This sounds like a good topic right? Relevant anyway. But the truth is Selling Power has been diluting their brand for the past year by having webinars with titles like this BUT that have no content related to the Headline. That’s marketing fluff. My time (and yours) is too valuable to give it more than 1 or 2 shots before we write them off as not worth the time.

When you read the detail and notice the sponsor (SugarCRM), it will likely be 45 minutes of statistics about how CRM can improve your sales process. Ooh!  Ends up being a waste of time. Dilutes the brand. It also makes me think that both the folks at Selling Power magazine and SugarCRM are out of touch with the real marketplace.

It is a widely held notion that CRM can improve the Sales Management Process. It is NOT widely held how to get salespeople to use CRM effectively — or more importantly how to get them to embrace the use of it (without using force or fear).  That would make a better webinar.

Or to actually take the Headline and give 5 tips for that without it being a pitch to buy SugarCRM. And SugarCRM is spending big money for that webinar too.

It’s not just Selling power either. I blog for TMCnet and Phone+ who also use the webinar as a lead gen tool for the sponsor. In many cases, they do the exact same thing. It ends up being a total pitch about the sponsor. Who wants that? Not any busy person I know.

When I hold webinars, the sponsors are told that they have talk about the subject, not themselves. Most marketing folks can’t wrap their heads around Give Value First.  But done correctly, your company gets some branding, and you

This isn’t my first rant on the subject – and I’m not alone (see here), but I see a proliferation of webinars being advertised. Dilution of brands – and dilution of the medium coming up (as people will associate webinar with wastinar).