Using Hot Conference For Making Presentations

Before using my HC room for making presentations, there are a couple preliminary steps I recommend to make your web conference room more user friendly.

1. Create an easier to share web address and "redirect page" for my chat room.
The web address assigned for your chat room by Hot Conference is rather long and certainly difficult to share with someone when you are talking with them on the telephone. For example, http://hotconference.com/software/conference.php?id=1234567. Now, is that a tongue twister or what? I much prefer to have a shorter and easier to remember address to give my prospect. By setting up a redirect page, I can give them something like http://www.vicbilson.com/chat and the prospect is automatically redirected to the longer web address. Much simpler.

There are actually a number of different ways you can do this.
a. HTML Refresh Meta Redirect
b. Php Redirect
c. JavaScript Redirect
d. htaccess Redirect
e. Domain redirect from your registrar

I prefer using the HTML Refresh Meta Redirect method simply because it's fairly easy to set up and I've been using that method for a long time. The actual mechanics of setting up a redirect is probably the topic of another email, or there is plenty of instruction of how to do it on the web. One good source is < http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/URL_redirection >. You could also do a Google search and find lots of good material.

2. Create a personalized entrance or home page.
There is NO default home page set up to display in your web conference window when prospects visit your room. What does display is an "error" page that does not make a very good first impression, in my opinion. I prefer a simple personalized welcome page to display, or you could set it to display your Follow Our Lead team web site. Again, the mechanics of creating an HTML page for display is the subject of another training. You can contact me for some suggested resources.

To change what displays as your home page, first log in to your Hot Conference members area < http://www.hotconference.com > and click on "Administration Panel". Next, click on "My Room Settings" where you can enter the address for your chosen Home Page URL.

With those preliminaries complete, I'm ready to use my room for making presentations…

The process of using the Hot Conference room for making a presentation is really quite straightforward. There are generally four things I want to accomplish: (1) I want to demonstrate the HC product to the prospect, (2) I want to suggest some ideas or possibilities of how the prospect might use this product, (3) I want to answer any questions the prospect might have by "showing" them the answer, and (4) I want to give the prospect a brief tour of our team web site to encourage them to return on their own to explore further.

Step 1.
Invite the prospect to your Hot Conference room. I generally like doing this while talking with them on the telephone or by Instant Messenger. I have already begun the process of asking questions and building a relationship with the prospect. The conference room will just be icing on the cake, so to speak.

Step 2.
Once the prospect joins me in my conference room, I've already begun the process of demonstrating the Hot Conference product. I tell them this web conference room is just one of our products and explain to them how we use it for our team training. I emphasize that this technology lets me talk with people around the world and explore some possible ways they might use this both for their business and personal communications. It's ideal, for example, for parents to keep in touch with children away to College in another city. Hopefully, if you've been asking questions earlier, you'll have some idea of what suggestions you might make to your prospect. In this area, every presentation will be a little different, as you'll want to personalize it for the individual you're talking with now.

Step 3.
Next, I want to demonstrate the ability of the moderator to "push" web pages to the prospect, while at the same time showing them relevant portions of the Follow Our Lead team site. Again, if I have been asking questions (as I should), I will already know what areas of the web site to show them. Perhaps, they have asked about our products. I can show them "The Program" page that details our products. Maybe they have asked about what they can earn. I show them "The Rewards" page. If the prospect is already in another MLM company and I know (or I can ask) what their web page URL is, I might pull up that page to show them. When they SEE their OWN page in the display window, they start to get excited about the possibilities.

Step 4.
Finally, I always ask them if they have any questions or are ready to get started. I answer their questions as best I can by showing them relevant portions of the web site. If they're ready to get started, I show them where to sign up for one of the products and where to sign up for their personalized FOL team site. Keep in mind some pages that are password protected cannot be pushed to your prospect in the Hot Conference window while in any Presentation Mode other than "Desktop Sharing." For those links, you'll just show them where the link is found and have them come back later to sign up.

TIP: I like changing to the "Hard Presentation" Mode selected from your "Moderator" menu at some point in the tour to further demonstrate the abilities of the web conferencing software and to make it easier to show web pages full screen and in follow-me mode.

ANOTHER TIP: If you go into "Desktop Sharing" Mode and open your web pages in a separate web browser (not in Hot Conference), you are able to take your prospects in to the password protected areas, the Yahoo Message board without requiring them to log in, and the various sign up pages. Remember, with Desktop Sharing Mode turned on, your prospect is seeing the same thing you are seeing on your computer.

Step 5.
At the end of the presentation, I will invite the prospect to our live training meetings on Monday and Wednesday and encourage them to subscribe to our Yahoo group and begin learning more about our team. I also tell my prospect I will send them an email following this presentation with the links and schedule for our meetings as well as my contact information if they want to ask any further questions.

TIP: You may want to practice your presentation a few times before going live with a prospect. This would be a great opportunity to invite a friend or family member to "help" you refine your presentation while letting them know what you're doing with your business at the same time in a non-threatening manner. Just ask them for their help. Most will oblige.