I sat in on a bunch of vendor/partner webinars lately, and I have to say that, for the most part, they were spectacularly useless – lots of words, lots of slides, and very little in the way of practical information.
Here are a few examples of what to watch for and not to stand for, so you can speak up when you need to. After all, it’s your time they’re wasting, so be sure you ask for what you need.
Four Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Things in Webinars
- The scripts sounded as if they were written by someone who had swallowed a records/process/information thesaurus.
For the love of Pete, please just talk to me, not at me. And OMG, please don’t burst my bubble by making it clear that you don’t really know anything about what I do!! As in the one particularly egregious response to a question: “I’m sorry, but I’m not familiar with what ‘ROT’ means.” And then later saying most of your clients don’t have much of it. (PS: Why read the question to the group if you don’t know the answer?)
- The openers spent far too much time detailing the history of the hosting vendor or partner.
A few seconds? Fine. But we already knew enough to have us register and right now don’t care about every company milestone since founding. Please just get to the point.
- Speaking of which … the point in these webinars very often was hard to discern.
Are you defining records management, infogov, or whatever your technology of choice is? Are you telling me your best practices? Introducing your latest features/functions? Too many webinars try to do all of this, and the result is a mish-mash of stuff that really teaches us nothing.
- It was great when a customer was on the line, but they should be doing most of the talking.
I have a lot more in common with them than the vendor or partner, so I want to hear mostly from them! Last time I had to wait fully half-way through before the customer took the mic for more than some “Can I add something?” comments, and that’s just way too long.
What webinar ‘gotchas’ grind your gears? Let us know in the comments!
— If you liked this post, please “Like” it and let me know! –
Steve Weissman, The Info Gov Guy™ • steve@hollygroup.com • 617-383-4655 • Principal Consultant, Holly Group • Member, AIIM Company of Fellows • Recipient, AIIM Award of Merit