frustrated by the lack of business support choice for women who wanted to build their own business. CanDoCanBe offers networking events, business coaching and mentoring.

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