Collaborative conferencing has jumped to the forefront of business communications, with companies clamouring for the technology to meet their employees' and customers' audio conferencing, video conferencing, web conferencing, and instant messaging demands. Microsoft's recently released Live Meeting 2005 is capable of meeting those demands, offering integrated communications to help people work more efficiently. Microsoft Office Live Meeting 2005 takes the best of Live Meeting 2003 and makes it easier to work together with colleagues, customers, and partners, no matter where you are.

Here's what's new and improved in Live Meeting 2005:

Guest Columnist

Five Reasons Why Webinars Work
(And why you should put them to work for your business)

Webinars can be considered one of the most underutilized marketing techniques for many of today’s firms, especially companies with a high customer lifetime value, such as those selling to businesses and those selling higher-end services and training. This is surprising considering that webinars are a powerful and inexpensive way to generate quality sales leads or get closer to partners or customers through online training or education.

Here are just five reasons why webinars can be both powerful and effective for many companies, and why marketers should become more bullish with webinars in the near future.

1. Webinars are Popular with Buyers who want direct access to educational or product information, without having to deal with a gatekeeper or salesperson. Studies in some industries show as many as 70% of buyers attend a webinar from a selling vendor before buying, and 90% of those webinar attendees tell others what they learned in the webinar.
2. Webinars are Effective for Sellers. They are relatively cost effective when compared to other marketing vehicles. A recent study showed that webinars are the most cost-effective way of getting sales appointments when all marketing, sales and time costs were factored in. This study compared webinars to commonly used marketing techniques, such as direct mail, telemarketing, trade shows and emarketing media like banner ads and email marketing. That means just by redeploying current marketing dollars to webinars from other, less effective media, you can likely get more leads and appointments with the same marketing budget.
3. Event Marketing Through Webinars Gives You a “Two-Step Sales Model.” How many times does your company get a call, email, or website inquiry from a new prospect asking, “Can I get pricing?”, as if all your products or services are commodities. Many companies turn this lead right over to sales and force individual salespeople to educate new prospects on a company’s approach to solving a problem and why their solution is unique.
   
   Instead, especially if you offer a differentiated or premium offering, use a live or archived marketing webinar to get the company message out to suspects and unqualified prospects in order to educate these potential customers in bunches. Now you won’t convert all price shoppers to value seekers, but you will educate many, identify high-probability opportunities, and save your salespeople lots of time in the process.
4. Many Companies Still Make Many Basic Webinar Mistakes, including an overdependence on one kind of webinar, the marketing webinar, which is typically designed to facilitate sales appointments. Because web collaboration services and tools are still relatively new, very few companies have recognized and use all the possibilities available through webinars. Furthermore, many companies have not yet figured out all the strategies and techniques to execute webinars well. That means significant opportunity for those that get the basics right and go beyond pure marketing webinars.
5. Webinars “Level the Playing Field,” meaning no matter how big or small your company or marketing budget, whether you are a market leader or just getting to market, an interesting and compelling webinar can attract the attention of your target market and get dozens to thousands of qualified prospects into your sales funnel. If your competition currently produces webinars, you can offer a better one to your prospects and help differentiate your company in the beginning of the buying process. If you're the webinar leader in your market, you're looking at a an opportunity for a solid competitive advantage.

Bob Hanson helps companies get maximum leads and sales with minimum marketing effort. He has helped generate over $1.5 billion in qualified sales leads through event and webinar marketing. See below for information on Mr. Hanson's upcoming webinar, “Seven Secrets of Winning Webinars.”

Upcoming Events

Seven Secrets of Winning Webinars

How can you increase webinar attendance 2, 3 even 5 times without increasing your marketing budget? What can you learn from today’s leading web seminar marketers? How can you get expert speakers and others to promote your events for free?

Join webinar and direct marketing expert Bob Hanson as he presents proven and practical strategies for blockbuster webinars. "Seven Secrets of Winning Webinars," will help you dramatically boost webinar attendance and your sales.

This webinar will also include webinar and marketing expert Michael Osterman, President of Osterman Research. Michael regularly speaks at webinars for clients and will present tips and techniques for uncovering winning webinar topics and getting the most from outside speakers.

Click here to learn more and register for this free webinar

Hints & Tips

Over the years we’ve heard some interesting stories from our clients about the types of distractions they run into while conducting a conference, meeting or large scale event. In fact, Encounter has created an annual event where we showcase some of the funniest, and often avoidable, mistakes, blunders and goofs that can railroad your most serious presentation.

To help you avoid those embarrassing moments, we’ve created a checklist of important things to consider before you host your next sales demonstration, marketing event, collaborative session or company wide meeting.

You can download the checklist from our Hints and Tips page.

Reader's Resource

The Future of Work: How the New Order of Business Will Shape Your Organization, Your Management Style, and Your Life

Thomas Malone is one of the keynote speakers at this week's Collaborative Technologies Conference and author of The Future of Work. The CTC website (http://www.ctcevents.com/) summarizes his book as follows:

Imagine organizations where bosses give employees huge freedom to decide what to do and when to do it. Imagine electing your own bosses and voting directly on important company decisions. Imagine organizations where most workers aren't employees at all, but electronically connected freelancers living wherever they want to. And imagine that all this freedom in business lets people get more of whatever they really want in life—money, interesting work, helping other people, or time with their families.

In The Future of Work, renowned organizational theorist Thomas W. Malone, codirector of MIT's landmark initiative "Inventing the Organizations of the 21st Century," shows where these things are already happening today and how—if we choose—they can happen much more in the future. Malone argues that a convergence of technological and economic factors—particularly the rapidly falling cost of communication—is enabling a change in business organizations as profound as the shift to democracy in governments. For the first time in history, says Malone, it will be possible to have the best of both worlds—the economic and scale efficiencies of large organizations, and the human benefits of small ones: freedom, motivation, and flexibility.

You can learn more about The Future of Work at amazon.com.